Sunday, April 26, 2009

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

Bluebird chicks enclose their waste within a flexible bag known as a fecal sac. These sacs are made of strong mucous that the parent birds can easily pick and dispose of. The parent birds meticulously remove these sacs and dispose them some distance away from the nest to help keep the nest sanitary and to reduce the chance of predators locating the nests through visual or chemical evidence.
Click on photos for a larger view.
To start with the parents would go in the nest box grab the sac, turn around and come back out head first.
As the babies got a little larger the parents would just stick their heads in the nest, grab the sac and then back out of the box and fly off with the fecal sac. Now the baby birds just back their butts up to the nest hole and deposit the sac in the opening for the parents to get.

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