Cowbirds, Parasites, and Stealing

I recently saw a male cardinal feeding its little fledgling. I’d seen male and female cardinals in the area and so wasn’t surprised that a little bird had hatched, but I felt pretty lucky to see something so private right there on the Chicago sidewalk. This baby cardinal, however, looked rather large and not at all shaped like its bright red father. I paused to take a video and later sent it to my bird enthusiast friend. She said, of the fledgling, “That’s a cowbird!”

Cowbirds are rather maligned in the bird world. They are “brood parasites.” Rather than raise their young themselves, the female of the pair deposits all her eggs into different species’ nests to be fostered by the respective host families. She will lay over 40 eggs in a season in these other nests, and she isn’t picky. Sources vary but generally agree that cowbirds will parasitize over 200 species of birds. Often, the female will remove the host’s egg to deposit her own.¹

The parasitic behavior continues upon hatching. Now, all baby birds, no matter the species, need near constant feeding. Nestlings hold up their heads, open their mouths, and gape. This open mouth tells the parents, “Feed me now!” This begging display is considered an “honest” signal of the chicks’ hunger, in that they only have their mouths agape in true relation to bodily need. (However, even birds of the same species are not so “honest” about it. Sibling rivalry happens with birds, too, and some have evolved to exaggerate their true need for more parental care/food.)²

The cowbird, however, does something different. It hatches first, before its adopted siblings, which allows it to grow rapidly from the resources of its host parents. And it begs for food longer and harder than any of its fellow nestmates, using extra strong neck muscles evolved just for this purpose.³ It holds its head high while veering a bit more into “dishonest” territory in terms of how much food it actually needs. The exaggerated begging behavior shows up in the video: the fluttered wings, the cocks of the head, the chirping.

Part of cowbirds notorious reputation comes from their destructive effects on their host species. The adult cowbird will not only remove other birds eggs but has been shown to kill nestlings of different species.⁴ And by growing very fast and demanding lots of food, the cowbird baby outcompetes the other birds in the nest, depriving them of their share of parental resources. This latter point may account for the cowbird’s species name, Molothrus ater. Sources suggest this derives from the Greek meaning “greedy fellow”⁵ or “vagabond, tramp, or parasite.”⁶

These destructive impacts were perhaps the impetus for the cowbird flame war that broke out when my friend posted my video to her birding group. “They kill other birds.” “They are sneaky.” “They are survivors.” “They are thieves.” “They are freeloaders.”

I suspect this is not simply another polarized situation in our deeply polarized times, that there is more to the story than initially meets the eye. The pejoratives are especially interesting and worthy of more attention.

These birds are parasites. They fit a scientific definition of parasitic behavior: they benefit at the expense of another species upon whom they are dependent. But “parasite” is also a very human insult, along the lines of “leech” or “weasel” or “sheep” (other animals simply doing what they evolved to do). It’s hardly fair to anthropomorphize animals and then praise or pathologize them for just playing their role in the natural world. So why do we do this?

Freud’s concepts of projection and identification have something to say about this. Both are relevant to our cowbird.

We project something when it is too much to tolerate in ourselves. Simply put, “I am angry” becomes “that person is angry, not me.” This is readily apparent in stereotypes about various “out-groups” of people.⁷ Davids, in his writing about psychoanalysis and racism, has suggested that normal infant stranger anxiety (a fear of the other stemming from fear of one’s own insides) is later projected onto those groups who are not “us” or “our people.”⁷ So, we might feel that “they” are dirty/loud/uneducated/careless/conniving because we cannot acknowledge this in ourselves.

We do the same when we apply human standards to non-human creatures. Who wants to be a parasite or a greedy fellow? So we take our parasitic behaviors, like using the planet’s resources at an unsustainable rate, or laying waste to wetlands and marshes to build housing and golf courses, and we put it over there, into a bird, where we can say, “That’s not me! That’s the cowbird!”

I use these ecological examples first rather than the smaller thefts of human behavior like plagiarism or shoplifting because of a rather twisted irony: it is habitat destruction that has allowed the cowbirds to proliferate.⁵ To quote zoologist Dennis Paulson:

We have favored cowbirds by opening up the landscape, providing them with cows and horses in lieu of the bison they often associated with and having feed lots and crops where they can feed to their heart’s content in winter.⁵

Too many cowbirds are a symptom of a world out of balance, of human’s greed as we plunder our own shared home. But perhaps too many cowbird impulses are also an example of a mind out of balance. As noted, there are also smaller everyday examples of parasitism, of little thefts that harm someone else. But these are difficult experiences to acknowledge. Perhaps the anger at the cowbird and the need for projection stems from an unease, at some level, of how we can hurt people with our needs. And so we may disavow these more difficult impulses, leaving them able, in their own way, to proliferate and wreak havoc.

Psychoanalysis offers a more nuanced and understanding look at some of our more troubling actions, like theft or dishonesty. Winnicott⁸ wrote about this in describing his work with a family friend’s son. The little boy had started stealing. Winnicott wanted to give her some advice and suggested the following:

Why not tell him that you know that when he steals he is not wanting the things that he steals but he is looking for something that he has a right to; that he is making a claim on his mother and father because he feels deprived of their love.⁸

Winnicott had the wherewithal to look a little deeper, to understand the underlying motivation and not just the behavior. Psychoanalytic thinking offers us a bit more grace and generosity, not just the admonition of “don’t do that.” This grace allows us to perhaps befriend or at least be curious about these more challenging parts of ourselves. Maybe, then, some of us can resonate with the cowbird, who seems to steal care from the wrong places. Maybe we have done this in our own ways. This resonance brings up the concept of identification, which is deserving of an essay in itself. And it involves, in a way, cowbirds. Or rather, the question of how cowbirds become cowbirds, when they are raised by a family of, say, cardinals.

Stay tuned…