A few weeks back, we got a big new hanging flower basket for our back yard
deck.
The very same day, a pair of Dark-eyed Juncos took an interest in it.
started building a nest. But, I was watching them and it seemed to be two
males - both with identical male coloration - dark heads & bold coloration
that's pretty familiar. I was wondering how this would go exactly, were they
just "playing house"? they were very defensive of the flower basket
(watering it became a delicate tasks - dealing with very intensive clicking
from the pair of them, and avoiding the nest. I didn't look in there, so as
not to disturb them too much.
A few weeks of this went by, and what do you know? There's a peeping chick
in the basket. So, I figured my identification must have been off, an maybe
there is some variation in coloration of female Dark-eyed Juncos?
Then, the single chick fledged. and. it's a Cowbird. It's about twice the
size of the adults. The three of them were mostly in the yard for a week or
so, so I got more chances to observe them (this period was during the heat
wave - they made it through).
So, now I'm wondering, is it possible we had a same-sex pair of Juncos
raising an adopted Cowbird chick? Is anyone aware of reports of this kind of
thing?
I wish I had gotten photos of the two Junco adults to verify this.
One other interesting observation, I saw an adult female Cowbird check on
the nest just once, briefly, a little while after the chick had fledged.
Does anyone know if Cowbirds are known to follow-up on their host nests?
I have been doing my office job from the deck many days in that period, so
had a lot of time to observe these birds, all day long for weeks.
-Jonathan
