Brown Headed Cowbird

Happy Friday, Blippers!

Another frosty but sunny day here in the hinterlands of NJ. Didn't see Extreme Seymour today, but did see a bunch of grey squirrels in the woods - Seymour was probably among them.

This new bird showed up today at the Bistro. Slightly larger than a house finch, and with a distinctive white patch below it's beak. Have no idea what it is, so sent some photos to my birder friend so he can have a look.

Post Script: I just learned from my birder friend that this is a brown-headed cowbird. Here is what he said about this most interesting bird:

Cowbirds are parasitic in that they lay their eggs in the nests of other smaller birds (finches, warblers, vireos, flycatchers) and let the host birds incubate the eggs and raise the young. Cowbird eggs hatch in a shorter period of time (about 10 days) than most of the host eggs and when the cowbird babies hatch they are larger than the other babies in the nest, so they are able to outcompete for the majority of the food brought to the nest by the host adults. The cowbird parents have nothing to do with raising their young.

I also posted another view on Flickr. My second choice of a blip today was a downy woodpecker close up, but this little mystery bird won out.

Hubs is home early and we are going to go for a short walk now. Brrrrr.