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Updated: May 31, 2025
Even the tiny egg of a butterfly has its ichneumon parasite, a microscopic wasp, which lays its own egg within the larger one, which ultimately hatches a wasp instead of the baby caterpillar. But who ever heard of anything but good luck falling to the lot of cow-bird or cuckoo, except as its blighting course is occasionally arrested by the outraged human? They always find a feathered nest.
Indeed, the similarities and contrasts afforded by a comparison of the habits of all these birds European cuckoo, American cuckoo, and cow-bird afford an interesting theme for the student of evolution.
Such is the inevitable, somewhat penitent conclusion which I always arrive at on the cow-bird question; and yet my next cow-bird fledgling will doubtless follow the fate of all its predecessors, the reminiscent qualms of conscience finding a ready philosophy equal to the emergency; for if, indeed, this parasite of the bird home be a factor in the divine plan of Nature's equilibrium, looking towards the survival of the fittest and the regulation of the sparrow and small-bird population, which we must admit, how am I to know but that this righteous impulse of the human animal is not equally a divine, as it is certainly a natural institution looking to the limitations of the cow-bird?
Suddenly he broke off and made a fierce rush into the prairie. A brown Cow-Bird flew up and lighted on Shag's horn. The Dog-Wolf rose on his hind legs and snapped viciously at the Bird. "Steady, Dog-Wolf, steady," admonished Shag, "this is a friend of mine. Do you not know the Cow-Bird, who is always with the Herd?" "Who is your friend?" asked the Cow-Bird of Shag.
It is a big price to pay two larks for a bunting-two sovereigns for a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to contradict herself in just this way. The young of the cow-bird is disproportionately large and aggressive, one might say hoggish. When disturbed it will clasp the nest and scream, and snap its beak threateningly.
"Did you speak, Wolf?" perked the Bird. "I said, 'Good riddance," snapped A'tim. "He, he, he!" laughed the Cow-Bird; "your friend is pleasant company, Great Bull." That night the two Outcasts and the Cow-Bird camped together, near the Saskatchewan River; the brown body curled up contentedly on Shag's horn, while the Dog-Wolf slept against his paunch. In the morning the Cow-Bird was gone.
Whether the process of evolution has similarly equipped our cow-bird I am not aware; but the vicious habits of the two birds are so identical that the same accommodating functional conditions might reasonably be expected.
It is the note of a bird, and from the sound it resembles it is generally known as the "cow-bird." It is also called the "yellow-billed cuckoo." It is in no respect behind any of its neighbours of the grove in conjugal and parental affection, for it builds its nest, hatches its own eggs, and rears its own young, Wilson assures us.
The female lays her eggs in different nests and troubles herself no further about their fate. She seeks for her offspring a shelter which she does not take the trouble to construct, and moreover at the same time assures for them the cares of a stranger in place of her own. In North America a kind of Starling, the Molothrus pecoris, commonly called the Cow-bird, acts in the same careless fashion.
I have had no opportunities of observing the habits of the young cuckoo in England with regard to this point, and do not know whether other observers have paid any attention to the matter or not, but I am very familiar with the manners of the parasitical starling or cow-bird of South America. The warning cries of the foster parent have no effect on the young cow-bird at any time.
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