Brown-headed Cowbird

About the Brown-headed Cowbird

The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) is a small, obligate brood parasitic icterid native to temperate and subtropical North America. It is a permanent resident in the southern parts of its range; northern birds migrate to the southern United States and Mexico in winter, returning to their summer habitat around March or April.

The brown-headed cowbird was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1775 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in the Carolinas. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle, which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name, but in 1783, Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Oriolus ater in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The brown-headed cowbird is now placed in the genus Molothrus that was introduced by English naturalist William Swainson in 1832 with the brown-headed cowbird as the type species. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek... Wikipedia →