BUFFALO BIRDS - A Linguistic Update

In reply to my previous post about Brown-headed cowbirds, I got exactly the information I was looking for from fellow blogger, gardenpath. She posted a site for Lakota language words that I hadn't seen before. I have friends who are Blackfoot and Flathead speakers, and a Cree-speaking friend who knows a little Lakota, but not enough to tell me about the cowbirds. So the link is a very handy one. It gives the Lakota word for "cowbird" as "pteyahpa" and also the word "pte" for a cow buffalo. Since this vocabulary is alphabetized by the Lakota terms, I checked for "yahpa" and for "eyahpa" but there isn't anything that could be a generic word for bird to combine with "pte." I'll take some time this weekend and go over all the rest to see if there are any others.

The link where I got the photo is an excellent one for extra info on these birds. They really can be quite aggressive, not just laying eggs, but also evicting young tenants they find already in the host nest. I do feel protective towards the small songbirds, especially the more endangered ones, but as I mentioned in yesterday's post, it's not the "fault" of the cowbirds. We humans are the one who have upset the balance, with too few forests and a lot more domestic livestock kicking up insects. In a moment of reverie I wondered if, since there are no more great nomadic herds, cowbirds might one day learn to build their own nests and rear their own young. But things change because they are selected for it, as Darwin observed, and so cowbirds would probably only change their age-old behavior if a new external force pressures them to, and they seem to have it pretty easy the way things are right now.

The only question that remains for me is a little more on how the Buffalo (cow)Bird was regarded by aboriginal peoples back in the buffalo days. I read that the birds not only ate insects stirred up by grazing buffalo, but they also rode on their backs and picked insects like an Oxpecker. In winter, the birds would nestle down into the wool and keep warm. So, they were year-round companions. I thought that cowbirds might have been singled out for special recognition among people who depended on buffalo for survival. Seeing a cowbird in the trees by the river might mean there was a herd just over the next hill. I don't know if I'll ever know the answer to that one, but it's still nice to ponder. And thanks to Gardenpath for the excellent sleuthing!


Photo source and information http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/nuisance/cowbirds/

KINDER WORDS and A NEW NAME for COWBIRDS

I’m feeling bad because I was kind of down on Brown-headed cowbirds in the post I did last Wednesday, right before Skywatch. Cowbirds are just trying to make a living like everybody else. Most bird enthusiasts will know the story about how they evolved as brood parasites to adapt to their feeding habits of following the buffalo across the open prairie. They would fly to the closest trees, find a warbler or other small bird’s nest, deposit an egg, and move on with the herd. Over millennia, some songbirds adapted for this, recognized the intrusions, and a balance was worked out. But now that we’ve destroyed so many large old forests, and fragmented many into isolated islands of trees, more and more deep woods songbirds, with no adaptations whatsoever, are abruptly subject to cowbird parasitism. A study was done to determine how far into a forest cowbirds will go, so we know what’s happening: we have been giving cowbirds practically unlimited habitat, and they’ve been taking full advantage. Only time will tell how many of our songbirds we will lose. Many species are already stressed form other environmental effects we've caused. We humans do not play well with others, it would seem.

I’m also checking with some of my First Nations (Canada) and Native American (US) friends to see they have any special name for these birds in their languages. Generally speaking, aboriginal peoples had names for all the “important” big birds, like eagles, hawks, or ravens, and all the rest were called by a generic word meaning “small bird.” But given the closeness of native people to the buffalo, and the buffalo to these birds, I wouldn’t be surprised if these birds had their own name. I'll let you know if I find anything out. Meanwhile, I want to make amends to cowbirds; it’s really not their fault about how things are going. So, I am hereby renaming them, in recognition of their original lifestyle following the buffalo herds. From now on they will be known (at least to me) as Buffalo Birds.




Buffalo Bird photo from Wikimedia Commons