As mentioned in my last blog post, most bird lovers have their favorites. But birders’ preferences often are broader than just defining their personal favorites. We often seem to judge the value of a bird or bird species as separate from whether we personally like them. Most of us can sometimes be heard to call a particular bird species “good” or “bad.” Such terms most often are synonymous with rarity. A good bird is thus quite often a bird that is hard to find or that a particular birder has had a hard time finding. At the beginning of a calendar year or when a birder travels to a new place, a good bird is often a bird that hasn’t yet been seen that year or in that place.
Even though I am not currently attempting to do a big year of birding, I still am keeping track of which birds that I have seen so far this year. A couple of weeks ago, I heard another Wisconsin birder telling of a huge flock of Brown-headed Cowbirds that he had just seen in the southern part of the state. Cowbirds normally do not winter in Wisconsin. Male Brown-headed Cowbirds are glossy black with brown heads, which gives them part of their name, and the females are a plain brownish-gray. They follow cows around gleaning insects that the cows stir up, which gives them the rest of their name. I had not seen a cowbird in 2024 when I talked to this birder, nor had I until an hour or so ago. Thus, when I spotted a male cowbird under my feeders earlier this morning, it became a “good” bird to me. The odd thing is that today’s good bird for me is actually a bad bird to most birders and to most little birds. Cowbirds do not make their own nests but lay their eggs in the nests of warblers and other birds that typically are smaller than cowbirds, resulting in the fast-growing cowbird baby outcompeting the littler bird’s youngsters, often shoving them out of the nest entirely. Over its lifetime, today’s male cowbird will probably cause more than one colorful little warbler to die. So, while it was temporarily a good bird for me this morning, most birders would call it a bad bird (except I guess it is a good bird to other cowbirds).
Lynn Barber's Birding Blog 