Another photo from yesterday afternoon… so cute!
Then, I took another peek today because it’s pouring outside and I was worried about whether or not I had left an opening in the clump of salvia where rain could get in – so I snapped a quick picture with my iphone and then carefully brushed the top of the salvia clump closed hoping the leaves provide a good cover from the next three days of rain. When I got inside and took a look at the picture I see another hatchling has added to the mix. Looking at this image I’m now even more suspicious than I was yesterday that this nest may be home to more than one species… Take a look at that white egg in the upper right. It appears whiter than the rest. We do have cowbirds that frequent our feeders and they are known to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, including song sparrows, and it certainly looks to be the coloring of a cowbird egg. There seem to be so many eggs in this nest that it certainly is suspicious. I also have seen a broken egg about 20 feet or so away from this location a couple weeks ago (although I can’t say exactly what type of egg that was as I didn’t look too closely… but cowbirds are thought to remove at least one egg when they lay eggs in another nest). Anyway… it is certainly intriguing and I hope to get a glimpse of them again as they grow bigger to find out for certain if we have a nest of sparrows or a nest of sparrows AND cowbirds.
