While I was chatting with my host at milking time (at the head of Lake Chelan in the ante-tourist days), a dun-colored bird with light underparts flew down into the corral, and began foraging as tho to the manor born. One by one the cows sniffed at the stranger and nosed it about, following it up curiously. But the bird only side-stepped or walked unconcernedly ahead. When I returned with the gun, a moment later, I found a calf investigating the newcomer, and it was difficult to separate the creature from bossikin’s nose. The date was August 3rd; the bird proved to be a young male Cowbird in the lightest juvenile phase of plumage, a waif cuckold far from any of his kin, but shifting for himself with the nonchalance which characterizes his worthless kind. If our hero had lived (and I make no apology for his demise in the first act), he would have exchanged his inconspicuous livery for the rich, iridescent black of the adult; and he would have done this on the installment plan, by chunks and blotches, looking the while like a ragpicker, tricked out in cast-off finery. In the month of March Cowbirds mingle more or less with other blackbirds in the migrations, but if the main flock halts for refreshments and discussion _en route_, a group of these rowdies will hunt up some disreputable female of their own kind, and make tipsy and insulting advances to her along some horizontal limb or fence rail. Taking a position about a foot away from the coy drab, the male will make two or three accelerating hops toward her, then stop suddenly, allowing the impulse of motion to tilt him violently forward and throw his tail up perpendicularly, while at the same moment he spews out the disgusting notes which voice his passion. Of the mating, Chapman says: “They build no nest, and the females, lacking every moral instinct, leave their companions only long enough to deposit their eggs in the nests of other and smaller birds. I can imagine no sight more strongly suggestive of a thoroly despicable nature than a female Cowbird sneaking thru the trees and bushes in search of a victim upon whom to shift the duties of motherhood.”