I almost posted an observation along these lines several weeks ago. In a one-week span I noticed three separate cowbird chicks all being attended to by blue-grey gnatcatchers. There was always a single cb chick to each set of birds, and never any sign of additional BGGC chicks vying for the food. In that same time span I also noticed a CBchick being fed by a pair of indigo buntings. It's not hard to find them as they are very raucous and conspicuous. I am curious how the numbers and densities of birds most typically affected by CB predations are doing here because we have hordes of cowbirds, yet I always hear/see vireos and thrushes and others that are prime targets for parasitism. I check my nest boxes regularly and destroy any CB eggs in the hopes that at least my small wooded acreage can better sustain songbirds in a time of decline, but we live in farmland with any remaining wooded areas being highly fragmented. Flocks of winter 'blackbirds' are usually groupings of redwings, starlings, grackles and cowbirds fattened up on a steady and readily available farmland diet. I only wonder what our songbird demographics will do in the next few decades.

Wear a hat and it won't seem so intimidating. My first year with Blues was the only year I had terrible divebombers other years they were much more tolerant and just scolded me. We have TRES so Blues divebombing never seems as bad anymore. TRES get really really close when they divebomb and usually if there are other TRES around they join in the bombing mission. It is nuts with the TRES. I say go look but wear a hat and you probably will feel better. They won't hit you cause if they did they could injure themselves. Donna

Hey Anita: I can be serious too, yes I do have a nestcam, I didn't have the nestcam set up for the first batch of the year, But have got it set up for the second batch, the mother has three eggs now, I also set up a cheap TV from Salvation Army out side my shed for the rest of those in the Trailer Park to also be able to see what's going on. As far as your baby with it's head back, well it probably just fell asleep like that, being it is probably just a day or two old with out much muscle tone to control much of any thing. I had a baby that was about a couple of days old, young enough that you could open the side of the bluebird box and they would still have their mouth open to any sound. Anyway got one picture where this one bluebird neck looked really bad, looked like a really big gash, I was really worried about the little bird, but they all grew up Ok and flew away Ok as far as I know, maybe some of them might end up with attention deficit disorder which some of us have, but I think they will be Ok. As far as your baby bird goes, maybe his neck feels a little sore and the way he has it laid out is the best way for him to feel good physically, but with out much muscle tone in his neck, He probably said good enough for now, ZZZZZZZZZZZZ. I'm sure it's a one time deal and after a day or two they will all be laying still in the box looking normal, trying to play dead. Looking forward to seeing my eggs hatch and seeing them feed with the mini camera. Right now it is on a old VCR but eventually before the eggs hatch will hope to get the DVD recorder hooked up to it to record nature at it's best. Sincerely, Keith

I enjoyed reading this tonight after a very busy weekend and want to thank you so much for sharing this. Your birding experiences are so interesting. I loved seeing the little bluebird finally make the leap in the movie and all of your photos are so incredible. Poor little mama bluebird with the hurt leg. I sure hope it heals correctly enough for her to get use from it. She is very unique in appearance and I wonder if any of her babies will look like her. Please keep us posted if you see any resemblance. The high winds have been so hard on our little birds this year.