1871 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
451 
The Cow-Bunting. 
BY ERNEST INGEBSOLL, OBERLIN, O. 
The striking peculiarity which gives to the 
Cow-Bunting bird a distinct character, is its 
strange yet undeniable habit of depositing its 
eggs in the nests of other* 
birds, and leaving them 
entirely to the mercy of 
strangers. Unaccount¬ 
able as this practice may 
seem, it yet has its par¬ 
allel. The ancients, 
even, were well aware 
that'the Cuckoo, of Eu¬ 
rope, never constructed 
for herself a nest, but 
dropped her eggs into 
the nests of other birds; 
but among the thou¬ 
sands of species spread 
over the globe, no other 
instance of the same 
uniform habit has been 
found to exist, until dis¬ 
covered in the Cow- 
Bunting. 
The nests usually se¬ 
lected by the Cow-Bird 
are those of birds small¬ 
er than herself; though 
here in the West—a fact 
which seems not to 
have been observed by some Eastern ornithol¬ 
ogists—birds as large as the robin, wood-thrush, 
and song sparrow are among her chosen nurses. 
About the middle of May, when the small 
birds are beginning to lay, the females leave the 
flock and skulk through the hedge-rows and 
brier-patclies with a stealthy, restless air, which 
plainly betokens that some anxiety of no small 
account agitates the mind of the dusky lady. 
Moving in short, spasmodic flights, she at last 
pauses above an old, brier-hidden stump, 
glances hurriedly right and left, and dives into 
the briers. She remain's but a moment, then 
springs out, not as 
before, stealthy and 
suspicious, but with 
a careless, joyous 
air, straight up to 
the top of the near- 
>est tree, pouring out 
with all her power 
the “ liquid, glassy ” 
notes which consti¬ 
tute her best song. 
But see, as if sum¬ 
moned by the ex¬ 
ultant cry of the 
Bunting, approach¬ 
es on swift, sure 
wings, a Maryland 
Yellow-throat, and 
darts into the bush¬ 
es like a flash of 
sunlight. There, she 
has come out again 
and perched on that 
smilax! Ho, it is 
mot the same bird! 
Yes, it is, but how* 
different ! She went 
;in blithe, and bright, and merry—she comes 
out restless, drooping, seeming almost stricken 
dumb with some mysterious terror. Let us 
go and discover the cause of her strange con¬ 
duct. Ah! yes, now it is plain. There, at 
the foot of the mossy stump, sunk among the 
fallen leaves, and arched over by sprays of moss, 
is the Yellow-throat’s nest—dry leaves and grass, 
lined with hair. There are three white, brown- 
dotted eggs, and one larger, porcelain white, 
peppered all over with brown and lavender 
dots, which become confluent near the large 
end. It is that large egg that caused the Yel¬ 
low-throat’s consternation. The Cow-Bunting 
has been here. But what will the Yellow-throat 
do ? Hothing. She will lay another egg to 
complete her complement of four; then one of 
her eggs must be thrown out, because there is 
not room enough in the nest for five. She will 
sit upon them all, and hatch out the Cow-Bird’s 
only; for that matures a considerable time be¬ 
fore the Yellow-throat’s. After the Cow-Bird 
has broken the shell she will remove from the 
nest her own three remaining eggs, and devote 
herself to the nourishing of the foundling, until 
it is large enough to take care of itself, and a 
hard enough task it will be, too. That is what 
the Yellow-throat will do if nothing happens. 
Something does happen, for we take the large 
egg out of its snug place among the small ones, 
and throw it so far that it is certain never to 
return. We prefer that one life rather than 
four should be sacrificed. 
“ It is a singular freak of nature, this instinct 
which prompts one bird to lay its eggs in the 
nests of others, and thus shirk the responsibil¬ 
ity of rearing its own young. The Cow-Bunt¬ 
ings always resort to 
this cunning trick; and 
when one reflects upon 
their numbers, it is evi¬ 
dent that these little 
tragedies are quite fre¬ 
quent. The Cow-Bunt¬ 
ing seems to have no 
conscience about the 
matter. Its egg is usu¬ 
ally the first to hatch; 
its young overreaches 
all the rest when food is 
brought; it grows with 
great rapidity, spreads 
and fills the nest, and 
the starved and crowded 
occupants soon perish, 
when the parent bird 
removes their bodies, 
giving its whole energy 
and care to the foster 
child.” 
Occasionally, how¬ 
ever, the intruder fails 
in her thievish purpose. 
If she happen to visit a 
nest which has not yet been occupied, the right¬ 
ful owner seems invariably to abandon it in dis¬ 
gust. Some birds, as the Goldfinch, build a new 
nest over the stranger egg, even though their 
own must also be buried. Only one egg 
seems ever to be laid in the same nest; but the 
Buntings are not scrupulous about leaving a 
card where some of their congeners have also 
been visitors; so that frequently I have found 
three of these parasitic eggs in the same nest. 
The Cow-Bunting is -well known throughout 
the eastern half of the Union, and, as with 
every common bird, has received a variety of 
titles, suggestive of 
haunts and habits. 
Arriving from the 
South early in the 
spring, with their 
cousins the red¬ 
wings, they do not, 
like them, separate 
into pairs, but into 
small flocks in 
which the females 
predominate in 
numbers. Thus 
they remain all 
summer in a sort of 
indiscriminate con¬ 
cubinage—a prac¬ 
tice seemingly con¬ 
sistent with their 
anomalous nidifica- 
tibn. In the fall 
the young forsake 
their foster parents 
and collect together 
in small parties 
with their older 
congeners and the 
redwings, committing common depredation on 
the Indian corn. By the last of October they 
have all moved off to the South, taking advan¬ 
tage of favorable winds to carry them on, and 
by short flights soon reach their winter quar¬ 
ters among the rice-fields of the Gulf States. 
hoodwinking the crows.— (See page 453.) 
THE COW-BUNTING. 
