Brown-headed Cowbird
(from All About Birds.com)
The Brown-headed Cowbird is a stocky blackbird with a fascinating approach to raising its young. Females forgo building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds, abandoning their young to foster parents, usually at the expense of at least some of the host’s own chicks. Once confined to the open grasslands of middle North America, cowbirds have surged in numbers and range as humans built towns and cleared woods.
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These birds are NOT our friends.
They are aggressive bullies.
While the other sweet birds are being neat and polite by sharing the feeders,
these meanies swoop in, making all kinds of noise and chasing all the other birds away.
They then proceed to swoosh out all the food onto the ground,
nit-picking to find just the particular seed they want.
They. drive. me. crazy.
I have even let my feeders go empty for days, sometimes up to two weeks,
in hopes they would forget about them and fly away to another place.
in hopes they would forget about them and fly away to another place.
But noooo...
They just keep coming back.
Has anyone else had to deal with these irritating birds?
Any ideas on how to get rid of them?!
: : :
Sharing with
in hopes that SOMEONE can help me!
I sound really desperate, don't I?
I sound really desperate, don't I?
Well... I AM!!!
Have a blessed day in the Lord!
We've had a few lately too. Please post if you find a way to deter them. I overheard someone in the bird feed aisle saying that safflower seed turned them off. I need to get some and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. No idea. Hope Amy's idea works for you (and her). They do make a pretty photo though, so that's something, right? (okay, fine.) ;-) btw, if you're interested, stop in at CranberryMorning's (last) Monday post and enter my homemadesoapnsuch giveaway. Three winners.
ReplyDeleteWe have birds similar to these and they may even be the same kind. They would always fall down our chimney into our wood burning stove and it was quite the pain to get them out!
ReplyDeleteHappy May, my friend :)
Is a cowbird another name for a starling? No worries on the post style... I actually saw/liked it on another blog and it was SO much easier to read than the standard justified text to the left and tight spacing, so I began using that style a couple years ago... thanks for posting on RBH!
ReplyDeleteOh I am so sorry they scare off the other birds. I don't know what you could do other than just shoo them off and hope they get tired of being chased off and find someplace else to feed. I tend to throw my seed on the grass/sidewalks so that a variety of birds can some and eat.
ReplyDelete