Parents swapping chicks

[Redwing]

I had a pair of painteds fledge 2 chicks a week ago and noticed on the weekend one of the chicks being fed by a different male who is nesting nearby and had newly hatched chicks himself. This morning he and his mate were sitting sunning themselves with both chicks and both feeding them. When I looked for the real parents I could see the female in the adopting parents nest and her mate standing guard. Don't usually check nests but was so curious that I did and found live chicks so in effect both parents have swapped young! Is this common and why would they even want to?

[Nye]

Hi, Very strange for them to swap. I do see newly fledged chicks being fed by other birds while their parents are out and about,but strangely enough I had a pair of Red wing parrots & a pair of Crimson Rosella's many years ago in adjoining aviaries and both had young at the time.I walked past the aviaries & could hear the young being fed as the logs were hung about midway in these 6 m x 1.2 m aviaries, when i noticed the door between the two aviaries was open & the males had swapped so i went down to the first aviary to get in to close the door & put the males back,but had to go through 3 other aviaries to get to do so. By the time I got to the door that's when I saw the Red wing hen climbing out the crimson Rosella's log , I then saw the crimson Rosella hen climbing out the red wing's log .I moved the birds back into their aviaries then checked the young,and all was fine the youngsters had full crops and had not been hurt. My guess is that in my case the parents moved aviaries and while checking out the log the youngsters started to call and mums instinct is to feed a calling chick.

[Tiaris]

Its not that unusual for birds other than the parents to feed noisy begging juveniles. Even other species will sometimes do so.

[Redwing]

it was more the fact that the parents of the newly fledged chicks took over the raising of the ones still in the nest that I found puzzling.

[Shark]

i had an old unpaired redbrow hen who used to feed lots of chicks from other species. I thought this was cute then I realized that she only had interest in chicks that were newly fledged and when a new lot of finches fledged she started feeding them. She neglected the ones that were out of the nest by a week and the actual parents had already started nesting again and had also lost interest in the chicks.
Long story short the clutch that were a week out of the nest died and from then I never keep odd unpaired birds in my aviary.