Short Stuff: Brown-Headed Cowbird

There’s a kind of bird that lots of people think is a real jerk. And it kind of is. But in the brown-headed cowbird’s defense, it’s just evolved that way. Find out why it has such a bad reputation among bird lovers in this Short Stuff. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:17Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is a short stuff, which is why I realized now that I started this off incorrectly. Short stuff, let's go.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  That's right. Big thanks to Britannica, Yellowstone Wild Tours, California Department of Fish Wildlife, New Hampshire Autobahn and Autobahn for information about the ground headed brown? Ground? Brown headed cowbird.

• 1:40Josh Clark?

  Thanks to Yumi too. She brought this bird to my attention.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Oh, I forgot. Yumi.org.

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, we're talking today about cowbirds and really in particular, the brown headed cowbird. You ever heard of them before?

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Had never heard of them.

• 1:53Josh Clark?

  I hadn't either, but if you want to know about a brown headed cowbird, the first thing you need to know about it is that it's a brood parasite. What does that mean Chuck? What does that mean?

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Well, I had never heard of this trait in a bird either. So a brood parasite is a bird that will be like, you know what? I don't want to build my own nest and go through all that whole process of raising these babies that I egg out of my body. So I'm just gonna go lay those eggs in some other bird's nest and then go away and shirk parenthood.

• 2:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you do it for me. How about that?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29Josh Clark?

  That's exactly what they do. Um, and it, you know, you're like, why would you do that? You have to be a jerk bird. And yeah, I think a lot of people think of cowbirds as kind of jerk birds just for doing that. But from their point of view, like this is, this is just an adaptation that made a lot of sense to how they evolved, um, originally. And they're from North America and they were, I think indigenous to the Great Plains of North America. And the reason why is because there's another animal that was indigenous to the Great Plains of North America. And they had a commensal, commensal?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Is it commensal?

• 3:07Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I don't think so. I feel like there's a U in there. Anyway, they had the kind of relationship where they benefited, but didn't harm the other animal. And I feel like it's high time we tell everybody what the other animal was, Chuck.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  That's right. Drumroll, everybody. It is the bison.

• 3:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Uh, they would follow these bison across the plains. Uh, sometimes they were initially, they were called bison birds or maybe buffalo birds, even though that's wrong. And they would follow these guys across the plains and they would feed on the insects that the bison would kick up and they would sometimes ride along on their backs. Uh, and this is, this led to why they, uh, would not birth their own little eggs in their own little nest and raise them because they went where the bison went and they were always on the move and bison can travel, buddy. So if they're moving 10, 20 miles a day and they're catching a ride on a bison's back or at the very least flying around with a bison, they're not staying there long enough to set up their own home.

• 4:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Cowbird was rolling stone.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  That's right. Well, bison bird at the time, I guess.

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. So, yeah, it totally made sense that like they still need to reproduce. So they would just find a nest somewhere along the bison route and leave their egg and then fly back to the bison and be like, wait, wait, wait for me, everybody. And I feel like that's a pretty good place to take our break. What do you think?

• 4:32Speaker 02

  I totally agree.

• 4:33Josh Clark?

  Okay. All right. We're taking our break, everybody.

• 4:45Speaker 03

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• 4:47Josh Clark?

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• 5:50Josh Clark?

  Sure.

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• 6:58Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, sadly, as probably most people know, the American bison was overhunted almost to extinction. We can seriously legitimately thank Ted Turner for almost single-handedly bringing the American bison back.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 7:14Josh Clark?

  And so while in between that period between overhunting and Ted Turner, the bison bird was like, I don't have my niche anymore. I need to figure out what's going on here. I gotta start looking elsewhere. And they basically spread outside of their ecological niche in the Great Plains to look for other things they could do to replace their bison friends, which they must have just been horrified by all the massacres they witnessed.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I bet. It was probably very sad times for the bison bird. But eventually one of them would land on a cow and say, hey, these guys aren't so bad to ride around on. But here's the thing is cows don't move around like the bison did. They're not traveling 20 miles a day. So you might think, all right, they're leading a more sedentary life, these birds are now cowbirds. And so maybe they will change their behavior now that they're not, they don't need to do this. But they didn't. They said, we love these cows, but we also kind of like this adaptation because, you know, who really wants to parent? They're young.

• 8:20Josh Clark?

  Exactly. We're not gonna, we're not gonna change anything. We're just gonna stop, you know, wasting so much effort flying around all the time. Um, I think there's, I don't remember. Oh, there's five species of cowbirds, at least the parasitic versions. And the brown headed cowbird, the reason we're talking about the brown head is because it is by far the least picky about what nest it lays its eggs in.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:45Josh Clark?

  So these are, you know, they're not large eggs. They're much smaller than like a chicken's egg, but they're probably not as tiny as like, say a robin's egg. They're middling sized eggs. Brown headed cowbirds will lay their eggs in like a duck's nest.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:01Josh Clark?

  This little egg is like five times smaller than the other eggs around it. Obviously the ducks are like, what is this crud? Um, and there are other bird species too that are kind of on to them. But a lot of times the birds will just, you know, play along or else just be fooled.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the finch is notorious for not liking these eggs in their nest. They're not good hosts of these, these intruding eggs. So apparently they will, uh, you know, they will, they will die if they are left in charge of a finch. Um, other birds will, will get mad and puncture holes in the eggs or just, you know, beak them out of their nests. I think that catbirds do that. Um, and then the yellow warbler, uh, has a strategy where they build a nest, they'll just nest a new nest on top of those poor little eggs, sometimes several new nests, like up to five new nests on top to really bury those guys.

• 9:57Josh Clark?

  I know. There's some like Tom and Jerry, like, like scene that is making, that makes me think of.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:03Josh Clark?

  But, um, like it happens like really, really fast.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 10:07Josh Clark?

  So, um, if however, the cowbird happens to lay their egg in a nest that the bird is like just too lazy to do anything about, that cowbird is probably going to be the only hatchling that survives.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:22Josh Clark?

  Because it has adaptations to outcompete other birds in the nest that it's, it's laid in.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of them is they have a shorter incubation period. So they're born first. I think sometimes up to three or four days before the other eggs might hatch. And so they got a little bit of a head start where they might take care of those extra eggs themselves. These baby birds might nudge those things out. So earlier, you know, were saying there are some bird enthusiasts that kind of think these are jerk birds. And in my mind, I was like, yeah, but you know, like, these birds are doing their thing. Like, you can't get mad at nature for being nature. But then you get to this part and you're kind of like, oh, man, that really kind of sucks.

• 11:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. So even if they're like, I'll let you guys stay. And the cowbird doesn't push the other hatchlings out. Just from being a couple of days older, they'll be able to muscle the other birds out of the way to get the food. And they'll just continue to outpace them in their growth. And it might be so bad that the other hatchling starved because the cowbird doesn't let them get any of the food from the mother.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I get it now, bird enthusiasts. I have a question for you, though, Joshua, which is with all this going on, not being raised by their parents, how in the world does the cowbird not start to take on traits of the bird that raised them? How do they remain cowbirds?

• 11:49Josh Clark?

  I'm glad you asked that. We don't really know, Chuck. As a matter of fact, there seems to be some sort of mechanism that prevents cowbirds from imprinting onto their adopted or foster parent from the other species. They're not exactly sure how this happens, but they think that cowbird's hatchlings are attuned to the sound of adult cowbirds in the area and that they're naturally attracted to it. Once they learn to fly, they'll go seek out other cowbirds. And I guess there they learn all of the cowbird habits, like playing craps and smoking cigarettes and all that stuff.

• 12:27Josh Clark?

  And then also, they do some weird nighttime excursions out of the nest while they're being raised. And I guess no one knows where they go, but that's something that they're like, that probably has something to go learn actual cowbird behavior to.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder if when they are attuned to the sound of their own, if they eventually fly out when they're big enough to find them, if they're like, mama? And the birds are like, don't look at me, buddy.

• 12:56Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. Even if it was their mom, they wouldn't take credit because it's a brown headed cowbird.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 13:03Josh Clark?

  So if you want to find one of these, you might see them in your feeder. They are adapted to all over North America, rural, suburban, urban. You can find them everywhere. They're a smallish, a medium sized, smallish bird, whatever that means. But the males have a brown head that shines and shimmers almost like a deep red in the sunlight. And they also have iridescent greenish blue plumage on their body. The females, you're not going to really notice that much. They're much less showy, but that's pretty standard for birds, anyway.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  For sure. I think short stuff is about out, but since we have an extra 30 seconds, I'm going to take this opportunity to promote the new nature series from the BBC, the latest in their ongoing work with the great David Attenborough, Sir David Attenborough, Asia.

• 14:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, nice.

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• 14:20Josh Clark?

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• 14:24Speaker 02

  Spell what, like Steely Dan? Oh, no, no, no, no.

• 14:26Josh Clark?

  No, they spelled it.

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• 14:28Josh Clark?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Not A J A.

• 14:31Josh Clark?

  Well, there you go. You're welcome, BBC. Chuck just hooked you guys up with some viewers. I'm going to go check that out myself.

• 14:37Speaker 02

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• 14:39Josh Clark?

  Cool. Well, then I think now Chuck, short stuff is out.

• 14:45Speaker 00

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