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  • Are these Cowbirds?

    From jmcquown@21:1/5 to All on Mon Sep 9 10:17:04 2024
    They showed up yesterday along with a whole lot of other birds on my
    patio after I scattered some mixed seed:

    https://i.postimg.cc/d1BNhJb5/cowbirds.jpg

    I suspect they are those insidious birds that take over others' nests,
    lay their eggs and then leave. Not sure what I can do about that.

    Jill

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  • From super70s@21:1/5 to jmcquown on Mon Sep 9 16:22:58 2024
    On 2024-09-09 14:17:04 +0000, jmcquown said:

    They showed up yesterday along with a whole lot of other birds on my
    patio after I scattered some mixed seed:

    https://i.postimg.cc/d1BNhJb5/cowbirds.jpg

    I suspect they are those insidious birds that take over others' nests,
    lay their eggs and then leave. Not sure what I can do about that.

    Jill

    Looks like cowbirds to me, my source says the males have brown heads
    and the females brownish-gray so yours are probably females. Says they
    walk when feeding and hold their tails higher than other blackbirds.

    Where you're located it says they live in there in winter, the
    southeastern US, and in the summer they live in a huge chunk in the
    northern and western US. Yours must be early arrivals, lol.

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  • From jmcquown@21:1/5 to All on Mon Sep 9 18:14:24 2024
    On 9/9/2024 5:22 PM, super70s wrote:
    On 2024-09-09 14:17:04 +0000, jmcquown said:

    They showed up yesterday along with a whole lot of other birds on my
    patio after I scattered some mixed seed:

    https://i.postimg.cc/d1BNhJb5/cowbirds.jpg

    I suspect they are those insidious birds that take over others' nests,
    lay their eggs and then leave.  Not sure what I can do about that.

    Jill

    Looks like cowbirds to me, my source says the males have brown heads and
    the females brownish-gray so yours are probably females. Says they walk
    when feeding and hold their tails higher than other blackbirds.

    Where you're located it says they live in there in winter, the
    southeastern US, and in the summer they live in a huge chunk in the
    northern and western US. Yours must be early arrivals, lol.

    Thanks! You can't really tell from the picture but the feathers behind
    the heads were blue-black so these might be males. I did see some other
    dull brown birds (didn't get a pic).

    It's getting colder up the northern coast so I'm not surprised to see
    some early migrations.

    Jill

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