April 22, 2026 • 11 mins
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.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
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 realize now that I started this
off incorrectly. Short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Let's go, that's right, big Thanks to Britannica Yellowstone Wild Tours,
California Department of Fish Wildlife, New Hampshire, Autobond and Autobond
for information about the ground headed brown ground brown headed cowbird.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Thanks to you me too, she brought this bird to
my attention.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Oh I forgot you me dot org.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So, Chuck, we're talking today about cowbirds, and really in
particular the brown headed cowbird. You ever heard of them before?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Had never heard of them?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I hadn't neither. 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?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I had never heard of this trait and 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 going to go lay those eggs in
some other bird's nest and then go away in shirk parenthood.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, you do it for me? How about that? Yeah,
that's exactly what they do. 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 originally. And they're from
(01:37):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Commensal Is it commensal?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I don't know. I don't think so. I feel like
there's a you in there anyway. Okay, 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.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Chuck, that's right, drum roll everybody, It is the bison.
They would follow these bison across the planes. 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 planes and they would feed on the insects
that the bison would kick up, and they would sometimes
(02:27):
ride along on their backs. And this is this led
to why they would not birth their own little eggs
in their own little nests 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 ten twenty miles a day and they're catching a
ride on the bison's backer at the very least flying
(02:48):
around with the bison, they're not staying there long enough
to set up their own home.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, cowbird was rolling stone, that's.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Right, Well, bison bird at the time, I guess.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
What do you think I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Okay, all right, we're taking our break, everybody, so chuck Sadly,
(03:48):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And so while in between that period between over hunting
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 got to start looking elsewhere. And
they basically spread outside of their ecological niche in the
great planes to look for other things they could do
(04:23):
to replace their bison friends, which they must have just
been horrified by all the massacres they witnessed.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, I bet 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 didn't. They're not traveling, you know,
twenty miles a day. So you might think, all right,
they're leading a more sedentary life. These birds are now cowbirds,
(04:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, right, 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. 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
(05:29):
least picky about what nest it lays its eggs in. Yeah,
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. Yes, this little egg is
(05:51):
like five times smaller than the other eggs around it. Obviously,
the ducks are like, what is this crud? And there
are other bird species too that are kind of onto them.
But a lot of times the birds will just you know,
play along or else just be fooled.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, I think the finch is notorious for not liking
these eggs in their nest. They're not good host 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. Other birds will will get mad
and puncture holes in the eggs or just you know,
(06:27):
beak them out of their nests. I think the catbirds
do that. And then the yellow warbler has a strategy
where they build 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.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I know, there's some like Tom and Jerry like like
scene that is making that makes me think of yeah,
but like it happens like really really fast.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So, 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 because it has
adaptations to outcompete other birds in the nests that it's
(07:17):
laid in.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
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 were saying there are some bird enthusiasts that kind
(07:42):
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, ah, man, that really
kinda sucks.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
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 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
and their growth, and it might be so bad that
the other hatchlings starved because the cowbird doesn't let them
(08:15):
get any of the food from the mother.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
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 raise them.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
How do they remain cowbirds?
Speaker 1 (08:37):
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 specie. They're not
exactly sure how this happens, but they think that cowbirds
(08:57):
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. Yea.
And then also there's they do some weird nighttime excursions
(09:21):
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 too.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
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, but.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right exactly, even if it was their mom, they wouldn't
take credit because it's a brown headed cowbird.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
So if you want to find one of these, you
might see them in your feet or they are adapted
to all over North America, rural, suburban, urban, you can
f find them everywhere. They're a smallish, a medium size,
smallish bird, whatever that means. But the males have a
brown head that shines and shimmers almost like a deep
(10:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think short stuff is about out, but since we
have an extra thirty 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.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Sir David Attenborough Asia.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Oh nice, and it.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Is fantastic stuff as always, exactly what you would expect
out of the BBC Nature Series. And Sir Attenborough is
ninety nine years old, he's going to be one hundred
and May and he's still doing it and it's just
some really amazing, striking stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Did they spell it like Steely Dan?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Spell what like Steely Dan?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:14):
No, no, no no, they spelled it Asia.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Not a ja.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
It's great, you guys would love it.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Cool. Well then, I think now, Chuck short Stuff is out.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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 realize now that I started this
off incorrectly. Short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Let's go, that's right, big Thanks to Britannica Yellowstone Wild Tours,
California Department of Fish Wildlife, New Hampshire, Autobond and Autobond
for information about the ground headed brown ground brown headed cowbird.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Thanks to you me too, she brought this bird to
my attention.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Oh I forgot you me dot org.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So, Chuck, we're talking today about cowbirds, and really in
particular the brown headed cowbird. You ever heard of them before?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Had never heard of them?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I hadn't neither. 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?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I had never heard of this trait and 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 going to go lay those eggs in
some other bird's nest and then go away in shirk parenthood.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, you do it for me? How about that? Yeah,
that's exactly what they do. 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 originally. And they're from
(01:37):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Commensal Is it commensal?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I don't know. I don't think so. I feel like
there's a you in there anyway. Okay, 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.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Chuck, that's right, drum roll everybody, It is the bison.
They would follow these bison across the planes. 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 planes and they would feed on the insects
that the bison would kick up, and they would sometimes
(02:27):
ride along on their backs. And this is this led
to why they would not birth their own little eggs
in their own little nests 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 ten twenty miles a day and they're catching a
ride on the bison's backer at the very least flying
(02:48):
around with the bison, they're not staying there long enough
to set up their own home.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, cowbird was rolling stone, that's.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Right, Well, bison bird at the time, I guess.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
What do you think I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Okay, all right, we're taking our break, everybody, so chuck Sadly,
(03:48):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And so while in between that period between over hunting
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 got to start looking elsewhere. And
they basically spread outside of their ecological niche in the
great planes to look for other things they could do
(04:23):
to replace their bison friends, which they must have just
been horrified by all the massacres they witnessed.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, I bet 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 didn't. They're not traveling, you know,
twenty miles a day. So you might think, all right,
they're leading a more sedentary life. These birds are now cowbirds,
(04:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, right, 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. 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
(05:29):
least picky about what nest it lays its eggs in. Yeah,
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. Yes, this little egg is
(05:51):
like five times smaller than the other eggs around it. Obviously,
the ducks are like, what is this crud? And there
are other bird species too that are kind of onto them.
But a lot of times the birds will just you know,
play along or else just be fooled.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, I think the finch is notorious for not liking
these eggs in their nest. They're not good host 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. Other birds will will get mad
and puncture holes in the eggs or just you know,
(06:27):
beak them out of their nests. I think the catbirds
do that. And then the yellow warbler has a strategy
where they build 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.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I know, there's some like Tom and Jerry like like
scene that is making that makes me think of yeah,
but like it happens like really really fast.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So, 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 because it has
adaptations to outcompete other birds in the nests that it's
(07:17):
laid in.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
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 were saying there are some bird enthusiasts that kind
(07:42):
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, ah, man, that really
kinda sucks.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
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 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
and their growth, and it might be so bad that
the other hatchlings starved because the cowbird doesn't let them
(08:15):
get any of the food from the mother.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
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 raise them.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
How do they remain cowbirds?
Speaker 1 (08:37):
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 specie. They're not
exactly sure how this happens, but they think that cowbirds
(08:57):
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. Yea.
And then also there's they do some weird nighttime excursions
(09:21):
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 too.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
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, but.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right exactly, even if it was their mom, they wouldn't
take credit because it's a brown headed cowbird.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
So if you want to find one of these, you
might see them in your feet or they are adapted
to all over North America, rural, suburban, urban, you can
f find them everywhere. They're a smallish, a medium size,
smallish bird, whatever that means. But the males have a
brown head that shines and shimmers almost like a deep
(10:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think short stuff is about out, but since we
have an extra thirty 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.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Sir David Attenborough Asia.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Oh nice, and it.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Is fantastic stuff as always, exactly what you would expect
out of the BBC Nature Series. And Sir Attenborough is
ninety nine years old, he's going to be one hundred
and May and he's still doing it and it's just
some really amazing, striking stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Did they spell it like Steely Dan?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Spell what like Steely Dan?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:14):
No, no, no no, they spelled it Asia.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Not a ja.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
It's great, you guys would love it.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Cool. Well then, I think now, Chuck short Stuff is out.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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