Tag: brown headed cowbird
Cowbird Drinking Bison Snot
My Attempt At Making A Cowbird Look Good
Not that they’re ugly. They’re not. But they get such a bad rap because of their nest parasitism habit, most folks (including bird photographers) don’t give them a chance. (6 photos)
Brood Parasitism of Song Sparrows by Brown-headed Cowbirds
It isn’t easy to watch as parasitic fledgling cowbirds run their adopted Song Sparrow parents ragged as they relentlessly follow the sparrows around and beg for food.
American Goldfinch on Musk Thistle
And an interesting goldfinch strategy for combating brood parasitism of the Brown-headed Cowbird.
The Dramatic Size Difference Between Parasitic Cowbirds And Their Host Species
The difference in size isn’t always this extreme but it can be even more dramatic than some of the examples I’ve included here.
Lazuli Bunting – A Swell Bird In “The Swell”
Lazuli Buntings are appropriately named after the blue gemstone lapis lazuli. I think it’s a perfect name for such a spectacularly plumaged bird.
A Snot And Spit-drinking Cowbird
For any who may be disturbed by the crassness of my title you have my permission to substitute mucus and saliva for the offending two words…
Redhead
In my view the only ducks that I see regularly that approach the elegance of male Pintails and Canvasbacks are the handsome Redheads.
Orange-crowned Warbler Parasitized By Cowbirds
Savannah Sparrow Feeding Fledgling
During our last Montana trip we had multiple sessions over several days with a very cooperative Savannah Sparrow – “cooperative” in the sense that the bird could always be found in the same spot along the shore of Lower Red Rock Lake in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
The American Goldfinch
Due to ongoing copyright infringement issues I’ve recently spent enormous amounts of time registering many thousands of my images with the U.S. Copyright Office. During that process I ran across these American Goldfinch images that I’d essentially forgotten about. They were taken almost exactly 6 years ago (11/18/2007) when I was first learning bird photography.
Lazuli Buntings In The San Rafael Swell
Appropriately named after the blue gemstone lapis lazuli, the Lazuli Bunting is one of our most colorful western birds. The persistent and conspicuous song of the male throughout the breeding season has been likened to an “acoustic barcode” that is unique to that individual bird.
A Serendipitous “Buffalo Bird” And A Bison Cow And Calf
Many in the birding world don’t like Brown-headed Cowbirds much, for reasons that have been bandied about for years. But I have no problem with them, especially when one of them quite unexpectedly pops up into one of my images in a rather dramatic way.
Mucus-drinking Cowbird
Before Europeans came to North America and cleared forests which modified the environment into the agricultural and suburban landscapes of today, the range of the Brown-headed Cowbird was limited to the short-grass plains where they followed the almost endless herds of American Bison as they fed on the insects stirred up by those wandering behemoths. Early settlers so strongly associated them with bison that they were called “Buffalo Birds”. Today that relationship still exists wherever limited numbers of bison can still be found. Antelope Island is one of those places. One of the many challenges facing the cowbird was obtaining enough moisture as it followed the bison herds over the hot, rolling plains. In late summer several years ago I photographed a cowbird behavior that illustrated one of the ways they solved that problem. I found this huge bull languishing in the broiling sun next to a boulder that it had been using as a scratching post. A group of Brown-headed Cowbirds were in the vicinity but at first I wasn’t paying much attention to them. Then this female (at frame bottom) flew in close… and began flying at the nostrils of the bull. Initially I was unsure about what she was doing but she did it repeatedly and eventually it became clear that she was… drinking the mucus-laden secretions from the bison’s nostrils. She would actually hover in place as she gobbled down the long, stringy strands of mucus. Not a pretty sight and perhaps a bit unsettling to our human sensibilities but what an incredibly adaptive behavior…
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Cowbird Drinking Bison Snot
My Attempt At Making A Cowbird Look Good
Not that they’re ugly. They’re not. But they get such a bad rap because of their nest parasitism habit, most folks (including bird photographers) don’t give them a chance. (6 photos)
Brood Parasitism of Song Sparrows by Brown-headed Cowbirds
It isn’t easy to watch as parasitic fledgling cowbirds run their adopted Song Sparrow parents ragged as they relentlessly follow the sparrows around and beg for food.
American Goldfinch on Musk Thistle
And an interesting goldfinch strategy for combating brood parasitism of the Brown-headed Cowbird.
The Dramatic Size Difference Between Parasitic Cowbirds And Their Host Species
The difference in size isn’t always this extreme but it can be even more dramatic than some of the examples I’ve included here.
Lazuli Bunting – A Swell Bird In “The Swell”
Lazuli Buntings are appropriately named after the blue gemstone lapis lazuli. I think it’s a perfect name for such a spectacularly plumaged bird.
A Snot And Spit-drinking Cowbird
For any who may be disturbed by the crassness of my title you have my permission to substitute mucus and saliva for the offending two words…
Redhead
In my view the only ducks that I see regularly that approach the elegance of male Pintails and Canvasbacks are the handsome Redheads.
Orange-crowned Warbler Parasitized By Cowbirds
Savannah Sparrow Feeding Fledgling
During our last Montana trip we had multiple sessions over several days with a very cooperative Savannah Sparrow – “cooperative” in the sense that the bird could always be found in the same spot along the shore of Lower Red Rock Lake in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
The American Goldfinch
Due to ongoing copyright infringement issues I’ve recently spent enormous amounts of time registering many thousands of my images with the U.S. Copyright Office. During that process I ran across these American Goldfinch images that I’d essentially forgotten about. They were taken almost exactly 6 years ago (11/18/2007) when I was first learning bird photography.
Lazuli Buntings In The San Rafael Swell
Appropriately named after the blue gemstone lapis lazuli, the Lazuli Bunting is one of our most colorful western birds. The persistent and conspicuous song of the male throughout the breeding season has been likened to an “acoustic barcode” that is unique to that individual bird.
A Serendipitous “Buffalo Bird” And A Bison Cow And Calf
Many in the birding world don’t like Brown-headed Cowbirds much, for reasons that have been bandied about for years. But I have no problem with them, especially when one of them quite unexpectedly pops up into one of my images in a rather dramatic way.
Mucus-drinking Cowbird
Before Europeans came to North America and cleared forests which modified the environment into the agricultural and suburban landscapes of today, the range of the Brown-headed Cowbird was limited to the short-grass plains where they followed the almost endless herds of American Bison as they fed on the insects stirred up by those wandering behemoths. Early settlers so strongly associated them with bison that they were called “Buffalo Birds”. Today that relationship still exists wherever limited numbers of bison can still be found. Antelope Island is one of those places. One of the many challenges facing the cowbird was obtaining enough moisture as it followed the bison herds over the hot, rolling plains. In late summer several years ago I photographed a cowbird behavior that illustrated one of the ways they solved that problem. I found this huge bull languishing in the broiling sun next to a boulder that it had been using as a scratching post. A group of Brown-headed Cowbirds were in the vicinity but at first I wasn’t paying much attention to them. Then this female (at frame bottom) flew in close… and began flying at the nostrils of the bull. Initially I was unsure about what she was doing but she did it repeatedly and eventually it became clear that she was… drinking the mucus-laden secretions from the bison’s nostrils. She would actually hover in place as she gobbled down the long, stringy strands of mucus. Not a pretty sight and perhaps a bit unsettling to our human sensibilities but what an incredibly adaptive behavior…