Thursday, July 1, 2010

Best Guess at Mystery Birds

We were a bit mystified by these unfamiliar-looking birds with thick-looking heads that are paler than their bodies, which we passed on a walk Tuesday evening. After doing some online sleuthing, my initial suspicion was confirmed and I'm almost certain these are female or juvenile Brown-headed Cowbirds. As allaboutbirds.org notes at the link above:
Even though Brown-headed Cowbirds are native to North America, many people consider them a nuisance bird, since they destroy the eggs and young of smaller songbirds and have been implicated in the decline of several endangered species.

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3 comments:

Dan Tallman said...

I agree that the birds look like cowbirds. By the way, I posted a link to a Lake Nakuru photo under your comment on my blog. Any luck seeing Indigo Buntings?

sebi_2569 said...

nice blog and nice photo; bravo

Chip said...

Most certainly brown-headed cowbirds. Their parasitic behavior has indeed become a problem since they no longer have any buffalo herds to follow. I have seen them feeding at my feeders in the city of MPLS for the first time this summer. I have a picture of a baby cowbird that a pair of cardinals were raising as their own in my front yard. Nice shots.