"Yes, but not more disagreeable than the bird's habits. I will tell you what happens every season to some poor Warbler, Sparrow, or Vireo, on account of this strange bird.
"A Song Sparrow builds her nest in the grass; an egg is laid, the bird looks proudly at it, and may perhaps fly off for a few minutes. Meanwhile, peeping and spying, along comes a Cowbird. She wants to lay an egg, too, but has no home, because she is too lazy and shiftless to build one. She sees the Sparrow's nest and thinks, 'Ah, hah! that bird is smaller than I am, and cannot push my egg out; I will leave it there!' This she does very quickly, and slips away again.
"When the Sparrow comes home she may wonder at the strange egg, and perhaps be able to push it out of the nest; but more likely she takes no notice of it, as it is so much like her own, and lets it stay. If she does this, that egg is only the beginning of trouble. It is larger than her own, so it gets more warmth and hatches more quickly. Then the young Cowbird grows so fast that it squeezes the little Sparrows dreadfully, sometimes quite out of the nest, and eats so much that they are half or wholly starved. The poor Sparrow and her mate must sometimes think what a big child it is; but they feed it kindly until it can fly—sometimes even after it leaves the nest. Then it goes back to join the flock its tramp parents belong to, without so much as saying 'thank you' to its foster parents.
"A Cowbird lays only one egg in each nest, but sometimes several visit the same nest in succession; and then the poor Sparrow has a hard time, indeed.
"The Yellow Warbler is one of the clever birds who will not always be imposed upon—you remember the two-storied nest we found; and some of the larger birds push out the strange egg. But Cowbirds are very crafty, and usually select their victims from among the small, feeble, and helpless."
"Does this hateful Cowbird over sing?" asked Dodo.
"Sometimes in spring he tries to; he squeaks a few notes, and makes faces, struggling, choking, wheezing, as if he had swallowed a beetle with hooks on its legs and was in great pain. It is a most startling noise, but it certainly is not musical, though perhaps it pleases the Cowbird ladies; for if they have such bad taste in other ways, they doubtless like such harsh and inharmonious sounds."
"I don't see what makes them act so," said Rap. "I thought birds had to build nests, or have a hole or a bit of ground or rock of their own—that it was a law."