Brown-headed Cowbirds are medium-sized birds, growing up to eight inches long. Male cowbirds have a black body with a brown head. Females are plain grayish-brown all over.

This bird lives in fields, forest edges, parks, and thickets.

Brown-headed Cowbirds eat seeds from weedy plants, as well as insects, including grasshoppers, crickets, and beetles. They will also eat other small creatures they can catch, such as spiders.

Copyright, Dan Sudia

What this bird is best known for is its breeding habits. These birds do not build a nest or raise their young. Instead, after mating, female cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Then they fly away, never to return.

Brown-headed Cowbirds depend on the owners of the nests to raise their young. The host bird will sit on the cowbird's eggs as well as its own. When baby cowbirds hatch, the host parents will feed them along with their own young. Cowbirds tend to grow quickly. This means they eat more food that was intended for the other baby birds. Sometimes they even push the young of the host parents out of the nest. These behaviors make the Brown-headed Cowbird a parasite.

There are hundreds of different species of birds that have raised cowbirds, including Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Blackbird, Eastern Phoebe, Common Yellowthroat, Common Grackle, Wood Thrush, and Indigo Bunting. Some birds recognize the eggs as not being their own. American Robins and Gray Catbirds, for instance, will throw the eggs out. Some birds build more nest on top of the cowbird egg. However, most birds do mistakenly raise the young cowbirds until they can make it on their own.

Predators of Brown-headed Cowbirds include hawks, owls, raccoons, squirrels, and snakes.

Brown-headed Cowbirds travel in large winter flocks with other species, including Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds.

Additional Media

Description Type Credit Brown-headed Cowbird Song Sound Richard Goodlet Brown-headed Cowbird Chick Pushing Indigo Bunting Nestling Out of Nest Link to Video Don Dearborn Download Quicktime if you are unable to play video.

Relationships in Nature:

PREY/FOOD	PREDATORS	SHELTER	OTHER
Differential Grasshopper	Red-tailed Hawk	Smooth Sumac	Northern Cardinal H
Field Cricket	Sharp-shinned Hawk	Highbush Blueberry	Common Grackle H
Common Black Ground Beetle	Barred Owl	Greenbrier	Red-winged Blackbird H
Patent-leather Beetle	Great Horned Owl	Spicebush	Common Yellowthroat H
Rabid Wolf Spider	Raccoon	Eastern Redcedar	Eastern Phoebe H
Eastern Tent Caterpillar Moth	Black Rat Snake	Sassafras	Wood Thrush H
Smooth Crabgrass	Eastern Gray Squirrel	Cinnamon Fern	American Goldfinch H
Common Ragweed			Carolina Chickadee H
Switchgrass			European Starling Mu
North American Millipede			Red-winged Blackbird Mu
Garden Centipede			Common Grackle Mu
Chinese Mantid
Fiery Searcher
European Gypsy Moth
Black and Yellow Argiope
Green Stinkbug
Harvestman
Green Lacewing
Spined Micrathena
Six-spotted Tiger Beetle

Relationship to Humans:

Brown-headed Cowbirds help people by eating pesky insects and eating seeds of weeds so that they don't spread in gardens and lawns. They can cause problems when they are in large flocks and eat seeds of farm crops. Some bird-lovers don't like them because of the problems they cause for other birds.

SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION

KINGDOM Animal PHYLUM Chordate CLASS Bird ORDER Passeriformes FAMILY Icteridae GENUS Molothrus SPECIES Molothrus ater

QUICK LINKS

Organism Menu Home Glossary Student Activities Relationships Classification Info How to Use This Site Bibliography