Northern cardinal

 

 

Eating at the feeder.  Then something weird happened.  The cardinal went over next to a different kind of bird.

 

The other bird started begging.

 

 

And the cardinal fed it!

 

 

It’s not unusual this time of year to see a bird feeding babies, but this one was feeding a different species, a blackbird!  Then I realized the big baby bird getting fed was a brown-headed cowbird.  Brown-headed cowbirds are nest parasites.  They’ll sneak in and lay their eggs in the nest of some other bird, and let that other bird raise their babies.  This northern cardinal had just successfully reared a brown-headed cowbird!