Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater)
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Rarely seen, but sometimes heard in the HPG, the Brown-headed Cowbird prefers to forage in large grassy areas where it eats seeds and insects. The attraction of the Garden, however, is the number of other birds that nest there. This cowbird species is a well-known parasite and the female lays her eggs in the nests of other birds. She only lays one egg per nest and either removes the other eggs or the resulting baby, which has a shorter incubation period than most birds, pushes the remainder out of the nest once it hatches. The large nestling grows quickly by consuming all the food that the foster parent birds can bring and leaves the nest in only 10 days. The cowbird egg shown above is in the nest of a white-eyed vireo, which would normally contain four smaller eggs.
class: Aves / order: Passeriformes / family: Icteridae / genus: Molothrus / species: ater
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