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Molothrus ater
Brown-headed Cowbirds are smallish blackbirds, with a shorter tail and thicker head than most other blackbirds. The bill has a distinctive shape: it’s much shorter and thicker-based than other blackbirds', almost finch-like at first glance. In flight, look for the shorter tail. Female Brown-headed Cowbirds are plain brown birds, lightest on the head and underparts, with fine streaking on the belly and a dark eye.
Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge: The refuge is encompassed within 1,500,000 acres (6,100 km2) of hardwood swamps, lakes and bayous. The natural floodplain of the Atchafalaya River flows for 140 miles (230 km) south from its junction with the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. The basin's dense bottomland hardwoods, Bald Cypress-Tupelo swamps, overflow lakes, and meandering bayous provide a tremendous diversity of habitat for more than 200 species of resident and migratory birds and numerous other wildlife and the area has been recognized as an Internationally Important Bird Area.
The Brown-headed Cowbird is a stocky blackbird with a fascinating approach to raising its young. Females forgo building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds, abandoning their young to foster parents, usually at the expense of at least some of the host’s own chicks. Once confined to the open grasslands of middle North America, cowbirds have surged in numbers and range as humans built towns and cleared woods.
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