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Photos by Vija Kelly
Tending the nest: Above: The House Wren delivers a mouth-full of goodies to the demanding young.
Birthing isn’t a lot easier for birds either. It was interesting to watch a Mallard who built a nest in a corner of my garden. She laid one egg a day. After laying, she would come and lie down in the bird bath—just like the sitz bath that they make human mothers use after delivery. There was blood in the water when she left.
Although birds do not have to go through the long pregnancy we human females do, caring for the eggs is just as tedious. The eggs must be kept warm and so the bird sits and sits. Then the eggs have to be turned so that they stay uniformly warm. I have watched mother loons, who are so graceful in the water, struggle with this landborne task. And, think of mother egrets and herons with their long legs and almost as long beaks doing it on nests 20 to 40 feet up in a tree.
After hatching, come feeding and hygiene duties. It takes ever so many bugs to fill a belly. The Northern Cardinal father in my yard carries a delectable morsel to the nest about every ten minutes. And how the babies whine. Give me, give me, give me. Every parent recognizes that song. And just like many a human child, the young bird is not often anxious to provide for itself. I’ve watched Downy Woodpecker parents get mighty testy by the end of the summer and strike at their own young to drive them away. The hygiene part is a bit easier for birds, at least for song birds. No diapers to wash—nature has provided easy disposables in the form of fecal sacs which the parent bird can carry away from the nest. With other types of birds, the young just hang their little rears over the edge of the nest, or not. It can get pretty smelly.
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