#female cowbird

[thomas--bombadil]

A content-looking female cowbird. 

[lunarlotuscove]

Pair of Brown headed cowbirds on the poles

Wednesday April 17th 2024 3:27pm

[alcnfr]

There was a fine crowd of Brown-Headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) at the feeders this afternoon.

[yells-of-the-not-so-danged]

birb

[mostlybirdsandphotos]

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

eep!

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

[ostdrossel]

Do you have special songs,

smells or sounds that instantly transport you to a time or place? These guys do that for me. Once I am hearing them, I know spring is on the way. Male Redwinged Blackbirds usually appear first, along with Grackles, but yesterday, I also saw the first females, as well as some Cowbirds. So despite the snow this morning, spring is really unfolding!

[todaysbird]

Today's bird is this female brown-headed cowbird!

[chickadooz]

A whole bunch of dark-eyed juncos for all you junco appreciators out there. I only saw male ones that day, but I suspect the females weren't far behind or were perhaps busy with nests/eggs. I'll surely see more of them through the summer assuming they don't get ousted by the cowbirds again this year.

🏷️ • 🖼️ • ☕ • 🛒 • please reblog if you enjoyed this post!

[swede1952]

Who Wants to Lay Her Eggs in Another Bird's Nest

Here, a female brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) seemingly raises one wing to answer the question. Or say "let me. let me." Brown-headed cowbirds are brood parasites and do lay their eggs in the nests of other species of birds.

As I've mentioned, I have a gallery of my favorite photos at: https://swede1952-photographs.pixels.com

Go there and take a look. Prints are for sale along with other doodads and I suppose it is kind of a business for me. But it's the kind of business where I don't care whether I sale anything or not. If you want something, by all means you are welcome to make a purchase. But I just want you to visit and maybe mark your favorites or leave a comment. Cheers 😄

[aplpaca]

my like actually genuine tips if you wanna get better at identifying birds is to download the Merlin app and visit r/whatsthisbird on reddit and just scroll around every once in a while

Merlin can give species ID suggestions from photos, descriptions, and sounds, and also bc you can just scroll through little info cards for birds by region. And both of those are really neat and helpful. 10/10 would recommend. (Also it's free)

And then r/whatsthisbird is a subreddit where people can post bird photos (and sometimes drawings and descriptions) they want identified, and then the members will comment what species it is. The sub is well moderated by actual ornithologists, so pretty much everything gets ID-ed correctly (and even without the mods comments, the majority are correctly identified pretty quickly, including for birds outside North America and Europe).

But I've found it really helpful to just scroll around in it, bc you end up picking up on various birds' appearances pretty quickly, and also getting a sense of ID from less-than-perfect photos of birds, and also seeing photos of various life stages and dimorphisms (ex: male vs female cowbirds, fledglings vs adult cowbirds, etc), which can be helpful irl where u might not get the best look at something or when most of the results that come up on google are all males in a dimorphic species. Plus the askers on the sub are of a wide range of expertise levels, so you get a good mix of exposure to poeople asking about common backyard birds like sparrows and blue jays to less commonly seen ones like various herons and raptors to people asking for an ID in which the two possible species look pretty much exactly the same minus the placement of like,,, one color bar or something like that.

But ye. Merlin and r/whatsthisbird for casual bird ID learning

[givemebishies]

I love birds and I also love ABM

So here are some birds I imagine as the wings of some of the angels!

Lucifer - Vinaceous Rosefinch

Michael - Brow-Headed Cowbird (female)

Rosier - Sulfur Crested Cockatoo

Asmodeus - Pink Cockatoo

Baal - Common Grackle

Uriel - African Firefinch

Raphael - Turquoise Green Cheek Conure

Gabriel - Blue Ground Dove

Phanuel - Kakapo

Dina - Common Starling

I can only post 10 images on mobile but I plan on doing more! :>

I might also change my mind if I find better options but it’s what I thought fits atm lol

[willibeest]

Female brown-headed cowbird perched atop a fence (May 25, 2024)

[lunarlotuscove]

Lil cowbird

Tuesday, April 30th 2024 426 p.m.

[alcnfr]

A pair of damp Brown-Headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) on the stump platform feeder on a wet and dismal morning...

[inbetween-beast-and-man]

🦅 Pier

You wont like the bird of choice. I do not recommend you read.

Brown headed cowbird

Famous for laying its eggs in the nest of other birds. U mat think that they have lousy parents but that is suprisingly not true. The female cowbird will watch over the nest they laid their eggs in. Making sure theyre being taken care of. Some birds, such as catbirds, hsve learned to spot these parasitic eggs and destroy them. When this happens the mother cowbird will swoop back in the nest once its empty and destroy the hosts eggs in a way to scare the host from destroying any other of her eggs.

[sphylor]

Hi Sphy!! Can we have a bird fact for today?

this one is gonna be about an instance of transgenderism in birds. going off of the assumption that in birds "gender" is the way a bird acts and its behaviours then there have been quite a few cases of birds acting in ways that dont align with their sex. a researcher studied a male hooded warbler that acted like a female for two years in a row. both years it sat on a nest of eggs that it had found (origin of the eggs not clear could be a female warbler that laid them or could be a brown headed cowbird as they lay their eggs in other birds nests. but it wasnt this hooded warbler that had laid them as it had male gonads) and both years two seperate male hooded warblers had accepted this bird as a mate!! and they would feed the bird and the nestlings. there are also cases of intersexuality in birds where they might have raised levels of hormones that cause them to look and act like the opposite gender. and studies have been done on golden-collared manakins that show that females given testosterone behave more like male birds and opens a really cool discussion about how flexible birds brains may be when it comes to gender