"One of the tragicomic scenes in nature is a pair of small foster parents working like Sisyphus to keep up with the voracious appetite of an outsized young cowbird.”
- The Birder's Handbook

Attachment is fresh on my mind. After a therapy session with my middle daughter yesterday, followed by her very frustrating poor behavior today, I am feeling more than a little bit whooped. In the midst of my daughter’s screaming tirade, and while attempting to look for interesting blog matter, I ran across this little story I had never heard before. The tale of the North American cowbird. Oddly enough I could relate to the cowbird’s unusual life cycle, or at least the life cycle of the other mother birds that the cowbird affects.

This medium size bird it seems, has adapted to it’s own situation in life in a unique way. Because the cowbird is migratory, and often strays to far from home to build a proper nest, it simply finds another suitable nest. The mother bird searches for the optimum nests of other birds where they will then lay their own eggs, never to return. Because the cowbird has “adapted” the other, unsuspecting mother birds have had to adopt, I mean “adapt” as well.

The mother cowbird bird lays eggs in the nest of another mother bird she has carefully selected, and then she leaves the incubation and the raising of resulting offspring to that other mother bird. An “adoption” of sorts if you will. The unfortunate part of this story is that most times the offspring of the cowbird crowd out the offspring of the host bird, and often the fostering birds are much smaller and less able to accommodate the large and demanding cowbird offspring.

Cowbird nestlings are significantly (e.g., 3-4 times) larger than the young of their host. (Some bluebird monitors equate them to Baby Huey or a Frankenbaby.)
-Sialis.org

Wow I can really relate. Most days here it feels like we have a large, squawking cowbird in our little nest. This one particular child drains resources away from her less dramatic, and there fore seemingly smaller, siblings time and time again. Oh, how I can see myself and my dear husband as the harried little fostering birds who just cannot seem to keep up with the demands of this odd fit child. I honestly feel like no amount of work some days would be enough to settle the emotional demands of this daughter. To make matter worse, our well meaning therapist returns every now and again to the logic that we should just “work a bit harder” to meet the needs of this child. I wonder how those little host birds would balk if someone told them they just needed to work harder to take care of the cowbird chick?

This story, though it has not a lot to do with adoption, or humans in general for that matter, does have some interesting details to compare to my own sometimes sorry situation. At least this made me feel like I am not alone in my troubles, even if my company is just a confused little bluebird with a chunky, squawking cowbird hatchling under her wing.

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Photo Credit: Elizabeth Young /Sialis.org