The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-22

0A4AA6 LAAC N--iASl &A4uLl-4S are EOWUlIufs for they are not. They are called 'grackles. and seem to be more like crows than blackbifds. You can find their nests, big bulky affairs, in the orange and cypress trees of almost any of your ranch homes. There are many, members to the bIackbird family. the sweet voiced meadoWlarks and the gor- gsous, golden orioles, as well as the more sober colored bIackbirds. and grackles. and of all these but one forces the matching of her eggs and the feed- ing of her young on to another bird mother.
 In England; the cuckoo has. this same habit, but the American cuckoo builds her hest and sits on her eggs as nicely as any robin or dove could do. Some times our read runner So far forgets herself as to lay her eggs in the nest of a quail or meadowlark. but not often, but when she does, the bird upon whom Mrs. Roadrunner tries to impose generally breaks the strange egg or else goes away and leaves the nest alone. Then the field mice and the wood rats have. a feast, to which sometimes the comes herself, for she is very fond of eggs as long as they are not her own.
 But the cowbird never makes any such poor job as that. Shealways selects the nest of some smaller bird-in regions where warblers are plentiful the home of one of these little singers is most frequently chosen-and there, as many eggs as she thinks the owner of the nest will submit-to are laid. Some times the Warbler goes right on in- cubating the intruder, but now and then the old birds get together and dump the eggs out on the ground. Nests have been found in which the warblers put a mud floor over the first nest and built another one on top of it. leaving their own eggs to spoil because they knew no other way to rid themselves of the cow bird. If the cowbird comes back by the repaired nest she will put another egg in it, and generally this egg is matched and raised by the foster pair lon whom 1t has been forced.
 It requires about ten or. eleven days for the young cowbird to break the shell, while most other birds of it's size are two or three days longer, and thus he has a good start on the other nest lings in point of growth. When matched the cowbird Is larger than the sparrow or the warbler, and consequent Ely gradually crowds them into the back ground, taking all the food that should belong 10 them. As they grow weaker from this, he grows stronger. and 1t is. mot long until he tips them out of the nest and is sole masteN of the two old bird, who work ceaselessly to satisfy his awful appetite. In a very few days .he gets too large for the little nest and goes out into the branches, where the old birds still continue to feed him in a way they never do their own young after they have left the nest. In Mexico and South America there Is a cowbird that sometimes builds nest of her own and sits upon and hatches her own eggs, but no such thing ever hap pens among the black hobos of the oriole family found further north.
 How many eggs cowbird lays no one knows, but as many as seven have been found in ono nest of the oven bird, kind of thrush found in the Eastern States. Usually. however, only one egg Is laid in each nest, especially if the birds to whom the nest belongs are small and the nest too little to hold Hmore than one of the cowbird's young in comfort. The parent cowbird never disturbs the eggs of any of the birds in whose nests she leaves her onw, know ing full well that if she did So the nest builder would in all probability desert her home or throw the strange egg out. Oftentimes more than one cowbird lays in the same nest, and as no two eggs of these birds are ever exactly alike in color, you may be sure that no cowbird knows her own egg half minute after she has laid 1t. Los Angeles Times