Many species of birds get reputations of various sorts. One species that gets a bad rap, through no fault of its own, is the brown-headed cowbird. The female cowbird lays its eggs in the nests of ...

Those are the first lines of a song written in 1979 by Bill Staines, once a regular on Garrison Keillor's radio show. The brown-headed cowbird, our resident cowbird, does have a place in the choir, ...

Female brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) singing at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge near New York City. (Credit: Rhododendrites / CC BY-SA 4.0) Brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater, are fascinating ...

While the brown-headed cowbird is native to North America, it is a much worse villain than the European starling — an invasive species that has expanded like wildfire in the U.S. since it was ...

This pair of brown-headed cowbirds won’t tend their own young, instead laying eggs in another species’ nest. (The Minnesota Star Tribune) Brown-headed cowbirds are plain Janes in the birding world, ...

Brown-headed cowbirds are generalist brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of many other bird species and letting the host parents raise their young. A new study seeks to understand the ...

There are exceptions to all birds being equal in my book. And one of them is the lazy brown-headed cowbird female, who neither makes a nest nor raises her young. It is not her fault for being lazy, ...

This data set concerns the possible effects of brood parasitism on the species composition of a songbird community. Your instructor will give you directions about using this file to make figures ...

Brown-headed cowbirds have shown up at my bird feeder a couple times over the last few weeks. Fleeting visits, they were there and then gone. I have always liked them because they seem so exotic - ...