There is a larger egg with speckles in a nest with four other smaller white eggs. What birds in N New Jersey tend to orrow others nests for their eggs?
A. Your larger egg was laid by a Brown-headed Cowbird. That baby will be larger than the other nestlings and will get more food, which often means one or more of the littler nestlings will die. You may be tempted to remove this imposter’s egg, but if you do, you risk ALL the other eggs being trashed, because cowbirds do return to check on their eggs and nestlings. If they think the parent birds got rid of one, they really do take revenge. A scientist here at the Lab wrote a story about this “mafia behavior” for BirdScope this year that you might be interested in. There’s more information about cowbirds in another BirdScope article and at All About Birds.
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