Bailey Lebreton
LiD paragraph
1-16-14
#17
Parental care
Parental care is very important the baby’s
cannot survive on their own. These baby’s need special care and that’s why the
parents are here. After the baby birds
are laid, the mother will start to get a brooding patch. This is a soft layer
of warm wrinkly skin and some feathers.
The mothers will use it to nestle on the eggs. The parents will put compost and sand to keep
them just the right temperature.
Fledglings
Fledglings
are young birds that are just getting the hang of flying. They are almost ready
to move out of the nest. Parents will
still feed the chick even if it already knows how to fly. Sometimes birds are pronounced fledge even
though they cannot fly. The ancient Murrelet
fledges two days after it is born.
Brood parasites
Brood
parasites are birds that lay there young in other birds’ nests. Example:
If a cow bird lays their eggs in the Eastern Phoebe’s nest, the Eastern
Phoebe will lay on their eggs hatch them and then feed them. The benefits for the parasitic parent are
they don’t have to care for, defend, or hatch their young. The parasitic parent thus spends more time
mating and hatching more eggs because they have more energy and time. The disadvantage for the host parent is that
they have to feed more chicks and the parasitic chicks tend to be larger and
dominate during feeding or even kill the other, smaller chicks. Some host parents, when they realize they
have been tricked, will leave the entire nest to die, rather than raise
somebody else’s brood.