Chapter Six: The Warbler and the Brown Headed Cow Bird

Time is an endless wind blowing through all things.  10 millennia before our little girl marked the passage of the whaleback, before our stone had even formed; the glacial ice began to shrink northward. The receding ice clawed deep rifts in the land like a giant cat’s claws gouging flesh.  It bled its waters into the deep wounds leaving an isthmus of cool and dry land jutting north from the body of the continent. North of the isthmus the glacial claw made the largest and deepest wound separating land from land with the melting waters which that became our lake.

On the exposed land to the south, a tree flourished, the Jack Pine. The receding water and cool air brought lightning and lightning brought fire. The heat of fire opened the cones of the Jack Pine, and seeded the great forests. Fire can be a destructive and terrible thing, to that I can attest, but for the Jack Pine its birth not death. The Jack Pine followed the Ice North, as did the birds that made its branches their summer home.  But so wide and long was the lake that the small birds couldn’t span its width to the northern shores. The migration of these birds stopped at the shores of the great lake facing North.

It was of course on the other side of the lake, on the Northern banks that our little girl would live and grow. Across the water, much further south, was the home of two birds. In the great north Pine forests, south of the massive lake, the Kirtland Warbler nested and bred and was generally as happy as birds can be, but as in all things what is becomes what was.  

Kirtland Warblers fly great distances south in the winter but mostly followed the land or island hop to warmer shores in the winter. Now if you ever saw a Kirkland Warbler I’m sure you would think it a fine little Bird. They are smallish birds about five inches or so in length with bluish-brown tops and dark streaks on the back. The belly and legs are yellow with streaked flanks, which to me always looked they were wearing a neat set of pajamas.

As cute as our friend the Warbler is, I can assure you the Brown Headed Cowbird is quite the opposite.  Cooooow Byyyrrrrd. It’s a funny sounding name to me and I laugh whenever I find myself saying it. Coooowwww BRRRRRRdd.. He is plain in comparison.

The little girl had a book of birds she carried in her tote which described the Brown Headed cowbird thusly: “The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) is a small brood parasitic icterid. The adult male is iridescent black in color with a brown head”.  Now there are words here you may not know; The little girl did not know them either, but did look them up in the dictionary in her fathers library.  She determined the villainous Brown-Headed Cowbird is a brood parasite.  What that means is it’s a pretty lazy bird when it comes to its children.  See the Brown headed Cowbird does not raise its offspring like other birds and humans do. Rather, it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds to feed and care for the Brown headed imposters at the expense of their own.

And that is exactly what happened to our hero the Kirtland’s Warbler.  She was a fine Warbler as far as Warblers go.  Now most Warblers are far too busy, making their nest and finding food for them too young to pay much attention to much of anything else, which is why the Brown Heads have such an easy time.  But our bird was somehow different.  I don’t know what made our bird different.  Perhaps some birds are smarter than others or that instinct is stronger in some.  It’s not a question I can truthfully answer for you.  But I can tell you that when our bird perched above the newly hatched chicks and reached down to feed them, something changed for this bird. She eyed the chicks, larger than she remembered the eggs to be.  She tilted her head and looked at the brown caps.  She flitted her tail, as Warblers tend to do and launched herself into the air.  She gave a call and swooped to the north and began flying.  North.  North North.  Over the Sparse Jack Pine forests, North North North.  Over the glacial ponds and carved valleys.  North North North, until the land ended, and there at the banks of a Great body she landed.  She glanced behind her.  She shook out her feathers and she re-launched over an endless fresh water sea foaming and broiling with white tips.