Cuckoos and Cowbirds

1906

A Bad Lot — Other Birds Are Driven to Desperate Measures by Them

With all its vagabond ways the cowbird is scarcely as bad as the English cuckoo. It has all the sins of the cowbird, to which is added the worse one of turning the legitimate birdlings out of their nest.

It begins as soon as it is out of its shell, and never gives up till all have been thrown over the edge of the nest. The strange thing about it is that the parent birds care so faithfully for the selfish intruder, be it cuckoo or cowbird.

The presence of a young cowbird in a nest usually means that the smaller birds are either smothered or starved to death on account of its bulky body in the tiny nest and its voracious appetite.

Some little birds, notably the yellow warbler, are wise enough to recognize the strange egg, and to build a second story to their nest, thus shutting it away from warmth enough to hatch it. Sometimes, says a writer in Good Health, they even build a third story to cover up an egg that has been deposited in the second story. But enough birds are duped and imposed upon annually so that the cowbirds hold their own in numbers with other birds.

Comment: Hey, if that's what they do, that's nature. No reason to get sentimental about it. Birds basically do whatever they're supposed to do.