Did you know that just like in human society there are "freeloaders" in the animal kingdom? The cowbird is a great example of this. Often a cowbird (or even several of them) will be mixing among a group of other birds and though there are seeds on the ground all around it ready for the picking, a young cowbird will put on a show of wing flapping and run around the group and the male cardinal, (for whatever reason) will be distracted from his own needs and the feeding of his own and will spend a great deal of time feeding seed to the cowbird. By "young" I don't mean a baby but an almost grown up cowbird. Fully capable of feeding itself if it would only do so.

I presume that it is the instinct of the male cardinal at work causing him to respond to the constant "feed me" motions of the cowbird. So if the female cardinal is waiting on the nest somewhere, her mate is distracted by the cowbird's begging. We have observed this behavior in our own back garden and confirmed it by research.
#9417343