A Wily Survivor with a Bad Rap
Glossy brown head, fearsome beak, fond reminiscence of working with cattle… yep, must be a cowbird.
Early in the spring, walking through my still deeply frozen northern town, I heard a “new” birdcall in the very limited collection of song I’d become so used to over the winter. Not a Black-capped Chickadee, Northern Cardinal, House Sparrow, American Crow, and not evening one of the European Starlings that ventured north in late February with their amazing array of sound effects. This was new yet nostalgic. Mostly unexpected. I just hadn’t expected to hear a Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) as one of the first spring arrivals on Lake Huron’s north shore. Their range map from Cornell University’s All About Birds site certainly brings them up to the northeast, but they are mainly a central North American species.
My buddy James describes their call as a “drop of water hitting a puddle.” It’s an inviting, intriguing blip-note with an accompanying whistle and chatter. I hauled out my Merlin Bird ID app and confirmed what my brain had already figured. No cows in sight, but the cowbirds had shown up. A couple weeks later, walking my usual lakeside park in Etobicoke, I saw several Brown-headed Cowbirds, both male and female, foraging in the grass off the paths. True to their nature, they let me get quite close for photos. These birds regularly hang with bison, cattle, and horses — unpredictable tonnes of meat and hoof —and feed off the insects stirred up by the giant beasts. One husky human with a camera is nothing to a cowbird.
Thank you to Cornell’s All About Birds site for this image. A widespread species is the cowbird, but not too northerly in general.
Credit for the title of this post goes to my other buddy, Dave, who is clearly a fan of Will Ferrell, and with whom I worked on a cattle farm in southern Ontario when we were both teenagers. Well, Dave worked on the farm, and threw me a few shifts piling hay and shovelling manure before the lure of a job at Dairy Queen took me away. Ice cream or cow shit… what would you pick? My time on that farm provided me with some lasting memories, though.
Being pinned against the side of a cattle stall by a subtle shift of weight when one of the big animals felt I wasn’t being gentle enough applying the mechanical milkers. Cows are HEAVY, and cantankerous.
Arriving for my morning shift at 5 am to find one of the cows giving birth. I helped the farmer pull that calf into the world with my bare hands, and have never taken a bite of veal since.
And the cowbirds, hopping around the pasture, and even hitching rides on the bony backs of the herd.
Look up Brown-headed Cowbird in a news search and you’ll notice one common theme in their media coverage. The humble cowbird gets very little respect for their particular evolutionary genius.
“Cowbirds Make Other Birds Do All the Work.”
“Female Cowbirds: Notorious Nest Invaders.”
“Cowbird Endures Bad Rap as Nest Parasite.”
These little birds need a better public relations team. Yes, this species has evolved into what is known as an avian brood parasite, which simply means they take advantage of other species of bird to raise their young, sneakily dropping an egg into the nest of another bird. Or more accurately, dropping many eggs into many nests to ensure survival numbers of their offspring. And they are super smart about that work. Forbes magazine has featured their “Goldilocks Principle” strategy of making sure a cowbird chick is one of exactly three total chicks in a nest in order to maximize survival rates (umm, for the cowbird).
But what’s with all the blamey language? As though the word “parasite” itself isn’t bad enough, cowbirds are accused of being lazy, deadbeat parents. Even I just called them sneaky.
A female Brown-headed Cowbird. The fake news media would have you believe she’s looking to plant an egg in your nest (actually, that’s absolutely what she’s planning to do).
Yes, an uncontrolled population of Brown-headed Cowbirds could pose a danger to the survival of other species — Kirtland’s Warbler is often mentioned as a victim of cowbird parasitism, with the much smaller warbler chicks unable to compete against the large interloper in their nest. It’s true that trapping and moving cowbird population away from Kirtland’s territory has helped bring them back from the brink, but it could be argued they were on the brink in the first place as much because of human intervention as brood parasitism.
This is from All About Birds:
During the past century, timber rotations and fire suppression proved incompatible with the bird’s needs, and Kirtland’s Warblers spent nearly 50 years on the Endangered Species List. Intensive conservation, including suppression of Brown-headed Cowbirds, allowed the population to increase tenfold, and the species was delisted in 2019.
Cowbirds come by their survival strategy honestly. Originally a companion species to the nomadic Plains Bison, they are in large part dependent on wandering ungulates for all their food. In their survival model, there’s not a lot of time for nest-sitting and feeding a stationary brood. It’s either depend on someone else to adopt the kids, or die out as a species. I really don’t think they’re doing it to be mean to the other birds, and in my own, stupid anthropomorphizing heart, I imagine the mother cowbird sheds a quiet tear when she leaves each egg behind. Totally unscientific assertion, there, but I make no claims to expertise. All I’m saying is… we’re all just trying to make it to tomorrow. Give the cowbird a little slack.
“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”
And finally, I am sinking deep into bird literature — this is a bird and book blog after all — and will be reporting on all of these titles sometime in the future (slow reader).
