Good or bad?

  I love watching the birds about the Bayou.  Their antics and beauty never cease to amaze me.  It is an enjoyable pastime that has been passed down to me by my grandmother.  She loved to watch the birds through the large picture window in her house.  Granddad created a large bird feeder out of a sliding board and erected it directly under the window.  Here she could watch dozens of birds from the comfort of her rocking chair.  My birding does not include a rocking chair.  I am more apt to be out traipsing about in the muck and mire of the Bayou than sitting inside the house.  I guess I differ a good bit from Grandmother but, then again, I share so many traits with her...loving the birds is one of them.

  Between the rain showers today, I spied a pair of birds that were new to me.  Not that these were any rare birds by far but I just have not seen any about the Bayou before.  It seems that this is the trend lately which is perhaps brought on by the encroachment of human population on all sides of me.  The birds, however, seem to make themselves at home and never leave.  This is all good with me.  My two newest discoveries have some bad habits, though, and make me wonder if I will appreciate their presence as time passes.  The Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites meaning that they do not build their own nests.  In fact, they do nothing to rear their young.  The female Cowbird is literally an egg-laying machine of a bird laying up to three dozen a season.  She will lay an egg in another bird's nest and will sometimes devour the other bird's eggs. This sounds quite mean to me but is just another strange thing that occurs in nature.  The cowbird eggs hatch much quicker than the host bird's eggs which gives an advantage to the chick.  It will be fed and be much stronger than its nest mates by the time they hatch.  The baby cowbird will sometimes be quite brutal and shove the host bird's eggs from the nest or even smother the new hatchlings if need be. This is all about survival for the baby cowbird.  Occasionally, the host bird will recognize that there is a strange egg in her nest and will destroy it before it hatches.  If the host bird is too small to remove or destroy the egg, she might rebuild her nest over top of the egg so it will not hatch. So goes the weird, parasitic habits of the Brown-headed Cowbird.

  The bird itself is rather pretty...at least the male is.  The female is more nondescript being buff-colored with darker brown markings.  He is glossy black with a lovely chocolate-colored head making him appear quite stately.  They received the name Cowbird from their habit of following a herd of cattle or horses about in pastures.  As the hooves of the larger critters stir up the ground, the Cowbirds feast upon insects. That fact makes them land on my "good" list.  The parasitic habits makes them land on my "bad" list.  I am a bit torn as to whether I want them to stay on the Bayou or be on their merry way to other parts.  (Not that I have a lot of choice where they decide to live!)  Still, it was fun to discover a new bird in these parts!  Grandmother would be proud that I made the correct identification.