Short Stuff: Brown-Headed Cowbird

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Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is a short stuff which is why I realized now that I started this off and correctly short stuff. Let's go. That's right.

Big thanks to Britannica, Yellowstone Wild tours, California Department of Fish, wildlife, New Hampshire, Autobahn, and Autobahn for information about the ground-headed brown, ground-headed cowbird. Thanks to Yumi too, she brought this bird to my attention. Oh, I forgot. Yumi.org. So Chuck, we're talking today about cowbirds and really in particular the brown-headed cowbird you ever heard of them before?

Had never heard of them. I had neither.

“But if you want to know about a brown-headed cowbird, the first thing you need to know about it is that it's a brood parasite.”

What does that mean, Chuck? What does that mean?

Well, I had never heard of this trait in a bird either, so a brood parasite is a bird that will be like, you know what?

I don't want to build my own nest and go through all that whole process of raising these babies that I egg out of my body. So I'm just going to go lay those eggs in some other birds nest and then go away and sugar-parenthood. Yeah, you do it for me. How about that? Yeah.

That's exactly what they do. And you know, you're like, why would you do that? You have to be a jerk bird. And yeah, I think a lot of people think of cowbirds as kind of jerk birds just for doing that. But from their point of view, like, this is just an adaptation that made a lot of sense to how they evolved originally. And they're from North America.

And they were, I think, indigenous to the Great Plains of North America and the reason why. Because there's another animal that was indigenous to the Great Plains of North America. And they had a commensual commensual? Is it commensual?

“I don't know. I don't think so. I feel like there's a you in there.”

Anyway, okay. They had the kind of relationship where they benefited, but didn't harm the other animal. And I feel like it's high time we tell everybody what the other animal was, Chuck. That's right, drum roll everybody. It is the bison.

Yeah. They would follow these bison across the plains. Sometimes they were initially, they were called bison birds or maybe buffalo birds, even though that's wrong. And they would follow these guys across the plains and they would feed on the insects that the bison would kick up and they would sometimes ride along on their backs. And this is this lead to why they would not birth their own little eggs in their own little nest and raise them because they went where the bison went.

And they were always on the move and bison can travel buddy.

So if they're moving 10, 20 miles a day and they're catching ride on a bison's back at the very least flying around with a bison, they're not staying there long enough to set up their own home. Yeah, cow bird was rolling stone. That's right, well bison bird at the time I guess. Oh yeah, that's right.

So yeah, it totally made sense that they still need to reproduce. So they would just find a nest somewhere along the bison route and leave their egg and then fly back to the bison. Be like, wait, wait for me everybody. And I feel like that's a pretty good place to take our break. What do you think?

I totally agree. Okay, all right, we're taking our break, everybody. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You place stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

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And the big money players network. It's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice. Ever. I went and had a lunch with him one day.

“And I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.”

I don't know what that means. But I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come. Look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent,

I wouldn't worry about you. Which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much lock and ball. And he's like, just give it a shot.

He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel funny anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging there. Yeah, it would not be.

Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot in life. Yeah. Listen to thanks dad on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Music] So Chuck, sadly, as probably most people know, the American Bison was over-hunted. Almost two extinction. Yeah.

We can seriously legitimately thank Ted Turner for almost single-handedly bringing the American Bison back. That's right. And so while in between that period, between over-hunting and Ted Turner, the Bison bird was like, I don't have my niche anymore.

I need to figure out what's going on here. I gotta start looking elsewhere.

And they basically spread outside of their ecological niche in the Great Plains

to look for other things they could do to replace their Bison friends, which they must have just been horrified by all the massacres they witnessed. Yeah, I bet probably very sad times for the Bison bird. But eventually you want to know what we would land on a cow and say, hey, these guys aren't so bad to ride around on.

“But here's the thing is cows don't move around like the Bison did.”

Right. They're not traveling, you know, 20 miles a day. So you might think, alright, they're leading a more sedentary life. These birds are now cow birds. And so maybe they will change their behavior.

Now that they're not, they don't need to do this. But they, they didn't, they, they said we love these cows, but we also kind of like this adaptation because, you know, who really wants to parent their young. Yeah.

Exactly. We're not going to change anything. We're just going to stop, you know, wasting so much effort flying around all the time. I think there's, I don't remember, oh, there's five species of cow birds. At least the parasitic versions.

And the brownhead and cow birds, the reason we're talking about the brownhead is because it is, by far, the least picky about what nest it lays it takes in. Yeah. So these are, you know, they're not large eggs. They're much smaller than like a chickens egg,

but they're probably not as tiny as like say a robin's egg. They're middling size eggs. Brownhead and cow birds will lay their eggs in like a duck's nest. Yes, this little egg is like five times smaller than the other eggs around it. Obviously, the ducks are like, what is this, Crud?

And there are other birds species too that are kind of on to them. But a lot of times the birds will just, you know, play a longer else just be fooled. Yeah.

“I think the Finch is notorious for not liking these eggs in their nest.”

They're not good host to these, these intruding eggs. So apparently they will, you know, they will, they will die if they are left in charge of a Finch. Other birds will, will get mad and puncture holes in the eggs or just, you know, beak them out of their nest. I think the cat birds do that.

And then the yellow warbler has a strategy where they build nest. They'll just nest a new nest on top of those poor little eggs.

I know, there's some like Tom and Jerry, like seen that makes me think of.

Yeah, but like it happens like really, really fast. Right, right. So if, however, the cowbird happens to lay their egg in a nest that the bird is like just too lazy to do anything about, that cowbird is probably going to be the only hatchling that survives. Yeah, because it has adaptations to outcompete other birds in the nest that it's laid in.

Yeah, one of them is they have a shorter incubation periods. They're born first.

“I think sometimes up to three or four days before the other eggs might hatch.”

Right.

And so they got a little bit of a head start where they might take care of those extra eggs themselves.

He's baby birds might nudge those things out. So earlier, you know, we're saying there are some bird enthusiasts that kind of think these are jerk birds. And in my mind, I was like, yeah, but you know, like, these birds are doing their thing. Like you can't get mad at nature for being nature, but then you get to this part and you're kind of like, oh man, they're really going to suck. Yeah, yeah, so even if they're like, oh, let you guys stay and the cowbird doesn't push the other hatchlings out. Just from being a couple days older, they'll be able to muscle the other birds out of the way to get the food and they'll just continue to outpace them in their growth.

And it might be so bad that the other hatchlings start because the cowbird doesn't let them get any of the food from the mother. Yeah, so I get it now bird enthusiasts. I have a question for you though, Joshua, which is with all this going on, not being raised by their parents.

“How in the world does the cowbird not start to take on traits of the bird that raised them? How do they remain cowbirds?”

I'm glad you asked that. We don't really know. Chuck, as a matter of fact, there seems to be some sort of mechanism that prevents cowbirds from imprinting onto their adopted or foster parent from the other species. They're not exactly sure how this happens, but they think that cowbirds hatchlings are tuned to the sound of adult cowbirds in the area. And that they're naturally attracted to it once they learn to fly, they'll go seek out other cowbirds. And I guess there they learn all of the cowbird habits like playing crabs and smoking cigarettes and all that stuff.

And then also there's they do some weird nighttime excursions out of the nest while they're being raised. And I guess no one knows where they go, but that's something that they're like that probably has something to go learn actual cowbird behavior too. Yeah, I wonder if when they are attuned to the sound of their own, if they eventually fly out when they're big enough to find them if they're like mama. And the birds are like, don't look at me, but even if it was their mom, they wouldn't take credit because it's a brown head of cowbird.

Yeah, that's right.

“So if you want to find one of these, you might see them in your feet or they are adapted to all over North America, rural suburban urban, you can find them everywhere.”

There, that's a smallish, a medium-sized, smallish bird, whatever that means, but the males have a brown head that shines and shimmers almost like a deep red in the sunlight and they also have a iridescent greenish blue plumage on their body. The females you're not going to really notice that much there much less, I'm showy, but that's pretty standard for birds anyway. For sure, I think short stuff is about out, but since we have an extra 30 seconds, I'm going to take this opportunity to promote the new nature series from the BBC, the latest in there, on going work with the great David Attenborough, Sir David Attenborough, Asia.

Oh, nice! And it is fantastic stuff, as always, exactly what you would expect out of the BBC nature series and Sir Attenborough is 99 years old, he's going to be 100 in May.

Wow. And he's still doing it, and it's just some really amazing striking stuff. Did they spell it like Steely Dangan? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, they spell it. Yes, I am. Okay, yeah. Not a J.A. Well there you go, you're welcome BBC, Chuck just hooked you guys up with some viewers. I'm going to go check that out myself.

It's great, you guys would love it. Cool. Well then, I think now Chuck short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart radio visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.