Fantastic! Lesbian birds. By the way, lesbians raise children together all the time and are very successful ;)

Keep us updated. This is very interesting. From my experience with cardinals around my house, they will abandon their nest when human activity is around. Good luck!

Hmmm.....interesting. Never heard of that before.

Me either, very cool though.

I think it is uncommon, but has been documented previously. I recall reading about it before, but I cannot recall the species. Hopefully they will all hatch in a short span, so the young are relatively the same size. And that the parents will cooperatively feed them all. I'd love to hear updates, too. What a great opportunity to watch unusual bird behavior!

kwryan, was there success with all the eggs hatching and both moms attentive? Update, please.

Three of the 7 fleged. Both females and at least one male participated in the care of the babies. It was hard to tell about the second guy. There were no eggs in the nest after the last one left and no evidence near by of the eggs so they were either taken by jays or something or the parents disposed of them after they didn't hatch.

It's interesting, but for the last several days, I've seen up to four female cardinals feeding at my neighbor's bird feeder. They always appear together and chase each other around on the tree limbs without any male in sight. I've never seen this before.

At this time of year they could be siblings.

tj

Shame on the person who called these birds lesbians. These were two mated females sharing a communal nest. It is not by any stretch of the imagination an ideal situation, with a low percentage of eggs ever hatching, let alone resulting in healthy fledgings.

Why this occurs within songbirds is not well understood. With hummingbirds, an excess of sugar water feeders is directly responsible for the unnatural overpopulation of birds in a very small area. A terrible scenario for most birds, as they are quite territorial.

Come on Rhizo. Homophobic much? It was a joke.

I just get irritated when people assign human personalities, emotions, and reactions to animals. It diminishes the animals' real roles, in my opinion. And in this instance, it even lessens the stature of lesbians.

But, har-dee-har-har, if you wish.

We have this happening this year. We had two cardinal pairs but found one male deceased on our deck - possibly hit the window? Not sure if there is a correlation but now we have two females and one male feeding the babies in one nest on the side of our house. The nest is too high up in the bush to see the count of chicks. If both females approach the nest at one time often one chases the other off so I dont think this is communal chick raising as much as a female who lost her mate and has possibly developed a mothering need with another couple’s nest?

These two beautiful young female cardinals are watching eggs. They are birds and are predisposed to mate make a nest when needed and make chicks. I have not seen a male yet but will keep you posted.

In our windchime

Closer without bothering.

Interesting. Let us know how many they fledge.