For whatever reason, they never returned last year. Now I'm not an expert on birds, but the last two years there has been an influx of grackles and cowbirds to my feeders that I fear may have chased away the chickadees last year.
So this year, the grackles have come and gone but the cowbirds continue to fly to my bird feeders. That has prompted me to shoot them to keep them from returning and as a result, I just saw a pair of chickadees once again starting to nest in one of the boxes........
Is it a coincidence that my eliminating the cowbirds upon their arrival to my feeders has allowed the chickadees to once again return to my nest boxes?
I don't know, but the cowbirds are nothing but parasite birds and I've already eliminated over thirty of them this past month alone for the sake of my local song birds.......
If I'm wrong in doing so, please let me know.
Great job getting rid of those cowbirds. We don’t see that many but we do our best to scare them off, blue Jay’s and wrens too. Wrens have been a problem here destroying bluebird nests with eggs in them.
Cowbirds are the worst! They’re the ones that will take over a nest, lay their own eggs there, destroy the original bird’s eggs, then the smaller birds EXHAUST themselves trying to keep the monstrous thing fed when it hatches!
And, it IS a native bird to North America, so we can’t blame immigration for this problem!
https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/bird-species/tanagers-and-blackbirds/brown-headed-cowbird/
Aim Small, Miss Small! ;)
That’s excellent on the chickadees! I hope they found that you’ve made a comfortable home for them. I hate cowbirds with a passion. I’ve seen wrens and cardinals raise those stupid cowbirds. It’s shocking.