the carefree cowbird

[asakiyume]

amaebi has been posting extremely entertaining excerpts from Garden Birds of Britain and North-West Europe, by Dominic Couzens and Carl Bovis--fun in the way the descriptions of the various birds makes you think about people (but at the same time is very illuminating about the birds).

It got me thinking about the brown-headed cowbird. I spent a pleasant afternoon with a female brown-headed cowbird a few years back. She was hunting around in the grass for seeds and insects, and I was mowing the grass, but I stopped, because she was paying so very little attention to my advances. So I sat down very close and watched her, and she was fine with that. She had a pretty face (here's someone else's photo).

Cowbirds are nest parasites. The female lays her eggs in someone else's nest, and then the unsuspecting parents bring up this baby as well as their own--or sometimes instead of their own, as the cowbird baby will often crowd its siblings out.

So, the parental cowbirds never experience babies and child rearing. They accomplish the evolutionarily required duty and then live out the rest of their days footloose and fancy free. (I wanted to find out if they were monogamous or not, and that looks like it's quite contested! Interesting.) I guess the same thing is true of most fish and amphibians and reptiles--and I'm used to it in those creatures--but I guess it feels different for me when it's birds. We have so many examples of birds that work so hard with child rearing.

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? Or are most of their habits hardwired?

Some of the articles about them use really inflammatory language and make the birds into villains. Kind of like when people get mad at other birds for using nesting boxes that they want bluebirds to take advantage of.

I could comment on the dangers of anthropomorphism, but I mean, **I'm** anthropomorphizing here, myself, so that would be kind of hypocritical. And I think some amount of anthropomorphism is inevitable, and I feel like it's where empathy starts (and/but also judgmental thoughts). And history is full of instances where the scientific community tells us not to anthropomorphize about, say, animal grief, and then some decades later has to eat their words.

¹ Ronald L. Mumme and Claire Lignac, "Living with Cowbird Nest Parasitism--and Thriving," American Ornithological Society, November 30, 2022.

Comments

[cmcmck]

A bit like the European cuckoo.

[sovay]

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?

I would love to know that. It would be neat if there is some quality of imprinting. (It would be neat if there isn't.)

[osprey_archer]

All of your cowbird questions are good questions! I too would be interested to know if the cowbirds retain any feeling of kinship to the bird species that raised them.

[squirrelitude]

Certainly not entirely carefree -- apparently they expend some time and effort checking in on those nests and will destroy other eggs in the nest if their own egg is removed. (Which answers the question of why the nest's owner doesn't take matters into their own talons.)

[sartorias]

Anent these good questions, recently the spouse turned up an article that stipulates that plants gossip. So much for us being told they just sit there dull and inert.

[yamamanama]

Cowbirds are hilarious because while cuckoo eggs look like their host birds' eggs, cowbird eggs do not. Instead, the cowbirds will trash the nest if they see the host bird get rid of the egg.

[anna_wing]

https://science.thewire.in/environment/house-crow-asian-koel-breeding-brood-parasitism-evolutionary-adaptation/

The Asian cuckoo also called the koel, is also a brood parasite, of crows, specifically. The picture in the link is of a female koel. The male is all black.

[amaebi]

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.

[med_cat]

How interesting. I thought only cuckoos did that

[lokifan]

What an interesting question about the cowbird's loyalties! And I mean, it's definitely anthropomorphising to some degree, but learned vs innate habits is a legit question.

I don't know about cuckoos either. (Had never heard of a cowbird before!)