The brown-headed cowbird is one of those native birds that wasn’t raised with good manners – Unknown

You can’t choose your backyard birds, but you can choose your friends – Unknown

It’s always wonderful to live in the Prairie and enjoy the coming of spring. Typically, the weather is nice though lately temperatures have been up and down. One day we relish being outdoors enjoying 70-degree temperatures. The next day may bring more like high 30s and 40s when sweaters and jackets come out again. It’s a little odd as the first day of spring was March 20 this year. The trees have ignored the lower temperatures and leafed out beautifully. Flowers have popped out from last year’s planting. Birdfeeders are out both seed feeders and sugar water for hummers. The feeders drew birds of all kinds: cardinals, American goldfinch, sparrows, chickadees, tufted titmouse, mourning doves, junco, woodpecker, hummingbirds, they all came until they didn’t.

One day we looked out the window and all the birds we had nourished were gone. The brown-headed cowbirds, a flock of them, settled in at the birdfeeders and foraged the ground for fallen seed. They would arrive day after day until the day I stopped filling the feeders. The only bird staying with us was “Woody woodpecker.” Woody fed on the suet tacked to a tree. When Woody finished pecking at the suet box, he hopped up the tree looking for bugs. He became the only bird we enjoyed besides the hummingbirds who fed a good bit away from the seed feeders.

There was a period of time I enjoyed the brown-headed cowbirds. I didn’t know anything about them except they had pretty feathers, and they were numerous, though dark-colored with a deep brown head and a black body. When seen in the sun they looked iridescent. Then came the day I mentioned the brown-headed cowbird to the Hummingbird Lady. Turns out “pretty is as pretty does,” does not apply to Cowbirds.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology “All About Birds” agrees with the same information that the Hummingbird Lady shared with me so long ago. The same morning, I was writing this column the brown-headed cowbirds were seen foraging the fields. Under the seed feeders was a cardinal so I rushed out and filled a feeder or two. Perhaps we can find a way to co-exist.

This is what the Hummingbird Lady shared as well “All About Birds.” I’m afraid it’s not pretty. Females forgo building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds, abandoning their young to foster parents, usually at the expense of at least some of the host’s own chicks. Since they destroy the eggs and young of smaller songbirds and have been implicated in the decline of several endangered species including warblers and vireos.

It has been found that the Yellow Warbler can recognize the cowbird eggs but are too small to get the eggs out of the nest. Instead, they build a nest on top of the older one and hope the cowbird won’t come back. Brown-headed cowbirds lay eggs in the nest of more than 220 species of birds. Keep an eye out at your birdfeeders.

Shannon Bardwell is a writer living quietly in the Prairie. Email reaches her at [email protected].

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