New World blackbirds, troupials and allies | Icteridae

Troepialen | Ictéridos

The bill is pointed and straight and is used not only for pecking but for gaping — inserting it closed into soil or under bark and then forcing it open to pry out hidden food, a technique widespread in this family and comparatively rare among other songbirds. In many species the males are glossy black or brightly coloured while the females are much plainer, streaked brown, a pattern that goes along with a mating system in which one male breeds with several females at once, as seen in densely colonial marsh-nesting species. Orioles weave a hanging, pouch-shaped nest of plant fibres that dangles from the tip of a slender twig, while the Brown-headed Cowbird is the only member of the family that builds no nest of its own at all, instead laying all its eggs secretly in the nests of other songbirds, which then raise the young as their own. A cowbird chick often grows faster than its host's own chicks and outcompetes them for food or space.