cow birds

[EBass]

So I was watching these birds in the yard. Baby yells and mama feeds it, but something was strange about this ordeal. There was a larger gray bird (a bit smaller than a Robin that I tought was the mom at first) chirp all the time only to see a female chickadee chasing down moths/bugs to feed this cow bird is my guess that's like 3-4 times her size. Looked like the male black capped chickadee was hanging around to, but never saw him feed the cow bird.

No pellet gun or I would've taken it out. It was a sad sight as the baby cow bird chased mama chickadee around all the time and poor mama was working overtime to feed that huge belly.

So Q about Cow Birds - will they lay their eggs in any bird's nest or do they target certain species?

[Dotch]

Sounds like they're fairly uninhibited as the females can lay up to 36 eggs in a season. However there are some species that have their number including brown thrashers that toss the cowbird eggs out of the nest and house finches, whose nestling diet is plant-based so the cowbird young starve to death.

Pretty good link to Cornell's bird HSOforum with some info.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/brown-headed_cowbird/id