Silly Saturday ....

This may look silly to some of you ..... a Chipping sparrow feeding a fledgling more than twice its size.  But this can be a serious issue.

The fledgling is a juvenile brown-headed cowbird and the "host" mom/dad is a chipping sparrow.  Unfortunately, this happens all to often this time of year. 

Why you may ask?  When the female brown-headed cowbird is ready to lay her eggs she will lay them in other birds nests ..... usually much smaller birds like this chipping sparrow.  Earlier this summer I saw a juvenile cowbird with a song sparrow, which is equally as small as this chipping sparrow. It's a very nasty habit that the female cowbird has .... and not very silly at all!

This afternoon we went up to Nazareth as today was the 11th Annual Martin on Main Festival .... a celebration of music that started in 2008 to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the famed Nazareth guitar maker. Many years ago I bought a Martin guitar for Richard and he wanted to get it restrung.  We had fun simply walking around and I met a super nice man from Canada that I sat next to as R was getting the guitar restrung. He comes down from Canada each year just for this celebration!  Now that's a dedicated Martin Guitar enthusiasts! 

Later on after we had returned home we noticed that monarch cat#1 had stopped eating and made his/her way to the top of the enclosure! We watched him/her for the rest of day as we knew that he/she would soon assume the J-hook formation and within 24 hours after that form into a chrysalis!  It wasn't until around 10:00 pm that the j-hook happened ..... and now we are on chrysalis watch!

Watch this space .....