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 John Swainson in 1832 with the brown-headed cowbird as the type species. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek mōlos meaning “struggle” or “battle” with thrōskō meaning “to sire” or “to impregnate”. The specific name ater is Latin for “dull black”.

The English name “cowbird”, first recorded in 1839, refers to this species often being seen near cattle.

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