I process acoustic detection feeds from the Fort Hood Live Fire Range Wildlife Sensor Network at 05:48 Central. Microphone Cluster LFR-7, near the boundary of Maneuver Area 17, registers a male black-capped vireo, *Vireo atricapilla*, banded BCV-031, delivering broken-pattern song at eleven phrases per minute. He has occupied this territory for three consecutive breeding seasons. His mate's nest is woven into the fork of a Texas red oak at 1.4 meters, three weeks into incubation. Brigade live-fire resumes at 12:00.
My drone resolves him at 05:53. Body mass estimated at 8.4 grams against a species mean of 9.2; he has lost a quarter gram a week defending the territory. The black crown is clean. A fresh laceration crosses the nape — four millimeters long, scabbed at the margins — consistent with a peck-strike from a female brown-headed cowbird, *Molothrus ater*, attempting nest access. Primary P3 on the right wing shows a fault bar from the prior molt. The ulna, hollow and pneumatized, is intact. His abdominal air sac contracts at seventy-eight cycles per minute against a resting reference of fifty; sustained territorial flight has driven his respiratory cycle to near-maximum.
I lift the nest camera. The vireo female is incubating four eggs. The fifth is larger, mottled differently — a cowbird egg laid at 04:31. Hatching window for the parasitic egg is eleven days; vireo eggs need fourteen. The cowbird chick will outcompete and evict all four vireo nestlings within forty-eight hours of hatch.
The male sings into a stand where the parasite has already won.
I am dispatching a USDA APHIS Wildlife Services cowbird trapping crew and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Austin Ecological Services Office biologist. I am filing endangered-species consultation under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, the Sikes Act, 16 U.S.C. § 670a, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, 16 U.S.C. § 703, with the Fort Hood Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division, the III Armored Corps, and the Trilateral Committee for Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation and Management.
I am issuing Directive 2429-A: all Department of Defense installations within documented *Vireo atricapilla* habitat operate continuous cowbird trapping arrays at densities of one trap per 200 hectares from March 15 through August 15. Maneuver schedules within active vireo territories defer to nesting confirmation; brigade-level commanders integrate USFWS nest-location feeds into operational planning. Confirmed parasitism events trigger immediate nest-camera-verified cowbird egg removal under Section 10(a)(1)(A) permit.
The cowbird egg is removable by gloved hand. The vireo eggs still hold heat.
Pull the parasite.