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Updated: June 12, 2025
You know she follows the cows about so much that we house people call her the cowbird." "Well, at any rate," said Nick-uts, "she thought she knew a great deal more than she really did. "So she said to the other birds, very haughtily, 'You are all very kind, and I am very much obliged to you. But I think I can get along without your help.
There on the edge stood the cowbird, his head drooping and his wings half spread. But he was no longer black. From his crown to his legs he was covered with a coating of frozen milk that, hiding his glossy plumage, turned him into a woefully bedraggled white bird; while from the ends of his once glistening tail feathers hung little icicles that formed an icy fringe.
Before they flitted away I had time to notice how the little family were disposed. The cowbird was squatted in the center of the nest, while his little foster brothers and sisters were ranged around him, partly covering him and no doubt keeping him snug and warm.
Instead, she turned very white and crept back to bed again without a word, taking the cowbird with her, cuddled under her arm. WHEN the sun stood over the farm-house and the frost was gone from the plains, the little girl climbed upon her pony's back and, with the cowbird perched on her shoulder, started northward up the river.
She had a queer, guilty feeling. And she walked away looking quite glum. She didn't want to talk with anybody. After her there followed a small flock of cowbirds. "We aren't intruding, I hope," one plump cowbird remarked with a smirk as he settled himself near the Muley Cow's forelegs, when she stopped to graze.
Says Major Charles Bendire: "In rare instances only will a fresh cowbird's egg be found among incubated ones of the rightful owners. I have observed this only on a single occasion." From one to seven eggs of the parasite are found in the nests of the dupes. In most cases the number is two, but in the case of ground builders the cowbird seems to have little fear of overdoing her imposition.
He and the elder brother had agreed to play a practical joke on me, and had snared a common cowbird and dyed or painted its tail a brilliant scarlet, then liberated it, expecting that I should meet with it in my day's rambles and bird-watching in the plantation and would be greatly excited at the discovery of yet a third purple cowbird, with a scarlet tail, but otherwise not distinguishable from the common one.
Its virtue is that it never imposes the work of incubation and brood rearing on any of its feathered associates, even though it does sometimes eject them from their premises. But what is to be said of the screaming cowbird?
As she did so, the husky cry of the cowbird came from the bench behind the door. "Look-see! look-see!" he called, as he walked up and down the eldest brother from head to foot; "look-see! look-see!" And the family, entering, beheld the eldest brother stretched upon the bench fast asleep.
How much simpler and easier it would be to throw the egg out how much more like an act of rational intelligence. So far as I know, no bird does eject this parasitical egg, and no other bird besides the yellow warbler gets rid of it in the way I have described. I have found a deserted phoebe's nest with one egg of the phoebe and one of the cowbird in it.
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