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Updated: June 23, 2025
"Do bring your children along with you the next time you come to the pasture," the Muley Cow urged them. "I'm very fond of little ones." The cowbirds tittered. They seemed to think there was a great joke somewhere. "Our children are too small to leave home just yet," the fat person told the Muley Cow. "The smaller they are the more I like them," the Muley Cow declared.
However, if their family relations are somewhat irregular, no one can accuse them of engaging in brawls, as so many other birds do, for both males and females seem to be on the most amicable terms with one another, and are, to all appearances, entirely free from jealousy. Who has ever seen two cowbirds fighting a duel like the orioles, meadowlarks, and robins?
At that time the cowbirds were to be seen everywhere; they chattered every morning in the trees, and the females left their unwelcome eggs in nearly every nest. One little red-eyed vireo's nest had five cowbirds' eggs, none of her own. But the birds which are building now are generally safe from the parasite. Only rarely is a cowbird's egg found after the middle of July.
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.
And when the last one had been gobbled up after a slight dispute as to who should have it the cowbirds left the Muley Cow abruptly. And they seemed to have lost all their politeness before they went. "They're shy that's all," the Muley Cow thought. "They hurried away before I could thank them."
When the great herds of ruminants disappear from the western prairies, the buffalo birds without hesitation become cowbirds, and when the plough turns up the never-ending store of grubs and worms the birds lose all fear and follow at the very heels of the plough-boy: grackles, vesper sparrows, and larks in the east, and flocks of gulls farther to the westward.
The little Vesper-birds flitted before them, the Cowbirds rode on them, and the Prairie-dogs chattered at them, just as they once did at the Buffalo. Down from the gray-green mesa with its green-gray rocks, they marched with imposing solemnity, importance, and directness of purpose.
No cowbirds have been seen since the first week of the month, save the young one on the stump, which the field-sparrow was feeding this morning. They disappear early, seeking seclusion for the moulting. When they emerge from their hiding places they form into flocks, spending their days in the grain-fields and near the rivers where the food is most abundant and easy to procure.
We might assert that our common cowbirds are the parasites par excellence of the family, for, so far as I can learn from reading and observation, they never build their own nests or rear their own young, but shift all the duties of maternity, save the laying of the eggs, upon the shoulders of other innocent birds.
And so did he as soon as he got his breath back. "You're a rough old thing!" he squalled. "You're rascals all of you!" cried the Muley Cow. "You can't fool me any longer. I know all about you. I wonder who named you cowbirds, for it's a deadly insult to me and all my family."
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