[Mnbird] White-breasted Nuthatch Behavior?

[Molly Miller Johnson]

I came out of my house to do some bird watching. The first thing I saw was a female Brown-headed Cowbird looking in some of my bluebird nest boxes. The bluebirds fledged a couple days ago so there was no danger to them.

I went to watch the White-breasted Nuthatch nest (in the fascia of our house) to see if the kids had fledged yet. The male was acting weird. He'd go to the hole and look inside, fly or walk away, and return--multiple times. Eventually he brought what I believe was a June bug. Evidently the female was on the nest this whole time; she took the bug and flew out of the nesthole. The male stayed and spent some time looking and leaning into the hole. He finally went in, and I was expecting him to come out with a fecal sac. Instead, he came out with a sort of light-colored, rosy-hued egg. I was a bit dumbfounded. He took it to a tree, and came back to the nest empty-beaked. Inside he went, and came out with another egg! He placed it in the same nearby oak tree as the other egg. Then he went off somewhere else.

Almost immediately after, a female Brown-headed Cowbird went to the oak tree where the first egg had been left. She did some "probing" with her beak and I saw the egg fall. I tried to see if I could find the egg below the tree to get an id on it, but the lamium vines were too thick.

My first reaction was that the male WBNH had removed two cowbird eggs. I've seen plenty of them and they vary quite a bit in color...and even size. But, after looking up WBNH eggs and see that they can have a rosy hue, I'm now quite unsure what happened. I didn't see speckling on the egg, but both times it was a very quick glance at the egg. The lighting wasn't great, as rain had just begun falling.

Thanks for any ideas on what happened.

Molly Miller
Inver Grove Hts,
Dakota Co.


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