#brown-headed cowbirds

[inthecityofgoodabode]

April 2023: The Last Day

First round of volunteer tomato plant giveaways: 

Dancing tubifex worms: 

First self-indulgent selfie: 

Second self-indulgent selfie where I’m acting like a carnival barker: 

It is hard to see but there is a mockingbird in this photo & it was harassing the hell out of this broad-winged hawk: 

I’ve been seeing these little birds on my walks the last few days & have had a tough time getting a good photo of one. However, this blurry crop was enough for me to figure out that they are palm warblers which migrating through the area this time of year: 

A long time plan is finally in execution. We’re converting our third bedroom from library/catchall junk room into a pantry: 

Dog bites. Sometimes our dogs need echinacea too: 

Bath time: 

[great-and-small]

Lots of folks dislike cowbirds due to their macabre start to life, but even their most ardent detractors can't deny that the behavior of this species is remarkable. The fact that every bird in a flock of hundreds has been raised by different unwitting songbird "parents" is truly mind-boggling. For these babies to leave their nests and be able to find, recognize, and understand one another is a natural marvel of instinct and intuition.

Pictured here, a tender moment between a male and female Brown-headed cowbird.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

brown headed cowbird and yellowthroat.

[thewaterbirds]

Brown-headed Cowbird

2025, watercolor and gouache

Painted for this month's BirdWhisperer Project.

[emilylorange]

this month's #BirdWhisperer is a Brown-Headed Cowbird!

Ref photo by Amanda Makepeace

[podartists]

Cyanocitta cristata | Molothrus ater | Lanius ludovicianus | Euphagus cyanocephalus | Quiscalus quiscula versicolor (aeneus)

Plate XVII | Die Nordamerikanische Vogelwelt (1891)

[mostlybirdsandphotos]

impress? lovely feathers, yes? impress? attracted to me? good feathers?

eep!

(male brown-headed cowbird attempting to woo a female)

[brooklynbridgebirds]

Brown-headed Cowbird Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 6

[thedruidsforest]

I cracked open my window half an hour before sunrise and recorded 6 different birds I haven't heard since late last summer.

Yeah I guess life is pretty good

[niky0408]

Cowbird, acrylic on canvas

[occasionallybirds]

Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater)

May 7, 2024

John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, Tinicum, Pennsylvania

[great-and-small]

Part of Spirit Halloween’s “Scariest Costumes for Passerines” line. Other costumes from this line include outdoor cat and glass windows

[revretch]

I was out sitting in a field sketching today when a little bird started hanging around me! She started getting closer and closer, until finally she hopped up on my foot, then on my leg, then on my other leg! She must have climbed on me at least four different times! (She also tried to eat my pencil and pooped on my shoe.)

Anyway, I looked her up and it turns out she was a brown-headed cowbird--a type of brood parasite, like a cuckoo! They even have the mafia tactics of cuckoos, laying their eggs in the nests of littler birds and destroying them if their offspring isn't cared for.

I hope she lives a long happy life and terrorizes many little birds to come

[alcnfr]

A Brown-Headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) splashing in the hanging birdbath...

[charyou-tree]

I'm thinking about changeling myths

What if the fae were brood-parasites of humans?

What if, like cuckoo birds, they left their own young to be unwittingly cared for by another species? Perhaps fae children have become excellent human-mimics out of sheer necessity, with humans trying to recognize the intruder and evict them in an evolutionary arms-race. Maybe they must leave their forcibly-adopted homes before adulthood, lest their fully grown fae forms arouse suspicion, and that most dangerous human threat-response: an angry mob. Perhaps that's why humans have the "uncanny-valley" response of instinctive distrust and aversion to nearly-humans.

What if most fae didn't steal human children outright, but placed their young into the homes of human families that had recently lost a child? Perhaps they took advantage of the tragically high ~50% child mortality rate of preindustrial societies, filling the gaps in families with their own children. Maybe they knew on some instinctive level that they would be cared for by the grieving parents who were thankful for the seeming miracle. Maybe they also knew not to leave a fae child in a healthy human home, for humans would certainly notice if there was suddenly an extra child after all.

What if, sometimes though, they were maybe a little too quick? Perhaps switching out the still-warm body of the human infant who had died in the night with their fae young before the human mother even realized that her child had perished. Maybe from her perspective, it would seem like her child was stolen and replaced, even if it wasn't the fae's fault that they had died.

What if desperate fae mothers would occasionally resort to killing a human child, lacking any other suitable home to place them into? Perhaps It was risky, trying something so overt, but biological imperatives being what they are she would find herself compelled to go through with it before her own child starved. Maybe she made it look like an accident, or a sudden illness. Maybe sometimes they really did switch out the human's offspring for their own, not to steal the human child, but tragically to leave them alone to die of neglect, a sad but necessary price to ensure that their own child might prosper. Maybe it wasn't such an emotional thing for the fae. Maybe they saw it as no different to how the humans culled bulls and rams to ensure that their herds and flocks were amenable to domesticity.

What if particularly nasty fae outright threatened human families that were starting to become suspicious of their strange wild child? Perhaps openly demanding that they continue to raise them, or face the horror of having their remaining human children killed if they were to kill the fae's child, the way that brown headed cowbirds do to the species that they burden with their eggs. Maybe the rest of the local humans lived in fear of looking too long at the wide-eyed children, or even just whispering the word "changeling", knowing that another child might "mysteriously" fall ill, and then suddenly appear to "recover", but would never be quite the same.

What if it was hardly the fae's fault, but simply their nature? Perhaps a mother fae felt stark terror even after placing her young into the seemingly perfect home, knowing that even if the humans were merely to evict her offspring they were still as good as dead, for they knew no other way of caring for them. Maybe there were elaborate methods and rituals that were meant to give their young the best disguise and protection from human wrath that they could, in lieu of a more direct parental role that their species had long since shed like a vestigial limb.

What if more sympathetic fae sought a consensual childcare arrangement? Perhaps they would approach a grieving family openly, but cautiously, with an offer of a child they could raise in the place of the one that they had lost. Maybe they had learned that some humans would willingly raise nonhumans, after all they kept animals of all kinds, why not a child specifically evolved to be appealing to them?

What if there were whole villages that were relative safe-havens, mutualistic societies with mixed human-fae families an open-secret? Perhaps they disguised it from outside humans that wouldn't understand the arrangement, to protect all of their children, even the adopted ones. Maybe it was worth having a few extra mouths to to feed to also have an inexplicably good harvest every year, and a few pairs of unnaturally keen eyes that can see the things that go bump in the night more clearly than any diurnal ape ever could?

What if humans from such special places might even undergo the opposite exchange? Perhaps they sought out the fae's help during times of dire need in their adulthood, and received it, because they had helped raise their children after all. Maybe the fae they were pleading to for aid was even raised alongside them in their youth, and knew the human coming for their help as a beloved sibling, so of course they would do what they could; it would be repaid manifold by generations of safe fae children, free from the fear of death by discovery by angry vengeful humans.

What if changelings weren't a myth, or a monster, but an adaptation?

[thomas--bombadil]

A content-looking female cowbird.