Bonsai Bird Nest!

edro

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My dad has a few bonsai trees on his patio.
This spring he noticed a bird nest in his ficus.
They have now hatched! :)
 

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Klytus

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I guess there are several considerations for presenting a tree as if it were found in nature.

The Art of Birds-Eye Bonsai has been mastered,but will they return next year?

Do you leave the nest?
 

Mojosan

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I have a bird's nest bonsai, but it didn't come with any eggs..................

That is pretty cool.
 

Yamadori

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That is wonderful. I would be so honored if a bird nested in one of my trees!
 

edro

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Yeah, my dad said that the different egg is now a different bird that is double the size of the others. I didn't know some birds did that.
 

davetree

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It probably will push the other ones out of the nest. I am not sure which ones, but I know that a number of species have this behavior.
 

Attila Soos

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Looks like you have two different kinds of eggs there. A cuckoo type bird that lays its eggs in other nests ?

Wow, good eyes Dave. I would be fascinated to watch how these hatchlings grow up together (eventually, the cuckoo trying to kill the host species), so I wouldn't touch the tree untill the drama is all over.
But I wonder how your dad is going to water the tree, without chasing the mother away.
 

mcpesq817

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Here's one I found in the chop of the canopy of a good sized bald cypress I have - looks like a robin decided to build a nest and lay a couple of eggs. The canopy was a bit bushy so I didn't realize a nest was there until I started thinning it out.
 

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rockm

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Those don't look like robin's eggs...Robin eggs are blue. These might be a carolina wren's. Smaller bird that's pretty common around No.Va.
 

mcpesq817

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The color in the photo is a bit washed out due to the flash, but they are bluish with the brown speckles (probably not as blue as a robin's egg). But, I think you're right that they are a different species. I sent the pictures to my brother, who said that a robin's nest would be a lot bigger than this one, which is only about 3-4" in diameter.

Just looked up the carolina wren - looks like you could be spot on Rockm:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Wren

Pretty cool to see though. I left the nest alone, and will have to tackle the tree later this year or next spring.
 

rockm

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I thought it might be a Carolina Wren, because I get them in and around my larger bonsai a lot.:D They seem to like rooting around a bit in the soil in my trees. They're pretty small, so any damage isn't that bad. They have a nice song, but also complain in a loud voice. You may recognize the bird by it's sound:
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Carolina_Wren/sounds
 

mcpesq817

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Not sure if those are the birds that made the nest in my BC, but I hear those songs all the time in my backyard. Good to know who the singers are :D
 

Dav4

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Yeah, my dad said that the different egg is now a different bird that is double the size of the others. I didn't know some birds did that.

Most likely a brown headed cowbird. They apparently can parasitize over 200 hundred other species of birds. Their eggs will actually hatch a day or two before the other eggs, and the chicks grow rapidly, giving them a huge advantage over their nest mates. Very interesting survival mechanism...


Dave
 

davetree

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I wonder why the host parents haven't evolved a defense against this. Why they don't recognize the different species and kill it/push it out of the nest ? Sometimes the invading chick can be twice the size of the parent bird and they still feed it ! I wonder if their is some chemical component to this mystery.
 

davetree

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Some interesting facts:

Two varieties of cowbird are the only birds that parasitize nests in North America. They can lay up to 40 eggs a year in the other nests of over 220 different species (in about 140 of those species successfully). A lot of birds do recognize the intruder and remove the egg, bury it under more twigs, or abandon the nest for another site. The female is believed to attempt to lay her eggs in the nest of the same species that raised her. The chicks do not kill the host chicks, but rather eat most of the food, leaving the others to starve.
 

parhamr

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Today I saw a bird nest in a nursery tree while shopping for mother trees. I was tempted to get the tree, anyway, but a bird nest would have made it extra cool!

IMG_0349.JPG

This was in an Osakazuki Japanese maple that was about 6 feet tall and growing in a 20-gallon nursery can.
 
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