No animal is an island. Social encounters throughout an animal’s life can profoundly influence fitness. My primary goals are to understand why an animal interacts differently with different individuals, and to glean insights into how the factors underlying these social interactions affect larger patterns in the ecology and evolution in birds. For example, how is parental favoritism linked to life history strategies? How do birds recognize social cheaters, and when do certain host defenses evolve? When do birds learn to identify their own species, and how does this process affect hybridization? Do migrant birds have friends at their wintering grounds, and if so, how might familiarity affect the dynamics of competition? I will give a brief overview of my new and ongoing research, touching on a wide variety of themes including cognition, social evolution, network theory, and species interactions.