This is actually the third column on changes at Kathryn Albertson Park, but the second on expected/possible changes in bird occurrence over future decades. Last week I dealt with species where change seems reasonably predictable. We’re now getting into species where I’m going to do more fact-based reasoning and extrapolation, aka guessing. Data are from eBird, and I define winter as December, January, February. The other three seasons follow.

Many species of birds get reputations of various sorts. One species that gets a bad rap, through no fault of its own, is the brown-headed cowbird. The female cowbird lays its eggs in the nests of other species and then leaves forever. It’s up to the host species to incubate the eggs, feed the nestlings and continue to feed the young cowbirds after they’re out of the nest.