Cowbirds: Villainous mobsters? Or falsely maligned native species?
Brown-headed Cowbirds ( Molothrus ater ) are notorious for their breeding system called "brood parasitism"-- they lay their eggs in the nests of hundreds of other bird species, forcing those birds to feed their ravenous young. They've been painted as dastardly villains, but what are they really? In 2019 I found myself getting really frustrated with Facebook comments advocating for removing cowbird eggs from host nests in Kansas, where I lived at the time researching cowbir
