Brown-headed Cowbird

About the Brown-headed Cowbird

The Brown-headed Cowbird is one of North America's most controversial songbirds. Males are glossy black with a coffee-brown head; females are plain gray-brown all over -- a bird so nondescript that beginning birders puzzle over it constantly. They walk the ground among cattle exactly as their ancestors once followed the bison herds.

Cowbirds are brood parasites: females build no nest at all, instead laying their eggs -- sometimes more than three dozen in a season -- in the nests of other songbirds, leaving the host to raise the oversized chick. It is a remarkable strategy, and it is also why cowbird numbers are managed in places that protect vulnerable species like the Black-capped Vireo and Golden-cheeked Warbler here in Central Texas.

They are abundant statewide in pastures, feedlots, and backyards. My photos include birds from Granger Lake farm country and the Inks Lake blind, and one individual worth a second look: a leucistic bird from December 2022 with washed-out, patchy plumage caused by a partial loss of pigment.

Odd plumages like that leucistic bird are a good argument for photographing even the common species -- the flock you skip past is sometimes hiding the most interesting bird of the day.