140 Birds Every Child Should Know 
West, boldly perching upon their backs to 
feed upon the insect parasites — a pleasant 
visitor for the cows. So far, so good. 
The male is a shining, greenish-black bird 
smaller than a robin, with a coffee-brown head 
and neck. His morals are awful, for he makes 
violent love to any brownish-gray cowbird 
he fancies but mates with none. What should 
be Iris song is a squeaking kluck tse-e-e, squeezed 
out with difficulty, or a gurgle, like water being 
poured from a bottle. When he goes a-wooing, 
he behaves ridiculously, parading with spread 
wings and tail and acting as if he were violently 
nauseated in the presence of the lady. Fancy 
a cousin of the musical bobolink behaving 
so! 
And nothing good can be said for the female 
cowbird. Shirking as she does every motherly 
duty, she sneaks about the woods and thickets, 
slyly watching her chance to lay an egg in the 
cradle of some other bird, since she never makes 
a nest of her own. Thus she scatters her prospec- 
tive family throughout the neighbourhood. The 
yellow warbler, who is a famous sufferer from 
her visits, sometimes outwits her, as we have 
seen ; but other warblers, less clever, the vireos, 
some sparrows, and, more rarely, woodpeckers, 
flycatchers, orioles, thrushes and wrens, seem 
to accept the unwelcome gift without a protest. 
If you were a bird so imposed upon, wouldn’t 
