A late season chick. But what species?
Here comes a parent… oh-oh. 
Chipping Sparrow.
And Brown-headed Cowbird. 
Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in the nests of other species. The hatchling may kill off the hosts’ own offspring. 
I’ve never seen this in action. 
BHC’s lay their eggs “in 220 species of birds. Recent genetic analyses have shown that most individual females specialize on one particular host species.“
And another, seen two days later not so far from the first scene. Couldn’t see who was feeding this one, but it was pretty small, and may very will have been another Chipping Sparrow.
How Now, Cowbird?
5 responses to “How Now, Cowbird?”
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power barons of avian world.
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There certainly are a lot of metaphors to be found here.
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Very exciting. Maybe you could make a documentary expressing your love of nature. A thought.
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[…] don’t know if this is one of the Brown-headed Cowbird chicks I saw in the last couple of weeks. If not, it would be the third one I’ve sighted this summer. I’d never seen one before […]
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[…] Americans is the Brown-headed Cowbird. I’ve seen Chipping Sparrow parents feed the enormous cowbird chicks here in Brooklyn. It’s quite amazing to […]
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