74 Bird Comrades 



field of investigation is open to some enterprising and 

 ambitious naturalist who wishes to study several of these 

 species, as comparatively little is known of their habits, 

 and indeed much still remains to be learned of the whole 

 genus, familiar as one or two of the species are. Their sly, 

 surreptitious manners render them exceedingly difficult 

 to study at close range and with anything like satisfactory 

 detail. 



Are all of them parasites? Probably they are at 

 least to a greater or less degree except one, the bay- 

 winged cowbird of South America, which I shall reserve 

 for notice later on in this chapter. We might assert that 

 our common cowbirds are the parasites par excellence 

 of the family, for, so far as I can learn from reading and 

 observation, they never build their own nests or rear their 

 own young, but shift all the duties of maternity, save the 

 laying of the eggs, upon the shoulders of other innocent 

 birds. 



These avian " spongers" have a wide geographical 

 range, inhabiting the greater part of the United States 

 and southern Canada, except the extensive forest regions 

 and some portions of the southern states. They are 

 most abundant in the states bordering on the upper 

 Mississippi River and its numerous tributaries. On the 

 Pacific coast west of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada 

 mountains, they occur only as stragglers. The most 

 northern point at which they have been known to breed 

 is the neighborhood of Little Slave Lake in southern 

 Athabaska. In the autumn the majority of these birds 



