Cacti and Baby Birds

I found a package of cactus seeds at the store and decided to give it a try. And guess what, they're growing! At first they were these tiny green globes, then they split, then BAM! they started growing spines. Pretty nutty.


Here is another image to show just how tiny these guys are.

Ok, now back to the car shitting bird story. The babies are growing up. A few posts back I showed a picture of the nest with three pretty eggs in it, then a few weeks later I posted a picture of three little hatchlings. Now here they are a few days ago.


So tell me, how the hell do we now have FOUR baby birds!?!?!
Crazy! I thought maybe the fourth was from a "brood parasite" bird. If you don't know a brood parasite bird finds a nest of another bird that already has eggs in it and it quickly lays her egg amongst the others and then leaves, sometimes taking one of the original eggs so things look back to normal when the original mother comes back. The mother of the nest comes home and she starts taking care of it and raising it as her own. Then as the impostor bird baby gets bigger instinct tells it to push the others out of the nest, killing them. Then all that's left in the nest is the impostor bird baby until it's big enough to fly away. It's nature's cut-throat welfare system. But I don't think one of these is an impostor baby bird though, all of these guys look the same. So where did that fourth one come from?!