Drama with Sally Sly

If you know the Burgess Bird Book for Children, then you know that Sally Sly is a Cowbird.  And if you know what a Cowbird is, you know that they don't build their own nests.  Or raise their own young.  They slip into another bird's nest and lay an egg along side the others.  

Here's a fun depiction from another one of our favorite books, Mama Built a Little Nest

And here it is in real life:

We have several Blue Bird nesting boxes.  Imagine our surprise when we checked one and found this!  Especially when we had just been reading about Sally Sly- amazing timing!  After some deliberation, we decided that we preferred Blue Birds to Cowbirds, and that the necessary course of action was to try to carefully remove the one without disturbing the three or leaving our scent.  That would keep Mama Blue Bird away from incubating them.   Cowbird eggs typically hatch 1-2 days earlier than other birds, and are larger in size, so they dominate the feeding and the others miss out, oftentimes to their demise.

Lead Leader and Brave Hero carefully came up with a plan.  Lead Photographer happily captured the action.

  And caught the egg.  It was a thrilling moment for me. 

The world was set to right. 

Except for the poor little Cowbird egg.  As the kids studied it, their hearts went out to it and the second-guessing and moral dilemma of interfering with the course of nature spilled out along with some tears.  We had quite the Existential and Logical discourse, (acceptability of killing of mice in the house, weeds in the garden, etc) but they were hardly satisfied by it.  It was a solemn time of considering life and death and responsibility. 

 I was frankly getting a little concerned over the whole issue.  Until I checked the box one evening and saw this 

What a joy it was to show the kids the two baby Blue Birds looking so happy and healthy and snug.  We don't know what happened to the third egg, but so it goes in nature. 

A few days older

The last time we checked the box it was contentedly empty.  They were off!  It was nice to end our adventure on a cheerful, hopeful, Blue Bird of happiness note.