Asakiyume mita

I wonder if a cowbird feels any kinship with or loyalty toward the bird species that raised it. Apparently it leaves its eggs with more than 240 host species.1 So if it's raised by a hooded warbler, does it feel kinship when it sees a hooded warbler? Is there a difference in cowbird behavior depending on what nests they were raised in?

You will of course not have forgot that "A female Cuckoo lays eggs in the nest of the species that raised it: a female brought up by Meadow Pipits, for example, will seek out Meadow Pipit nests when it comes to breed. If none is available, it may then use other hosts." - Dominic Couzens and Carl Bovis (2023). Garden Birds of Britain and North-West Europe. Oxford, UK: John Beaufort Publishing, 19.

:)

Or are most of their habits hardwired?

You know, I've been marveling for years at how often humans want to presuppose that other entities and also humans exhibit strictly hard-wired behavior: are animate programs, have no choice.

If so I think we have to acknowledge that they and we are self-programming programs: present choices are affected by (depend on) past choices and on adaptation to experienced stimuli. And as to how to distinguish that from individuality and sentience-- well, it seems to me a moot point.

I guess that what's seemed to me to bear the best fruit is to think of the entities I encounter as fellow creatures, with desires and capacities and constraints and plans for various time horizons, and to have some humility about what I can infer, whether they're human or not.