Brown-headed Cowbird
Molothrus ater · Songbirds
Brown-headed Cowbird
Central Park, 26 October 2025
A male Brown-headed Cowbird in Central Park in October, glossy black body against a warm brown head. Cowbirds were a bird of the Great Plains that followed the bison herds, and they spread east with the clearing of the forests; they are now in every open space on the continent, and a park lawn in autumn holds flocks of them.
Cowbirds are brood parasites. They lay eggs in other species' nests and leave the host to raise the young, a habit that evolved when the species followed roaming herds and couldn't afford to stay in one place long enough to build a nest. A female can lay forty eggs in a season, in forty nests.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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