Mom and I have become connoisseurs of the feeder birds. Each day for lunch, we sit in the dining room and watch the birds come and go. We have huge doves and the usual assortment of wrens, titmice, a cardinal pair, chickadees (my favorites), a downy and a pileated woodpecker. I love looking them up in the field guides and learning a new tidbit each time.
Our current fascination includes Eastern Towhees and Cowbirds. Just in case you are not familiar, here’s a quick lesson on each species. All of the quotes are from the site https://www.allaboutbirds.org.
The Eastern Towhee is “A large sparrow with a thick, pointed bill, short neck, chunky body, and long, rounded tail.” For a picture, click here.
Early in the breeding season, male Spotted Towhees spend their mornings singing their hearts out, trying to attract a mate. Male towhees have been recorded spending 70 percent to 90 percent of their mornings singing. Almost as soon as they attract a mate, their attention shifts to other things, and they spend only about 5 percent of their time singing.
By contrast, “Brown-headed Cowbirds are smallish blackbirds, with a shorter tail and thicker head than most other blackbirds. The bill has a distinctive shape: it’s much shorter and thicker-based than other blackbirds’, almost finch-like at first glance. In flight, look for the shorter tail.” You can find their photo here.
Cowbirds lay eggs in a great variety of nests, including Red-winged Blackbird nests in marshes, dome-shaped Ovenbird nests on the forest floor, cup nests in shrubs and treetops, and even occasionally in nests in tree cavities. Over 140 host species of the Brown-headed Cowbird have been described, from birds as small as kinglets to as large as meadowlarks. Common hosts include the Yellow Warbler, Song and Chipping sparrows, Red-eyed Vireo, Eastern and Spotted towhees, and Red-winged Blackbird. (The Cowbird)… doesn’t build its own nest. Experiments done with artificial nests in an aviary suggest that Brown-headed Cowbirds tend to choose nests containing eggs of smaller volume than their own.
Those sections I underlined above fascinate me. One species is a masterful singer; the other is like a thief.
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.
Yet God made both of them. They are both welcome at the table (or feeders, as the case may be). It’s hard not to love one species over the other, now that I know their true nature. Mom delights in them equally and I follow her lead.
My sister was here this weekend and made an observation of another connection between Mom and her birds. With Mom’s arm still broken and never to heal, she’s like a bird with a broken wing. She’ll never fly solo again and she’s forever caught in this cage of dementia. I wonder if that’s why she loves to watch the birds so much; their freedom and flight are appealing. Of course, the birds are so entertaining for all of us. Dad is constantly “upscaling” their table with more feeders and a variety of seeds.
Since we spend much of our time in the dining room, I’m certain this won’t be the last bird story in Mondays with Mom!
