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We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, April 27. 2020

Bird of the Week: Cowbird

All members of the blackbird family have been passing through over the past month. In the Northeastern US, that mostly means Redwings, Purple Grackles, Cowbirds. 


Cowbirds are famous for their foster parenting habit. Bad parents.


They like to hang out in pastures, where the animals stir up bugs to eat. 


About the Cowbird. 

Posted by Bird Dog in Natural History and Conservation at 14:06 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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Nice article, but it fails to mention one very important fact about the cowbird. Once upon a time it was called the "buffalo bird", and its range was limited to the Great Plains, which was also the range of the American Bison. Buffalo birds evolved to be brood parasites because the adult birds depend on the bison herds for food. But the bison herds are always moving. If the birds stayed in one place to nest and raise their young, they would quickly lose their food source.

An ingenious solution to the problem, I suppose, but to my mind it makes cowbirds even more unpleasant than vultures.
#1 wolfwalker on 2020-04-27 21:02 (Reply)
"Females forgo building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds, abandoning their young to foster parents, usually at the expense of at least some of the host’s own chicks."

So, they vote Democrat.
#2 Fred Z on 2020-04-28 00:33 (Reply)
Here in Michigan they are considered a parasitic pest, and the DNR traps them in bunches and then euthanizes them. I see one or two a year coming through my backyard. I take the BB gun to them.
#3 John Venlet on 2020-04-28 08:59 (Reply)

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