Birdbrains

I sure enjoy my birdfeeders. They hang right outside my kitchen window. I have a wire basket feeder, a suet feeder, a thistle sock for the goldfinches, and a hummingbird feeder. All day long there is a parade of birds including cardinals, tufted titmice, black capped chickadees, bluejays, nuthatches, goldfinch, housefinch, hummingbirds, and woodpeckers (hairy, downey, red bellied). It has been really fun lately as many of the birds are now bringing there fledgling babies up to feed. The babies usually perch in the crabapple tree or on my plant hanger bars and chirp and flutter there wings till mama or papa feeds them. I've really enjoyed the downey woodpecker family, they were bringing up one baby at a time, but now all four babies are coming at once and doing some eating on their own. There is one type of bird that comes around that I'm not too thrilled about, the brown headed cowbird. They are known as "brood parasite" birds. This bird does not make a nest of it's own.. So when the female cowbird is ready to lay an egg she deposits it in another birds nest. (what a slut) This egg usually hatches before the host nests eggs do.. then this cowbird chick either nudges the rightfull chicks out of the nest or is just plain the dominate chick and starves the host parents babies. Amazingly, the host parents dutifully feed and raise this interloper! Yesterday I heard the familiar baby bird chirping at my feeder and went to the window to see who was there. I saw a male cardinal at the basket feeder (which is 2ft from window).. He was getting seed and he turned his head and looked at me.. we had a moment.... Then he flew over to the crabapple tree and began feeding his BIG UGLY COWBIRD BABY! I shook my head.. "sucker" I thought... "you need Maury Povich"....