A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
(Molothrus ater)
A fledgling brown-headed cowbird being fed by its song sparrow host.
Spotted on Jun 24, 2012
Submitted on Jun 24, 2012
2 Comments
Thamks for the info Ava T-B
Great series of pictures of Brown-headed Cowbird paratism. Here's a quote from Wikipedia on this phenomenon:
Parasite response
It seems that Brown-headed Cowbirds periodically check on their eggs and young after they have deposited them. Removal of the parasitic egg may trigger a retaliatory reaction termed "mafia behavior". According to a study by the Florida Museum of Natural History published in 1983, the cowbird returned to ransack the nests of a range of host species 56% of the time when their egg was removed. In addition, the cowbird also destroyed nests in a type of "farming behavior" to force the hosts to build new ones. The cowbirds then laid their eggs in the new nests 85% of the time. Please add a reference to this spotting -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown-heade...