Amador ledger., 1904-12-23
THE TIRED COWBIRD
DOWNRIGHT LAZY is THIS BLACK
HOBO OF THE ORIOLE TRIBE.

Lays Its Eggs In the Nests of other
Birds and Never Troubles Itself
About Rearing Its Young.
The cowbird was born so tired that if
lie could compel any other bird to
gather his food for him he would do so,
but he cannot, so he scratches about all
day among the herds of cattle and
sheep and goes to roost at night in
great bands Of hundreds of his rela-
tives, always selecting a bushy tree,
such as cypress, for a nights perch.
All up and down the Mississippi river
valley is the common summer home of
these birds, for only in the depth of
winter do they retreat to the warmer
mesas of Mexico, whittier most of the
other birds have preceded them. In
the spring following such a winter
they are the first to return, filling all
the new year air with their chatter and
lining the barnyard trees
You must not think that the glossy
black and brown birds so plentiful
around southern California barnyards
during the winter months are cow
birds, for they are not. They are call
ed ''grackles" and seem to be more like
crows than blackbirdA You can find
their nests, big, bulky affairs, in the
orange and cypress trees of almost any
of your ranch homes. There are many,
many members to the blackbird family,
the sweet voiced meadow larks and the
gorgeous golden orioles as well as the
more sober colored blackbirds and
grackles, and of all these but one
forces the Matching of her eggs and
the feeding of her young on to another
bird mother
In England the cuckoo has this same
habit, but the American cuckoo builds
her nest and sits on her eggs as nicely
as any robin or dove could do. Some
times our road runner so far forgets
herself as to lay her eggs in the nest
of a quail or a meadow lark, but not
often, but when she does the bird upon
whom Mrs. Road Runner tries to i'm
pose generally breaks the strange egg
or else goes away and leaves the nest
alone Then the field mice and the
wood rats have feast, to which some
times the road runner comes herself,
for she is very fond of eggs as long as
they are not her own.
But the cowbird never makes any
such poor job as that. She always Sc
lects the nest of some smaller bird-in
regions where warblers are plentiful
the home of one of these little singers
is most frequently chosen-and there
as many eggs as she thinks the owner
of the nest will submit to are laid
Sometimes the warbler goes right on
incubating the intruder, but now and
then the two old birds get together
and dump the egg out on the ground.
Nests have been found in which the
warblers put mud floor over the first
nest and built another one ON top of it,
leaving their own eggs to spoil because
they knew no other way to rid them
selves of the cowbird. If the cowbird
comes back by the repaired nest she
will put another egg in 1t, and gener-
ally this egg is Matched and raised by
the foster pair on whom it has been
forced.
1t requires about ten or eleven days
for the young cowbird to break the
shell, while most other birds of its
size are two or three days longer, and
thus he has good start on the other
nestlings in point of growth. When
Matched the cowbird is larger than the
sparrow or the warbler and conse-
quently gradually crowds them into
the background, taking all the food
that should belong to them. AS they
grow weaker from this he grows stron-
ger, and it is not long until he tips
them out of the nest and is sole mas
ter of the two old birds, who work
ceaselessly to satisfy his awful appe-
tite. In very few days he gets too
large for the little nest and goes out
into the branches, where the old birds
still continue to feed him in a way
they never do their own young after
they have left the nest In Mexico
and South America there is a cowbird
that sometimes builds a nest of her
own and sits upon and matches her
own eggs, but no such thing ever hap
pens among the black hoboes Of the
oriole family found farther north.
How many eggs a cowbird lays no
one knows, but as many as seven
have been found in one nest of the
oven bird, kind of thrush found in
the eastern states. Usually, however,
only one egg is laid in each nest, es-
pecially if the birds to whom the nest
belongs are small and the nest too
little to hold more than one Of the cow
birds young in comfort. The parent
cowbird never disturbs the eggs Of any
of the birds in whose nests she leaves
her own, knowing full we'll that if she
did so the nest builder would in all
probability desert her home or throw
the strange egg out. Oftentimes more
than one cowbird lays in the same
nest, and, as no two eggs Of these
birds are ever exactly alike in color,
you may be sure that no cowbird
knows her own egg half minute aft
er she has laid it.-Los Angeles Times.