This box was one of my favorites to check. At first, there were four very typical, very normal Western Bluebird eggs. It wasn't until the next week that it started to get weird.
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| These are the eggs I found the second week. |
These are NOT bluebird eggs, as they are much too large and the wrong color. A possibility that came up was Brown-headed Cowbirds, a species of bird that lays their eggs in other birds nests.
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| The brown, spotted egg is a Brown-headed Cowbird's egg in a Dickcissel nest. Picture belongs to MDC Discover Nature |
The eggs did not belong to Brown-headed Cowbirds either.
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| This is the bird, a couple of days after hatching |
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| These are baby Bluebirds from one of my other boxes |
As you can see, the mystery bird is definitely not a bluebird. I have actually had a couple of people comment that the bird looks like a piece of uncooked chicken!
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| The baby has started to grow some feathers |
With the baby getting older, the time for identification was getting shorter and shorter.
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| This is the last time I saw the bird before it fledged |
Sadly, we were not able to identify the bird before it fledged (left the nest) and at this writing, I still haven't identified it.
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