DEAR JOAN: Recently we have seen an Oregon junco feeding another bird under our bird feeder. It would make sense if this were a mother feeding her baby, however, the bird being fed was larger than the junco, and the closest I could find in the bird book was a white winged junco, which does not live here.

I have never seen that kind of bird at the bird feeder before. Do you have any ideas about what kind of bird it might be? It was such an unusual sight.

Anne Macpherson

Los Altos

DEAR ANNE: This is a puzzle. I talked with my birding friends for their thoughts, and we suspect that the larger bird was a young cowbird.

Junco, left, with cowbird.
Junco, left, with cowbird. (Courtesy of John Hoy)

Mature cowbirds have dark bodies and tan heads, but their coloring is more uniform when they are juveniles.

Cowbirds are classified as "parasitic brooders," which sounds slightly sinister. They feed on insects, particularly those that hang around with cattle, which explains the unusual name. As such, a cowbird following a wandering herd doesn't have time for sitting on a nest.

Instead, the female searches for other birds' nests and lays her eggs there, usually just one per nest, leaving the unsuspecting brooding mothers to sit on a stranger's egg.

If the conscripted mother figures out what's going on, she may push the cowbird egg out of the nest, which does not please mama cowbird at all and, if she has the chance, she will revisit the nest and destroy all the eggs inside.


If the cowbird egg hatches, the new parents will usually raise it as one of their own, although often the cowbird baby is bigger than the other hatchlings and may even force them out of the nest.

It could be that mama junco, who would be smaller than even a young cowbird, was taking care of her chick.

P.S. Just as I was finishing up this column, I received a letter and photo from John Hoy, of San Jose, who is seeing the same thing. He sent in a photo of the two birds, and it is clearly a young cowbird with the junco. Another mystery solved.

DEAR JOAN: My garden is the superhighway between the wooded area across the road and the river on the opposite of my house. Every critter imaginable travels through my garden. I don't mind that some vegetables are eaten -- I plant enough for everyone. It's a little bit of a wind in the willows existence. I also have a big shallow cement dish that is full of water for the visitors.

I'm not complaining about the lack of tomato hornworms as my neighbors all have them, but I'm wondering why I don't.

Is it possible the skunks that roam my garden every night are eating them? If not, is there another animal that may be? Or might I just be lucky and have now jinxed myself?

Jim Belbeck

Bethel Island

DEAR JIM: You could very well have a skunk visiting your yard at night and picking off the worms, which actually are caterpillars. Birds also eat them.

It could turn out that you just don't have the hornworms in your yard either through luck or through cultural practices.

If you use pesticides, you may be killing the moth -- as well as lots of bugs you don't want to kill -- before it can lay eggs.

If you have Queen Anne's lace, dill, fennel, spearmint, sweet alyssum or clover growing in your garden, you're likely attracting a small, parasitic wasp that kills the hornworm in a rather gruesome but effective way.

I despise hornworms, but they do turn into splendid moths that do important pollination for night blooming plants, which is more than I do.

Contact Joan Morris at