Yes, but a surprising lesson was also being learned by a host of professionals and teachers at the Lab of Ornithology. Messages had begun pouring in from viewers horrified by this drama, beseeching us to save the nestlings. Many were irate that Lab staff could sit idly by while these parent birds neglected their young right underneath our video camera. Uncertain of how to proceed under these circumstances, our Nest Box Network professionals elected to turn off the camera and tried, in vain, to locate a foster nest. It is important to stress that we have no evidence, in this or any other case, that the presence of a video device in the box or any other human intervention caused any of the behavior we witnessed.
Individual birds vary tremendously in pair bonds and social situations.
Such variation can result in reproductive failure through a host of routes, many of them well understood but many others still unclear. To intervene, at either nest, would have been an unnatural event. It is exciting never to stop learning. These events reminded us that we should not assume that all viewers of nature feel as we do about accepting the natural death of animals when we have some small power to prevent it. They caused us to examine our very purpose as a Lab with a mission.