Bronzed Cowbird

About the Bronzed Cowbird

The Bronzed Cowbird is the Deep South Texas cowbird - stockier than the familiar Brown-headed, with a heavier bill and, on the male, a striking blood-red eye set in glossy black plumage that shines bronze in good light. That ruby eye against the dark body gives the bird an intensity all its own.<br><br>Males in breeding season perform one of the odder displays in the blackbird family: puffing out a thick ruff of neck feathers until they look hunchbacked, then hovering in place above a female in a helicopter display, wings whirring.<br><br>Like all cowbirds, this species is a brood parasite. Females lay their eggs in the nests of other birds - orioles are frequent hosts - leaving the fostering to the victims. It is a lifestyle inherited from a nomadic past following grazing animals across open country.<br><br>In Texas the Bronzed Cowbird is common in the Rio Grande Valley and ranges up through the southern brush country, spreading north in summer. Flocks work cattle pens, sorghum fields, and town lawns, often mixed with grackles and other blackbirds.