What the nesting birds teach me about revolution

Parasites, failure, and instinct

This spring, a familiar pair of Bewick’s Wrens took up residence in the rafters of my back porch.

I first noticed them hopping around together, landing on chairs and railings and craning their heads quizzically, scoping out the joint.

For a week or two after, I would periodically catch one or both of them coming and going with twigs and leaves in their beaks. Disappearing through the opening of the old, hollowed out wood, and then emerging a moment later. Both on entering and exiting, they would pause and look around briefly, making sure they weren’t being followed, trying to ensure they weren’t attracting dangerous eyes to their hopeful nursery.

Later, two birds carrying nest materials turned into one bird carrying moths, worms, and suet from our nearby feeder. Every time he squeezed into the nest, buzzy chirps would emerge from within, as if his hungry partner was so relieved to have some company, even for a moment, in the long, boring task of incubating eggs. 

Within a few weeks, she was back flying around again, helping him out as the number of bugs carried to the nest doubled. The chirping of a momma bird was replaced by the faint, barely perceptible squeaks of nestlings. 

With each stage, my delight and relief grew as I watched these devoted parents pass each new test and progress to the next round. I was so honored they’d trusted our porch to hold their family.

I was trying to do my part, as well. When contractors came by to remove some dead tree branches on the back of the house, I hovered around anxiously, making sure everyone was aware that there was some very precious work being done in this one spot on the porch so could we please try to avoid disturbing it or making too much noise too close by? Outdoor hangs with friends, games of fetch with Breck, and yard work chores were all rescheduled or relocated to give the nest a wide berth.

Last year, this same pair of wrens had chosen to build their nest in that same rafter. That year, the bustle on the back porch was much more brief. I saw the careful inspection of the porch, saw leaves get brought in, but then mysteriously, the activity stopped. I’ll never know what went wrong, but the nest wasn’t filled and all our hope was disappointed.

My dad could empathize with me when I told him about it. He too had watched wrens build a nest outside his home in Arkansas, but the eggs laid in it never hatched. In fact, almost everybody who has ever closely watched birds could relate, all of us swapping stories about the many nests we’d seen fail.

This spring, hundreds of thousands of viewers got invested in the live nesting cam of two Bald Eagles named Jackie and Shadow, who were building a nest in the Big Bear Valley. Unfortunately, that meant hundreds of thousands of hearts were broken when Jackie and Shadow spent almost three months sitting on eggs that never developed. Screenshot from LA Times

It really seemed that this was our year, though. Everything was coming together. The weeks continued and so did the excited work. The faint noises in the rafters were getting a little stronger, day by day. 

And then one evening, I was sitting on the back porch when a wren parent came by with one of the countless daily food deliveries. From the angle I was sitting at, I could actually see (FINALLY!) a baby bird receiving the worm. Obviously, I was thrilled. Eyes glued to what I was witnessing, staying statue still on the outside while internally dancing. This was the moment I’d been waiting all spring for, to see proof of life, proof of success, with my own eyes. It was here, and it was perfect.

Until I noticed that the nestling sitting there - mouth wide open and expectant - was already almost twice the size of the adult wren feeding him, and my heart dropped as I realized.

The bird they were working so hard to care for was not an infant Bewick’s Wren, but a baby Brown-Headed Cowbird. 

A Brown-Headed Cowbird nestling (left) vs Bewick’s Wren nestlings (right). Both images are from Tuft University’s database of baby bird photos

Brown-Headed Cowbirds are not able to make nests of their own. Instead, the female leaves dozens of eggs scattered in any nests they can find, in hopes that the birds who built the nest will unknowingly hatch and raise them. Cowbird babies grow more quickly and much bigger than the babies of their host species, so they end up crowding their fellow nestlings and monopolizing the food and care that the parents offer. Usually at least some of the host’s own chicks become casualties of this arrangement. 

This is the only way Cowbirds have to reproduce, and it’s a natural part of the ecosystem. The nest I watched these wrens labor over did facilitate the life of a new bird. But in the days that followed, I still couldn’t help but feel a little rage on their behalf, groaning in disgust every time I would train my binoculars towards the rafters and get a peek at the comically large interloper lumbering around within. My precious pair of wrens had worked tirelessly to offer a safe home to their brood, who were supposed to look and sing like them. And then here was this traitor, who murdered baby birds just by his mere presence, feeling entitled to the protection and care of the very parents whose offspring he’d destroyed. To my human mind, it’s hard to imagine a greater injustice.

It feels unfair that out of all the nesting I’ve witnessed and all the nesting I’ve heard about, so little of it has ever ended in watching an intact bird family flying off into the sunset. But it’s also to be expected.

In springtime, 100% of the adult birds in the world are trying to reproduce. It’s all any of them are doing, all day, every day. 

Only 30% of those birds will have eggs that hatch. 

For the eggs that do hatch, up to 90% of those baby birds will not make it through their first year of life.

If you do the math, in springtime 100% of adult birds are attempting to create the next generation of adult birds. Only about 3% of them will succeed. 

That’s such a huge amount of loss. And yet, that 3% is enough for us to have birds!! Every bird you see flying around outside is the result of a 97% failure rate, but we have enough birds to keep running all of the many facets of our ecology that rely on them to thrive. 

It’s enough, only because every year, 100% of the birds try.

Imagine if next year the Bewick’s Wrens from my porch said “You know what, we’ve done that nest thing for two whole years now (at least) and it hasn’t panned out. It was so much work, we were exhausted and in danger the whole time, and what came of it? Not to mention all of our bird neighbors who have also tried for years and also keep having their nests get blown away or pillaged by a fox…I think it’s just time we call it. Isn’t doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result the definition of delusion? It’s not worth the disappointment.”

And then imagine if they went around expressing that nihilism and defeat to the other birds in the area. Imagine if the idea started to grow among bird populations, that building a nest was a waste of time and didn’t make a difference anyway. Imagine if it was no longer 100% of birds trying. That 3% success rate would no longer be sufficient. The consequences would be disastrous.

Last week, someone told me that they stopped protesting because “in their lifetime” they’d never seen a protest achieve its goals. It just didn’t seem to be an effective method for changing the world.

That comment has stayed in my mind, not because it’s such a weird thing to think, but actually because I know it’s so common. So many of us have killed ourselves over ballot measures and causes and campaigns and then watched the bills get passed, the person get elected, the cops do whatever they wanted, the pipeline get built, anyway. Some of us have done that over and over again without a single victory to celebrate, and now have a pile of losses festering in disappointment in the corner of our hearts.

As much as I understand that pain, as much as I get the urge to start asking if it’s even worth it, I also wonder if maybe we could learn something from the birds. If we could step back from looking at our one specific nest and its lifeless, decomposing eggs to take in the millions of other nests being built around us. Realizing that the value in what we do is less in the outcome of our personal attempts as it is about us taking our place in the collective effort occurring. I wonder if we could rest into the knowledge that the more of us there are trying, the more room there is for any of us to fail. If 100% of us decided to try, it would be ok if 97% of us came up empty. This particular protest might not be part of the 3% that makes it, but it also could be, and that is too precious a possibility to pass up on. And no matter what happens with today’s efforts, the same will be true again for tomorrow’s.

The other thing I’ve noticed from watching bird nests go wrong is that the birds don’t seem to have any huge feelings over what stage their nesting efforts end at. As much as I want to anthropomorphize their feelings into matching mine, they continue to flit around at the same level of contentment, whether the contents of their nests end up being hatchlings or just eggs, whether the baby they were feeding turns into a wren or a cowbird. Because, for a bird, what they’re invested in is not necessarily a specific end result. What creates their contentment is just the knowledge that they are honoring what their instincts tell them to do. If those instinctive actions create a next step, they will honor their instincts in that step too, and whenever there is nothing left to do, they will move on to the next task their nature requires of them. Their peace of mind comes from knowing they are doing exactly what they are meant to do at any given moment. Whatever comes from that, they will accept.

As people, we are bound to have a different relationship with goals and disappointment. Not only does that make sense, it’s good! We should be invested in the outcome of our efforts, especially when we know that the ends we are pursuing have life-or-death consequences for our planet and its people.

And, I also wonder if our stores of disappointment could be eased, if our resilience could be bolstered, by us reminding ourselves that fulfilling what our humanity asks of us has value no matter what happens next. I do not know if any of my efforts will ever change a law or stop a bomb. But I know that there is something deep within me that will die if I am silent. I do know that my truest instincts spur me towards dissent, action, and care. Maybe all I can do is honor those instincts, see what they create next, and then honor my instincts there, too.

The failures will be many, but more failures are just more evidence of more trying. And the wren singing outside my window as I type this reminds me that even if the failures vastly outnumber the victories, it can still be enough.

A note on sources: I learned the stats on baby bird survival rates from a Cornell Ornithology webinar on nesting I watched last spring. In writing this essay, I went looking for some sources to cite for those numbers. I found this study that confirms the stat of 30% of eggs hatching, but wasn’t able to find a source I trusted that confidently gave any single number about how many baby birds make it through their first year. All sources agreed that the first year is perilous for fledglings, but I imagine due to the number of variables, from species to habitat, it’s difficult to have a single definitive percentage for what the survival rate actually is. With that being said, I really trust Cornell as a source for info on birds and am confident that the expert leading that seminar had good backing for their estimate of 10%. But in the interest of transparency, I wanted to be upfront about not having found a study to link that number to!