The "Helicopter Bird"

During a trip to the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, I was introduced to the wonderful Bronzed Cowbird (Molothrus aeneus). Note the bright red eyes of this bird:

And here are a few images I captured of the display:

These next 3 images are in a sequence of a mid-air display (why I nicknamed this bird "the helicopter bird"):

As you can see, this bird puts on quite a show, ruffling his feathers, "ballooning" out to a much larger looking bird, and vigorously flapping his wings!

All of the above image were made with the Canon 7D digital SLR camera. Having built-in video capability, I also grabbed a couple of videos of this bird's displaying behavior. In this first video, you can see the display, in front of another bird:

Displaying Bronzed Cowbird video

And this next video is extremely short. As one of the cowbirds began displaying in mid-air, I directed my lens towards him and grabbed only a brief mid-air display, before the bird flew down to the ground:

Mid-air Display by Bronzed Cowbird video

This post was written by Jim Braswell of Show-Me Nature Photography.