244 COWBIRD. 



the Indigo Bunting, for instance, will sometimes abandon their own eggs should the 

 stranger's egg be removed, but apparently do not mind the loss of one or two of their 

 own, and continue incubating just the same. 



"Almost invariably the nests in which one or more of these parasitic eggs have 

 been deposited contain only incomplete sets of their rightful owners. Where the Cow- 

 bird drops an egg in the nests of species considerably smaller than itself, as the Gnat- 

 catcher, etc., its much larger size seems to be a positive advantage to the more rapid 

 development of the embryo, as the egg must necessarily receive more animal heat than 

 the smaller ones, which can scarcely come much in contact with the body of the sitting 

 bird, and the development of the embryos in these must be more or less retarded th'ereby. 



"It is ludicrous to see a fat, fully fledged young Cowbird following a pair of 

 Chipping Sparrows, or some small Warbler clamoring incessantly for food and uttering 

 its begging call of seerr-seerr most persistently, only keeping quiet while its gaping beak 

 is filled with some suitable morsel, and stranger still to note how devoted the diminutive 

 nurses are to their foster child. One would think that they might see through the fraud, 

 at least after the young interloper left the nest, if not before, and abandon him to his 

 fate, but the greatest attachment seems to exist between them until the Cowbird is able 

 to shift for himself, when he leaves and joins his own kind." 



Such is the Cowbird's bad reputation. For every individual in the flock of Cow 

 Buntings four or five of our beautiful insectivorous birds had to suffer their death — and 

 there are often many hundreds of these birds in a single horde. In localities w^herethey 

 are abundant they become a great nuisance, and their parasitic habit does more harm 

 to our beautiful native birds than the much hated European Sparrow. 



It is astonishing how many different species of our birds suffer from this parasite. 

 Major Bendire, the celebrated oologist and ornithologist of the National Museum in 

 Washington, D. C, mentions ninety different small birds, comprising pretty much all 

 the species nesting within the Cowbird's breeding range. These foster parents of the 

 parasite range from the size of a Mourning Dove, down to that of the House Wren 

 and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. One would naturally suppose that birds breeding in holes 

 like the Wrens and Woodpeckers, or build nests with a small entrance on the side, like 

 the Parula Warbler, would be exempt from this infliction, but it is not the case. All 

 these birds are exceedingly valuable in the household of Nature. I have found the egg 

 of the Cowbird in a nest of Bewick's Wren, in one of the nesting boxes I had provided; 

 the entrance hole was very small so that no Bluebird and not even the Tufted Titmouse 

 could enter. Nevertheless the Cowbird deposited its egg in the nest. "It seems almost 

 impossible," says Major Bendire, "that a bird of this size would be able to enter the 

 small pendant nest of the Parula Warbler and deposit its tgg therein in the usual way ; 

 still this species is occasionally imposed on, and it is possible that the egg is dropped 

 in the nest with the beak." I have found from one to three Cowbird's eggs in one nest 

 and other observers have even discovered five and seven, but generally only one egg is 

 deposited in a nest. Although I have paid much attention to the subject I have never 

 found more than one young Cowbird in one nest. In Texas, where I found two para- 

 sitic eggs in the nest of the Painted Bunting, and three in the nest of the Orchard Oriole, 

 only one was hatched, while the other disappeared in a mysterious way with the foster 



