How to Use cowbird in a Sentence

cowbird

noun
  • The red-wingeds won’t stay too long, but some cowbirds will linger in your neighborhood.
    — Taylor Piephoff, charlotteobserver, 16 Feb. 2018
  • But the cowbird eggs managed to crack their hosts’ eggs about 10 times as often.
    — Erica Tennenhouse, Science | AAAS, 8 May 2018
  • That scene is what prompted me to investigate cowbirds a while back.
    — Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, Indianapolis Star, 18 July 2019
  • According to Audubon, their open nests are easy to find with cowbirds often laying eggs in them.
    — Micah Walker, Detroit Free Press, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Bronzed cowbirds, metallic black with eyes and otherworldly red.
    — Shannon Tompkins, Houston Chronicle, 3 May 2018
  • How did the team figure out that juvenile cowbirds are attracted to adult females of the species?
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Decoys or food lure cowbirds inside, where they're euthanized.
    — John Flesher, Fox News, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Sometimes, yellow warblers try to prevent the birds from coming back by building a new floor over the cowbird eggs and laying a new clutch of their own.
    — Micah Walker, Detroit Free Press, 3 Sep. 2019
  • The one-two punch of fire suppression and cowbird parasitism drove Kirtland's numbers down.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 11 Oct. 2019
  • The researchers wanted to see what effect the females' new, lax attitude would have in cowbird society.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 4 May 2013
  • Such brood parasitism has arisen independently at least three times, in the groups known as cuckoos, cowbirds and honeyguides.
    — The Economist, 18 Jan. 2018
  • Are there plans to follow up, or perhaps to study juvenile cowbirds’ social interactions with adult males?
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Typically, the cowbird egg would hatch first, and the larger chick would outcompete the smaller vireo chicks for food—or simply push them out of the nest.
    — Ashley Stimpson, Popular Mechanics, 31 Aug. 2022
  • Among birds, several species of cuckoo, several species of cowbird, some finches, and even some ducks slip their eggs into other birds’ nests.
    — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • Lastly, as the young cowbirds grow up and begin to resemble adults, other bird species will start showing more aggression towards them.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • If a host parent tosses a cuckoo or cowbird egg of out its nest, the cuckoo or cowbird parent may return and destroy every other egg that bird has laid.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 25 Apr. 2014
  • Federal and state officials, for example, have broken the necks of thousands of cowbirds to save the warbler, a songbird once on the brink of extinction.
    — Phuong Le, The Know, 19 Oct. 2019
  • Despite the fact that the population is comprised mostly of adult males, the juvenile cowbirds were much more likely to be captured in the company of adult females.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • In addition to similarities in appearance, the young cowbirds are drawn to the chattering noises of adult female cowbirds (read more here).
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Some bees are cleptoparasites, sneaking into unoccupied nests to lay eggs, in the same way that cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and let the unknowing foster parents rear their chicks.
    — Stephen Buchmann, The Conversation, 17 May 2023
  • Most birders don’t much like cowbirds because the adults lay their eggs in other songbirds’ nests and abandon them to be raised by their foster parents, often at the expense of the foster parents’ own offspring.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Once all the birds in the sample population had laid, the researchers went around adding and removing eggs from nests to see whether having a certain number of cowbird eggs affected mockingbird survival.
    — Veronique Greenwood, Discover Magazine, 22 Dec. 2011
  • First, female cowbirds’ plumage is more similar in appearance to the juveniles than to that of the more aggressive male cowbirds, which probably partially explains why the young birds seek them out.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • By planting new young jack pine forest and implementing a cowbird removal program, conservation managers helped the warblers begin to recover their numbers.
    — Wendy Mitman Clarke, Smithsonian, 6 Mar. 2017
  • The study suggests that the young cowbirds may be specifically seeking out adult cowbirds with female characteristics with no preference, or perhaps no knowledge, of whether they are related.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • These results suggest that the young cowbirds may be specifically seeking out adult cowbirds with female characteristics with no preference, or perhaps no knowledge, of whether they are related.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • The cowbird expanded its territory naturally, but people introduced the whydah.
    — Joanna Klein, New York Times, 29 June 2017
  • That said, the sample was very small and did not include all potential parents in the population, so it must be replicated with much larger numbers to determine whether relatedness plays any role in the social development of cowbirds.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cowbird.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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