northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here were a couple of Brown-headed Cowbirds  (perhaps our favorite brood parasites [1]) from last summer. Note that these are pictures of a male (top) and a female (bottom). While the males have a strikingly brown head on a basically black body, the females are more of a uniform beige; if the species had been named after the females, they'd probably be called something like the Beige-bodied Cowbirds. While writing this blog, MS Copilot - the AI associated with their Bing search engine - told me that they collect milk for cows to feed their young. This sounded stupid since, as brood parasites, cowbirds don't even raise their young, leaving that job to unwitting "foster parents". Searching a little more, I found articles that told me that birds never drink milk in the wild and are actually lactose intolerant , yet another reason to doubt the cowbird/milk claim. Finally I found what was intended to be a light-hearted joke in this article that claims cowbirds collect mi...

While my 1st picture shows a Wood Duck who's probably raising ducklings, the 2nd picture shows a Wood Duck who probably isn't the mother to those turtles.  These 2 pictures are of 2 female Wood Ducks in basically the same location and I found it interesting that 1 of them was surrounded by juvenile Wood Ducks while the other was surrounded by turtles ( probably Painted Turtles ). One thing that could be going on is intraspecific brood parasitism , where 1 duck mom ends up raising the ducklings of other duck moms. Perhaps the 2nd female's ducklings are being raised by the 1st female, and so she has no parental responsibilities and can hang out with her turtle friends instead.  Of course, there are probably dozens of other plausible explanations behind these 2 pictures. I'm just sketching out 1 possibility. June 13, 2023 at Washington Valley Reservoir Photo 300988614, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) June 13, 2023 at Washington Valley Reservoir Photo 300...

I met 1 mother Wood Duck with (at least) 6 ducklings and another that seemed to be alone 1 day last spring. I think it's actually a little easier to photograph the mothers with young than it is to photograph them as adults. As adults they can either fly away or swim into dense vegetation when they see me, but when ducklings are involved the mother is forced to herd/lead them slowly away, since young ducklings don't move all that fast. (FWIW I was almost certainly fairly far away when this picture was taken.) One thing you have to question when you see ducklings is whether they're all the mom's ducklings. Intraspecific brood parasitism happens quite a bit . May 25, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 292818544, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) On that same day, I think I met the proverbial duck out of water . May 25, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 292818929, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Though the cowbird part of their name may require a little explanation [1], the brown-headed part of their name is immediately evident, at least among mature male Brown-headed Cowbirds . (Females have the same basic shape but are more of an earth-toned gray .) Their habit of brood parasitism makes them reviled by some; it just doesn't seem right to trick other birds into raising your kids, especially to the detriment of the other birds' own kids. But it's worth remembering that nature does a lot of immoral stuff, whether it's cannibalism, killing for non-food reasons, and of course regular parasites that plague most of the plant/animal/fungi species out there. (Believe me, you don't have the time/energy to be a Nature Cop policing all of the environment's injustices.) May 13, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 282423018, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] They are frequently seen near cattle, inspiring the cowbird name. There was a theory that they used ...

Here are a couple American Goldfinch pictures. These are males wearing their vibrant yellow-and-black plumage. Females, juveniles, and non-breeding males all have more subdued coloring. I've occasionally heard of people reporting an American Goldfinch sighting as a "escaped canary", and the Domestic Canary is somewhat related. I suspect that some people just don't think that such a colorful bird would be flying around in the wild in NJ (selectively forgetting about birds like Northern Cardinals ). These birds are considered one of the strictest vegetarians in the passerine world. While many passerines preferentially eat insects, and most will at least supplement their diet with insects, for American Goldfinches it's all about seeds. One consequence of this is that they're seldom a victim of brood parasitism by Brown-headed Cowbirds , since the cowbird nestlings can't survive on the American Goldfinch's non-insect diet. July 25, 2021 at Duke Farms Ph...

Here's a mother Wood Duck  with 13 ducklings that I met last month.  It sounds like these could be all her own ducklings, though Wood Duck females will do egg dumping, where some females lay some of her eggs in the nests of other females. This is a form of brood parasitism called intraspecific brood parasitism, and is somewhat common among ducks. Initially this might seem as "immoral" and "lazy" as the brood parasitism performed by birds like the Brown-headed Cowbird , but: This probably doesn't hurt the victim duck's brood much. Ducklings feed themselves, so the true or adopting mom just needs to herd them all to a food source and away from dangers. The adopted ducklings presumably don't mistreat the other ducklings. It doesn't hurt the species at all, since the ducklings are all of the same species. I don't know if Wood Ducks also pick up ducklings from other moms after they hatch like this Common Merganser mom , though it wouldn't sur...