Yesterday, a friend reported that a Cooper's hawk had killed a brown-headed cowbird on his property. As an avid birder, my first impulse was to cheer.
After all, cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other songbirds, thereby enlisting the parents to raise their young. Worse yet, the young cowbirds are often larger and more aggressive than their nest mates, outcompeting them for food and often knocking them from the nest to die on the ground. Finally, the "adoptive" parents must expend extra energy caring for their demanding "intruder."
Nevertheless, this scenario is a natural process, one that has played out for thousands of years. Suffering, deception and death are all part of natural ecosystems and human efforts to interfere with nature's complex cycle only promote its dysfunction. We may not mourn the loss of a cowbird but neither is it cause for celebration. Survival and procreation are the only goals that count; nature is not sentimental.
