Comments on: Big Sur, Big Cliffs…Big Birds!

By: maria jose

maria jose — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:19:00 +0000

We all know that condors are assumed to be the best bird in California but still there are various state where it is considered to be an endangered species.

By: victoria stiles

victoria stiles — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:10:20 +0000

The California Condor are now back from near extinction, and if you look at this magnificent creature, it looks very prehistoric out of the days of the dinosaurs. However they don't do so well around mankind, or human civilizations you see. Even though the Condor has come back from the endangered species list, its existence in the wild is predicated on its ability to get food, and if we continue to interfere with this it may someday end back on that list again.

By: types of birds

types of birds — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:06:16 +0000

After doing a little research I found out they were actually cowbird babies. Cowbirds are brood parasites that lay their eggs in other birds nests hoping that that bird will raise them as their own. The cowbird mothers remove at least one egg of host’s by piercing the egg with it’s beak and either knocking it out of the nest or flying off with the egg. We didn’t see any egg shells below the nest so the mother must have flown off with it. I’ve also found that cowbirds typically only lay one egg in a nest so because we have two baby cowbirds they were probably from two different mothers. The cowbird babies hatch earlier and grow faster and larger than the host’s babies so they have a better chance of surviving. Cowbird hatchlings also tend to get fed more because they have a bright pink mouth which indicates they need to be feed more. In the picture above you can clearly see this. I remember watching the “mother” phoebe flying around frantically trying to feed them from our study window too.