Day 209: It is uncharitable of me, I know, but I cannot look at cowbirds without remarking on how pin-headed they are compared to other birds. Contrasted with a parrot, for example, who is possessed of a brain able to manage tasks of higher learning (vocal, mechanical, etc.), a cowbird is easy to dismiss as a creature capable of survival skills and not much more. Yet the cowbirds' ability to mimic sounds is astonishing. I have personally heard them ringing telephones and honking horns, but one other vocal feat sticks the strongest in my mind. I was living in rural Thurston County at the time, surrounded by neighbours who had livestock of various sorts. I had gone out in the yard early one morning and was assailed by a whinny close by. My first assumption was that the cattle rancher whose pasture abutted ours had got himself a horse, but then I realized that the sound had come from above me, about sixty feet up one of the Doug-firs towering over our garage. It came again, that whinny, and again, somewhat higher pitched than a horse voice ("horse," not "hoarse"). After watching the tree for a while, I saw a Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) fly out from among the branches. The whinnying stopped until the bird had returned to its nesting site, where it again took up the imitation. Over the years I lived there, there were many other occasions when I heard a horse up a tree. Apparently the sound was easy to reproduce, even for a pin-head.
