THE COWBIRD. 15 



and bushes in search of a victim upon whom to shift the duties of motherhood." 

 The egg thus surreptitiously placed in another bird's nest usually hatches two 

 or three days before those of the foster mother, and thus the infant Cowbird 

 gets a start which he is not slow to improve. Its loud clamoring for food often 

 drives the old birds to abandon the task of incubation; or if the other eggs 

 are allowed to remain until hatched, the uncouth stranger manages to usurp 

 attention and food supplies, and not infrequently to override or stifle the other 

 occupants of the nest, so that their dead bodies are removed to make room for 

 his hogship. It is asserted by some that in the absence of the foster parents 

 the young thug forcibly ejects the rightful heirs from the nests, after the 

 fashion of the Old World Cuckoos. This is emphatically denied by others. I 

 never caught the rascal in the act myself, but I once found a nest which con- 

 tained only a lusty Cowbird, while three proper fledglings clung to the shrub- 

 bery below and one lay dead on the ground. The appearances were certainly 

 against Molothrus ater. 



When the misplaced tenderness of foster parents has done its utmost 

 for the young upstart, he joins himself to some precious crew of his own blood, 

 and the cycle of a changeling is complete. 



It would be easy, not to say picturesque, to record a large number of 

 unpleasant epithets which would justly apply to this bird. Sneak, cuckold, 

 ingrate, are only a few examples. If any comfort at all is to be found from 

 his presence in the bird world, it must be similar to that supplied by the 

 presence of evil in the moral world. And some such value we do see through 

 the expedients to which unwilling victims are driven in their efforts to rid 

 themselves of the despised eggs. Perhaps some are able to remove the foreign 

 egg from their nests, altho this is uncertain. Others promptly desert upon the 

 first glimpse of the interloper. But others, more ingenious, are driven to build 

 a second story to their nests and lay another set of eggs on the new floor. In- 

 stances are on record where a bird has thus constructed three stories, having 

 been a second time defeated in the effort to avoid unpleasant responsibilities. 



While it is true that the smaller birds, notably the Vireos, the Yellow 

 Warbler, and the Field Sparrow, are most frequently imposed upon, such is 

 not always the case. I have found eggs with the Red-winged Blackbird and 

 the Cardinal. In the latter case the close resemblance of the eggs probably 

 accomplished the deception of the owner herself. 



The Cowbird's egg is of a peculiarly generalized form and pattern. While 

 there is no evidence that it is varied for adaptation to particular hosts, it is sur- 

 prising how closely it resembles the speckled eggs of many species, which are 

 among themselves distinctive. Thus it often requires a second glance to dis- 

 tinguish it among the eggs of the Ovenbird, the Towhee, the Yellow-breasted 

 Chat, the Field, Grasshopper, and Song Sparrows, and even the Yellow 

 Warbler. 



