Morning Bird Pic

[sleigh]

This one's in the interest of displaying another species. The pictures are a few months old, but I don't believe I've shown them here, and I haven't seen the bird in question around much since.

Here's the brown-headed cowbird. You'd mistake him for a black starling or perhaps a grackle until you catch him in the sun and see the distinctive brown head.

Comments

[maiac.livejournal.com]

I can't approve of cowbirds. They lay their eggs in other birds' nests, and the cowbird nestlings crowd out their foster parents' babies.

I once saw a fledgling cowbird doing the baby bird "Feed me! Feed me!" to a foster parent that was smaller than the fledgling.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

There is that...

Cuckoos have the same reproductive strategy, I believe -- though we don't have them here.

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

You could have both Yellow-billed and Black-billed Cuckoos in your general area. Unlike some cuckoos in other parts of the world, North American cuckoos do make their own nests. They occasionally lay their eggs in some other individual cuckoo's nest but they don't normally parasitize other species' nests.