Female and juvenile cowbirds are mostly brown with cream-colored wing bars. Centuries ago in North America, brown-headed cowbirds followed bison herds and were called “buffalo birds” by settlers.

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 ...

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 ...

The female cowbird lays its eggs in the nests of other species and then leaves forever. It’s up to the host species to incubate the eggs, ...

Female brown-headed cowbird. Source: Rhododendrites, via Wikimedia Commons. Additionally, Barros and Benedict were surprised to find that less than 10% of studies attempted to link female song to ...