Most birds are loving parents. The mother bird sits on the nest to keep the eggs warm with her soft feathers.. Sometimes the father bird takes turns sitting on the nest while the young birds develop inside their eggs. Later, the parents feed and educate their darling babies. But the cowbird does none of these things.

Of all the birds that live in our land, Mr. and Mrs. Cowbird are the most careless parents. They do not even make a home for their children, for they build no nest at all. They are not even around when the baby cowbirds hatch from their eggs. They do nothing to feed their babies or teach them to fly.

We wonder how baby cowbirds manage to grow up at all. But they do, because in summer we see parties of them playing together' They seem to be fond of cows, for often we see them near a herd of cattle, This is how the cowbird got his name   he is friendly with cows.

True, Mrs. Cowbird does not take the trouble to build a nest, hatch her eggs and bring up her babies But she is very careful to place her children in good foster homes. She lays each brown speckled egg in the nest of another bird. Sometimes she lays two eggs in the same nest, The foster parents may be song sparrows, wrens or warblers, Birds, of course, cannot count and sometimes the foster parents mistake the cowbird egg for one of their own.

But some of the foster parents sense that the cowbird egg is a stranger. They may desert the nest altogether and start a new one. They may try to bury the cowbird egg in the bottom of the nest or build a second story on top of it. Little Firs, Wren is apt to poke her beak into the cowbird egg and pitch it out of her nest.

But every year, thousands of cowbird eggs are adopted by foster parents. This is sad, for the cowbird hatches sooner than his foster brothers and sisters. He is bigger and often shoves them out of their rightful nest: When grown, he flies away to join his relatives. The cowbird is a black bird with a brown head and his wife is drabbish grey. They feed on grain and grass seeds and also gobble up grasshoppers.

Many birds refuse to take a cowbird egg into the nest and most of Mrs. Cowbird is eggs never get a chance to grow up at all. But when a cowbird baby hatches, things are different. Almost any bird will feed a baby bird who cries for food, Mr. and Mrs, Song Sparrow may desert the cowbird’s egg. But a young cowbird will be fed in the nest of a vireo, a redstart or a Baltimore oriole.