Bird Podcast with Shoba Narayan

This episode features Josep Del Hoyo, one of the founders as well as the director of Lynx Edicions and an expert videographer of birds. This episode is a wide-ranging conversation about birds in different parts of the world.

Josep is an Editor of the 17-volume Handbook of the Birds of the World series (1992–2013) and an Author of the HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World in two volumes (2014–2016). He has most recently authored the book All the Birds of the World (2020), which presents every bird species in a single, fully illustrated volume. Josep has been the driving force behind these and many other projects at Lynx, always motivated by his passion for nature, books and conservation.

Every good city needs a generous birding guide, one who is empathetic and loves to explore nature around her. If this intrepid explorer is empathetic, generous and inclusive, that's even better. Deepa Mohan is one such wildlife enthusiast and explorer in Bangalore, India. In this podcast, we discuss the many aspects of Deepa's birding all over India, about how to count birds, about going to the same location many times and some of her favourite birding areas in India. Some of the locations Deepa mentioned in an around Bangalore: Hoskote Lake, Begur Lake, Bannerghatta National Park, Bannerghatta biosphere, Ankasamudra, Eagle Nest, Talle Valley, Arunachal Pradesh, Jaipurdoddi, Manipal, Western Ghats. Unusual species include over-wintering birds, vagrant species such as black-capped kingfisher, a blue throat wintering in Anekal Lake, a Demoiselle Crane, a dark sided flycatcher in Nandi Hills. The location that Deepa mentions early in the podcast– the one she took me to in the morning, is Muninagara Kere. Her ebird checklist from that outing is here.

When we asked Bangalore-based, experienced birder, Deepa Mohan to provide a bio, this is what she sent. It is typical of her understated humour. "Deepa Mohan, age 66, Carnatic musician, theatre reviewer and quiz buff, turned into an avid amateur naturalist and bird watcher. Loves writing about the outings and her experiences."

This episode is about striated caracaras, or rather, one man's obsession with them. The man in question is Jonathan Meiburg who is a musician, author and bird lover. In 1833, a young Charles Darwin was astonished by a strange animal he met in the Falkland Islands: a handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcon that was "tame and inquisitive," "quarrelsome and passionate," and so insatiably curious that it stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle.

Darwin met many unusual creatures in his five-year voyage, but no others showed an interest in studying him—and he wondered why these birds were confined to islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story. But he set this mystery aside, and never returned to it.

Almost two hundred years later, Meiburg picks up where Darwin left off. These rare and unusual birds—now called striated caracaras—still exist, and A Most Remarkable Creature reveals the wild and fascinating story of their history, origins, and possible futures in a series of travels throughout South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana. Along the way, Meiburg draws us into the life and work of W.H. Hudson, a Victorian writer and naturalist who championed caracaras as unsung wonders of the natural world, and takes us to falconry parks in England, where captive caracaras perform incredible feats of memory, problem-solving, and friendship.

A Most Remarkable Creature is much more than a book about birds: it's a quest for moments of first contact between humans and animals, science and religion, and the mismatched continents Europeans mistakenly called the New World.

In 1997, Jonathan Meiburg received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel to remote communities around the world, a year-long journey that sparked his enduring fascination with islands, birds, and the deep history of the living world. Since then, he's written reviews, features, and interviews for print and online publications including The Believer, Talkhouse, and The Appendix on subjects ranging from a hidden exhibit hall at the American Museum of Natural History to the last long-form interview with author Peter Matthiessen.

But he's best known as the leader of the band Shearwater and as a member of Sub Pop recording artists Loma, whose albums and performances have often been praised by NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Pitchfork. His unique career between the sciences and the arts makes him an ideal guide for a journey that takes in the deep history and landscapes of an entire continent, from the lush forests of Guyana to the windswept Falkland Islands. He lives in central Texas.

"Caracaras are not like other birds, or even other birds of prey. Curious, wide-ranging, gregarious, and intelligent, the ten species of caracara are a scientific puzzle that has intrigued biologists since the days of Darwin. And this book — as curious, wide-ranging, gregarious, and intelligent as its subject — is not like any other book that I have encountered." Charles C. Mann, author of 1491.

Image credit: Bryan C. Parker

1:00 What are Caracaras?

3:00 Falklands from Tierra del Fuego.

5:25: Bird life in the Falklands per Darwin. Striated caracaras.

8:30 Black-browed albatrosses. 140,000 birds sitting on their nests in the summertime. Royal and Wandering albatrosses.

10:00 Jonathan imitates bird sounds.

12:00 Antarctica used to be warm before the Cretaceous extinction. The ancestors of falcons lived there and came to North America later on. Greatest diversity of the various falcon species are in North America.

13:00 True falcons-- what are they?

14:00 Specialist versus generalist approach to life.

15:00 Are Caracaras intelligent? Ten species of Caracaras. Only one is endangered: Striated Caracaras. Why are they only in the Falklands? This is what Darwin asked. Jonathan has a theory about why Striated Caracaras are stuck in the Falkland Islands.

20:00 Who was William Henry Hudson? The book has both these characters? What did Darwin think about the function of music?

24:00 Guyana trip to look for tropical caracaras. About the red-throated caracaras. They nest in bromeliads, sometimes 200 feet off the forest floors. Feed on wasp combs, litter their nest with millipedes (pest control?)

27:00 Genetically, falcons are closest to parrots. Not hawks and eagles.

28:00 The Guadalupe caracara.

30:00 Flamingoes on Andes Mountains

33:00 The future of striated caracaras.

Visit the home of Shubha Bhat and you will find many birds enjoying birdbaths in her garden and its surroundings. An avid birder, Shubha has spoken about backyard birding in many forums including the Bangalore Bird Day, Manipal Bird Day and others. Her work has been videotaped and photographed in many publications, including Bird Count India. Today we talk about how to make your gardens and balconies a haven for birds.

1:00 Basic steps of how to attract birds.

3:00 Use of big pots and coconut shells to create an ecosystem.

5:00 Shubha lists her resident birds.

6:00 Kashmir Flycatcher sighting.

8:00 Poetic description of birds enjoying her garden. Do listen to this part.

9:00 Bird behavior. How do they bathe and drink water? Shubha gives beautiful descriptions.

11:00 Why did the kingfishers stop coming?

11:30 About warblers. How do they bathe?

12:00 Persuading others to keep bird baths.

14:00 Migratory birds and birds breeding in her garden.

15:00 The pleasure of backyard birds and birding.

15:50 Shubha Bhat speaks about backyard birding in her native Kannada. It is a beautiful section. How poetically she speaks. Listen if you know Kannada.

Birds quoted in this episode: Oriental magpie robin, Indian white-eye, mynas, coucals, black kite, flycatchers, warblers, thrushes, Indian blue robin, Indian pitta, Kashmir flycatcher, Tickell's thrush, large-billed leaf warbler, ultramarine flycatcher, blue-throated flycatcher, yellow-browed warbler, Tytler's leaf warbler, rusty-tailed flycatcher, paradise flycatcher, monarch flycatcher, drongos, orioles, ashy wood swallows, cineroeus tits

Manipal Bird Day, Shubha's talk for Bangalore Bird Day, Photos of Shubha's garden here

JN Prasad has been a keen naturalist and birdwatcher for the last 4 decades. Associated closely with the WWF-India Nature Clubs of India movement since its inception, he went on to co-found Merlin Nature Club, which became the cradle of learning for many of Bangalore's most enthusiastic naturalists.

A post-graduate in International Marketing and also in Ecology and Environment, he has over 50 papers and notes to his credits in leading national & international publications.

More recently, continuing the passion Dr. George had for nest boxes, especially for cavity nesters like Magpie-Robins, that are facing a huge challenge to find space to breed, he has started the Gubbi Goodu network of volunteers who build nest boxes for sparrows and other birds.

For all this and more, he has been recognized and awarded by the Rotary Club for Outstanding Service and contribution to the community.

Do you want to become a reviewer for ebird? Which bird is the logo of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology? Do you think sparrow populations are declining? What abour vireos? Can you "rent" land from farmers to help shorebirds? In this fascinating episode, we talk to Christopher Wood, who heads ebird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Ashwin Viswanathan who is part of Bird Count India and NCF. Over one billion birders use ebird. How did it become this global behemoth? Hint, it wasn't driven by America. How does ebird track and help avian populations, migration and mapping birds. How do different countries use it, and is India really the "global custodian" of so many species including the Common Rosefinch, Bar-headed Geese, or Blythe's Reed Warbler?

Christopher Wood is the Managing Director, Center for Avian Population Studies and Director, eBird.

Full bio here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Chris was fascinated by dinosaurs as a child. Now, he says, he has moved to their closest living relatives.

Ashwin Vishwanathan is a Research Associate, Education and Public Engagement at the Nature Conservation Foundation or NCF. He is a part of Bird Count India which encourage bird watching using ebird as a tool.

10:32: Listen for a fascinating explanation of the challenges that ebird faces, especially if the goal is to develop maps for where birds are every single week of the year. How can the methods of analysis of ebird's data correlate with other data such as the breeding birds survey. The bias between how birdwatchers are bird-watching and what they are seeing.

13:00 Patterns of bird movement and population linked to habitat and climate change. Chris talks about the interplay between forests and farms, and why the vireo population is going up. Ashwin talks about how certain species has expanded all over India. Hint: it is India's national bird. In that sense ebird is a great "hypothesis generator" as Chris says.

18:00 different in the migration and arrival dates of the Eastern Phoebe and Orchard Oriole. Ashwin talks about the black-capped kingfisher and how the data helped them realize that it was "entirely a winter migrant."

23:00: Which are the top countries that supply data to ebird?

25:00 the link between identification and probability. Why are some birders able to glance at a flying bird and immediately identify it? It has to do with filtering data rather than paging through a field guide.

29:00 how a remote community in Mexico called Mayan Jays used ebird to attract nature tourists to their area. The same with Honduras, Guatamala, Columbia.

34:00 how to get indigenous tribal communities to share their knowledge of nature?

37:00 How do you marry specificity and local context with access and global knowledge. Ashwin talks about vernacular languages for bird names. Ebird has 42 different languages that it supports and 68 choices. How to preserve local knowledge and culture?

42:00 Diverse systems are inherently more stable. How does ebird help conservation. Listen for a fascinating new idea adopted by the Nature Conservancy, which typically buys land for conservation. They worked with the farmers of the Central Valley of California where a lot of shorebirds and ducks migrate through. For example, can rice fields and the flooding that farmers do be adjusted to benefit both farmers and their food production and the shorebird habitat. Point Blue used ebird data to "rent" land from rice farmers to keep the water in the rice fields.

47:00 how village panchayats are using ebird data for local policy decisions. How a road in Kerala is named after the orange breasted green pigeon

50:00 Do you want to become a reviewer for ebird? Here's how.

55:00 Are Eastern Yellow Wagtails present in India? How do ebird reviewers preserve the integrity of the data?

56:00 how does ebird figure out if you are a good birder or not? How does ebird model data based on bird calls?

58:00 Do you want to know why your checklists were accepted or rejected? List length is a way to predict how likely it is for a species to be reported. And about the Kerala Bird Atlas.

Listen to this fascinating episode

ebird, Bird Count India

To research books, films and articles, Sy Montgomery has been chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica, worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana. She has been deftly undressed by an orangutan in Borneo, hunted by a tiger in India, and swum with piranhas, electric eels and dolphins in the Amazon. She has searched the Altai Mountains of Mongolia's Gobi for snow leopards, hiked into the trackless cloud forest of Papua New Guinea to radiocollar tree kangaroos, and learned to SCUBA dive in order to commune with octopuses. In this episode, she talks about a variety of birds including California Condors, Hummingbirds, Hawks, Cockatoos and many others.

Sy's 28 books for both adults and children have garnered many honors. The Soul of an Octopus was a 2015 Finalist for the National Book Awards. The Good Good Pig, her memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller. She is the winner of the 2009 New England Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Award, the 2010 Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award, the Henry Bergh Award for Nonfiction (given by the ASPCA for Humane Education) and dozens of other honors. Her work with the man-eating tigers, the subject of her book Spell Of The Tiger, was made into in a National Geographic television documentary she scripted and narrated. Also for National Geographic TV she developed and scripted Mother Bear Man, about her friend, Ben Kilham, who raises and releases orphaned bear cubs, which won a Chris award.

1:00 About hummingbirds. The tiny Bee hummingbird. The fastest bird, the male Allen's Hummingbird's is faster than the space shuttle, she says.

3:50 How to care for an orphaned hummingbird.

5:00 Why should you save a bird? Sy talks about why she saved orphaned hummingbirds.

7:00 The variety of hummingbirds.

7:45 Ruby throated hummingbirds.

9:00 Sy talks about condors and vultures. 10 feet across wingspan. Native Americans revere the condor wherever it was found. All vultures take death and make it into life, she says.

15:00 What is it like to hold a condor? Sy was part of the California Condor Recovery project.

18:50 How do you hold a condor? Do you pull the neck to you or away? What does the breath of a condor smell like?

20:00 How to conserve condors while working with hunters? Using copper versus lead bullets.

24:00 Emus of Australia. Sy says that they showed her "my destiny."

28:00 The personality of an emu. They are curious and have a sense of humour, says Sy.

30:00 Sy talks about the books she loves. Dian Fossey's Gorillas in the Mist. Jane Goodhall's The Chimpanzees of Gombe. Howard Ensign Evans book on insects.

34:00 Sy talks about her favourite birds. The woodpecker. The Cassowary. Papua New Guinea and Queensland, Australia where she saw a cassowary. Casque, red wattles, the curiosity of a cassowary.

38:00 Hawks and learning falconry. Nancy Cowan, master falconer. Harris' hawks. Yarak

41:00 About crows roosting in Auburn, New York

44:00 About parrots. Dancing with a cockatoo. Snowball the cockatoo

48:00 Birds and the wildness.

1. The first of your books that I read was about the California Condor. For listeners here in India, could you please tell us about the condor-- details will help as we don't have Condors here. I for instance, didn't realize they were vultures.
2. Please tell us about the conservation efforts for the condors. For instance, you say that the efforts to return them to the wild is "creative, controversial". Please tell us details for those who may not have read that book.
3. Where are condors most plentifully found?
4. Ask Sy about lead versus copper bullets.
5. Tell us about the emus you met in Australia. (how to be a good creature)
6. The books that inspired you that you list. (how to be a good creature)
7. Tell us about the woodpecker's song. (the wild outside your window)
8. Migrating songbirds
9. Tell us about the birds in your book, Birdology. What was the theme of the book, Birdology
10. --hawks (illustrating that birds are fierce--as I learn through falconry)
11. --crows (showing how birds are everywhere--following the controversy generated by a very large roost of crows)
12. --parrots (showing that birds are smart--we meet Snowball the Dancing cockatoo and the Alex studies, of the talking African grey parrot
13. --cassowaries (showing that birds are dinosaurs--I go to find one in Australia)

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"By the time a bar-tailed godwits dies, it would have flown to the moon and most of the way back," says ornithologist and author Scott Weidensaul. A bar-tailed godwit flies 18,000 miles a year. By the time it dies, it will have flown closer to 500,000 miles. In this episode, Scott talks about the magnificent migrations of birds-- the songs they sing while in flight and how they undergo binge-eating before they take off on their epic journeys. Comparing a migratory bird to an elite athlete insults the bird, he says. Arctic terns, for instance, sometimes travels a staggering 57,000 miles a year, he says. Scott celebrates the natural world—particularly birds and bird migration—in his research, his writing and his public speaking. Weidensaul spearheads a number of major research projects focusing on bird migration. His latest book is "The World on the Wing: the global Odyssey of migratory birds."

He has written more than 30 books on natural history, including Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ghost with Trembling Wings, about the search for species that may or may not be extinct; Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians; Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding; The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery and Endurance in Early America; andthe Peterson Reference Guide to Owls.

Listen to Weidensaul's latest interview on NPR's "Fresh Air." (And here is a previous "Fresh Air" appearance with Terry Gross.) Weidensaul lectures widely on wildlife and environmental topics, and is an active field researcher, specializing in the study of migration in owls, hummingbirds and passerines. A native of the Appalachians of eastern Pennsylvania, he now lives in New Hampshire. Scott Weidensaul leads tours to such exotic destinations as Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, Alaska, the Amazon and other exciting locales - check out the details here.

3:00 Migrating after dark. Look up at the night sky for "literally billions of birds aloft in the night sky."

8:00 Yellow Sea's mudflats. In China. How central it is in migration.

13:00 How shorebirds make epic migrations. About the bar-tailed godwit that spends 11 days in continuous powered flight, crossing the widest part of the Pacific Ocean-- 11,000 kilometres in one great leap.

14:00 Hyperphagia. Binge feeding. What these birds do before migration? They fly to the moon and back.

16:00 How migration and breeding change the body organs of the birds.

17:00 Scott imitates the song of the arctic song of the redknot.

19:00 About arctic terns, about the size of a dove flies 47,000 miles a year. Oh wait, it is 57,000 miles a year.

22:00 Scott reads a section from his book.

26:00 The specific things birds change about themselves. They change speed, endurance, memory, blood chemistry, metabolism, and much more.

"Comparing a bird to a human athelete insults the bird."

27:30 A little semipalmated sandpiper, weighing 50 gms. Take off from the Northeastern coast of North America and fly to the Northeastern coast of South America with no food, water or rest. That's like running 126 marathons continuously.

30:00 European swifts and how they sleep. Uni-hemisphere sleeping. They sleep with one part of their brain for a few seconds a day. About owls.

32:00 Bar-headed geese and their one long nonstop flight. Climbing from 3200-feet an hour to 7200-feet an hour.

38:00 Conservation efforts to help bird migration.

42:00 About Amur Falcons in Nagaland

44:00 About Snowy owls and owls in general. Nest boxes in Israel.

50:00 Regional wintering areas. The connections between forests and the Swainson's Thrush.

52:00 Migratory connectivity.

54:00 Final words. Birds fan out from Alaska to cover three-quarters of the earth's surface.

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"To be able to conserve and protect, you have to observe and love," says philanthropist Rohini Nilekani. "Being in nature, you get this sense of continuing renewing wonder," she says. In this episode, Rohini talks about her favourite birds and why conserving nature is an "enlightened self-interest" for humanity as a whole.

Rohini Nilekani is a thoughtful and intuitive philanthropist, author, journalist, columnist, television anchor, punster, funster and a champion of wildlife. She combines a deep empathy for wildlife with a sharp, quick, and curious mind. She loves nature and the outdoors and is most comfortable in her beloved forests and mountains wearing her trademark cap and carrying her binoculars. Her enthusiasm for the world of wildlife is infectious. Her involvement with wildlife includes the following. She is a board member of ATREE, the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, a board member of Science Gallery Bengaluru, on the Artificial Recharge of Ground Water Advisory Council of the Union Ministry of Water Resources, an elected Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

Rohini has done a television documentary about her encounters with a black panther. You can watch Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Rohini Nilekani is the Founder-Chairperson of Arghyam, a foundation she set up for sustainable water and sanitation, which funds initiatives all across India. From 2004 to 2014, she was Founder-Chairperson and chief funder of Pratham Books, a non-profit children's publisher that reached millions of children during her tenure. She is the Co-founder and Director of EkStep, a non-profit education platform. She sits on the Board of Trustees of ATREE, an environmental think tank, and serves on the Eminent Persons Advisory Group of the Competition Commission of India.

A former journalist, she has written for many leading publications such as Times of India, India Today, Mint, etc. Penguin Books India published her first book, a medical thriller called Stillborn, and her second non-fiction book, 'Uncommon Ground', based on her eponymous TV show. She has written several books for young children, published by Pratham Books, including the popular "Annual Haircut Day". In 2017, she was inducted as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Well Being Project from 2019.

Rohini Nilekani is a committed philanthropist and in 2017, she, together with her husband Nandan Nilekani, signed the Giving Pledge, which commits half their wealth to philanthropic causes.

Rohini's photograph by Sandesh Kadur

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Maitreya Sukumar, 18, who has been birding since he was 4, has seen 850 + bird species in the Indian subcontinent and around 2500 species overall . He was named Sanctuary Asia's Young Naturalist of the year in 2018. Apart from birds, he is interested in frogs, conservation and evolutionary biology. Here is a video of Maitreya winning the Sanctuary Young Naturalist Award 2018.

Here are some books he has co-authored, and birding clubs he co-founded.

He writes regularly for Saevus magazine.

In this conversation, we explore Maitreya's journey in birding all over the world. You can see the birds that Maitreya talks about in the below links.

Wilson's bird of paradise, Lemon rumped warbler, Rufous mot mot, Five coloured barbet, Sapayoa, Apolinar's wren, Green-bearded helmet crest, Resplendent quetzal, Bowerbird, Black sicklebill, Sultan tit, Ward's trogon, Satyr's tragopan, Yellow-rumped honeyguide, Sikkim wedge-billed babbler, Beautiful nuthatch, White gorgeted flycatcher,

Bird is Owls of the Eastern Ice