Summer World_ A Season of Bounty - Bernd Heinrich [25]
Over the next two years these phoebes (probably two different pairs) made four attempts in that nest, but none of them was successful. Brown-headed cowbirds parasitized the nests with eggs, and then the newly hatched young were raided by chipmunks who had been attracted by the bird feeder, and who had somehow managed to climb the wall at the nesting spot.
After the successive failures of nests on the house I put up a shelf deep in the chicken shed, and it was quickly discovered. I was there when one of the birds found it; the bird cheeped and chattered excitedly, and I knew it liked what it had found in this new, very hidden, protected place. The pair soon produced five young there, but then one of the adults disappeared before they fledged. The other continued to feed them, but apparently not enough, because the cool wet weather that spring was not conducive to flies. One by one of the young died. Several fell out of the nest, as though trying to escape before starving. The next year, 2006, set records for rain, which hit just when the young were larger and needed much food. Again they starved, this time despite care by both parents, as did also the neighbors’. I removed the dead, and the birds then raised a second clutch in the same nest; this clutch fledged in early July. A second pair arrived then as well, and they laid a clutch of eggs in the ready-made but vulnerable and previously unsuccessful nest by the garage. Even before the clutch was finished (at the third egg) I heard the strained nuances of the adults’ alarm calls. They attracted me, and as I suspected, the nest was once again empty, probably just raided by a chipmunk.
In 2007 the pair started refurbishing the same hidden nest in the chicken shed on 6 May. Egg laying was delayed because of cold and rain, but I eventually felt five eggs in the nest by reaching up and into it and feeling them with my fingertips. On 1 June I heard the adults announce the eggs’ hatching, and the young fledged on 13 June. A cowbird was and had been around for most of this period, but I thought that the phoebes’ nest had been safe. I did not expect a cowbird to come into the chicken shed for a nest tucked onto a ledge in a dark corner, so I had not even bothered to get a mirror to look into the nest. However, to my great surprise, in the days immediately after fledging I saw only one of the phoebe pair, and it was feeding a baby cowbird. A pair of cowbirds were then still around the premises. I never saw the baby phoebes, and I assume the male left with them while the female and “her” cowbird baby stayed.
The baby cowbird was still following the phoebe around, and persistently begging from her, until at least 30 June. However, at dawn on 18 June a loud singing refrain signaled that the male was back. I suspect he came back after having left the young on their own. Two days later I found the first egg (eventually there would be three) of the second clutch, again in the same nest. Even after the eggs were laid, the presumed female was still feeding the cowbird, and only occasionally incubating. It was not until 29 June that she was consistently incubating her eggs during the daytime. I suspect, therefore, that she was not free to incubate full-time until the male was back and able to feed her. Now the cowbird followed the male around. It looked as though the male was trying to escape from this nest parasite and its almost constant begging for more food. (A pair of phoebes reused the same nest the next spring. It again was parasitized with a cowbird egg.)
After the second brood fledges, our phoebes usually become almost silent. They still hang around the house and we occasionally see them until mid-September. After that we miss them, and we look forward with anticipation to seeing them the next summer. The phoebe connects me to the miracle of returning at all from I know not where, and to the mystery of I know not how.
5
Bald-Faced Hornet Nests
21 July 2006. I FOUND A NEST OF BALD-FACED HORNETS (Dolichovespula maculate).