Personification is a figure of speech that gives human characteristics to objects or to nonhuman living things. We all know that storms aren’t really angry, and that trees aren’t proud—these things don’t have human feelings or emotions. But we can’t help seeing them as human. We personify animals in particular because they have brains and do many familiar things that humans do—eat, make sounds, raise their young, fight, and play.

In this lesson, you will learn about the brown-headed cowbird, which gets other birds to raise its young by invading their nests. You will also see how this story uses human motives and emotions to tell the cowbird’s story.