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From: dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: What bird WAS this??!
Keywords: gurgling, bowing
Message-ID: <79820@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 13 Jun 91 12:29:52 GMT
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In article <25412@well.sf.ca.us> lp@well.sf.ca.us (Lily Pond) writes:
]
]What did I just see???  It looked to be a little smaller than a towhee, with
]the coloring, maybe, of some kind of blackbird (but they've never come to my
]feeder before!).  I think also (coincidentally?), at the same moment, this
]year's baby towhees came for the first time!
]
]The amazing thing about this bird was that it (they -- I think there were
]three -- it's just that the light was really bad) -- it kept doing this:
]it would puff up its feathers, spread out and "cup" its wings, gurgle, bow,
]and then trill!  The tree of them kept doing it over and over on my "feeder"..

They were Brown-headed Cowbirds.  You witnessed the male's "courtship
display".  Cowbirds are North America's only "nest parasites".  They lay
an egg in the nest of some other species, which then raises the baby
cowbird instead of its own.  Some people think that is "bad" or "evil",
but that is applying human values.  Cowbirds are native species, and that
happens to be the way they reproduce!  Of course, they have increased
in number and expanded their range during the last few hundred years due to
agriculture and other land clearing, so they now are a threat to species that
they did not come in contact with until recently, and which thus have no
behavioral counter-cowbird mechanisms.  There are three cowbird species
in the US:  Brown-headed is widespread; Red-eyed (or Bronzed) is only in
the southern parts of the southwest, and (very recently) Glossy in Florida.

David Mark
dmark@sun.acsu.buffalo.edu