Cowbird SONG-BIRDS. 



walking after the grazing cattle and feeding upon the insects 

 dislodged from the grass by their cropping. Other birds 

 build a home and seek a mate, often remaining with the 

 same one a lifetime. The Cowbirds are polygamous, liv- 

 ing in roving flocks, building no nests, and providing in no 

 way for their offspring. When the laying impulse seizes 

 them, they slyly deposit the egg in the nest of some smaller 

 bird. This shows forethought, however; for there is less 

 likelihood of the eggs being thrust out, and it also obtains 

 a greater share of warmth than the other eggs in the nest 

 and hatches more rapidly. 



Many birds do not allow themselves to be so imposed 

 upon, and either eject the strange egg, build a new nest 

 over it, or abandon their nest entirely ; others seemingly 

 less intelligent will rear the ungainly stranger, even though 

 from its greater size and appetite it crowds and starves the 

 legitimate tenants of the nest. I have many and many a 

 time seen a young Cowbird, after leaving the nest, being 

 fed by a bird so much smaller than itself that the poor 

 foster parent had to stand on tiptoe. 



Cowbirds' eggs have been found in the nests of the Chat, 

 Baltimore Oriole, Wood Thrush, Mourning Dove, Kingbird, 

 Towhee, Vireos, WaiV^s, and all the Sparrows, and even 

 in the secluded hut of the Ovenbird, while many nests are 

 so unfortunate as to contain more than one of these eggs. 



Vagrants as the Cowbirds are in the breeding-season, 

 after the nesting the young do not continue with their 

 foster parents, but return to the flocks of their progenitors, 

 and remain with them. Thus these Cowbirds are the social- 

 ists among birds, and are like their human prototypes, who 

 send their young to free kindergartens and mission schools 

 that they may be fed and clothed at the expense of others ; 

 then drawing them surely back, with their inherited prin- 

 ciples unchanged. Some evils are inextricably mixed up 

 with the foundations of things. 



168 



