Okay, But... Birds

E42. Birds get sick too, and a lot of what happens next looks surprisingly familiar. Dr. Andrea Townsend of Hamilton College has spent two decades following American crows through outbreaks, and she walks Scott through what illness really does to a bird, from the family it belongs to down to the clever brain it depends on.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• The surprising way crows choose their partners, and what it costs them when disease comes around
• What a stomach bug does to one of the cleverest birds you'll ever meet
• Why going it alone can be the riskier move while a virus is spreading

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• American Crow video contributed by Jay McGowan, ML472843
• Common Raven audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML137574
• Burrowing Owl audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML188805

E41. Centaurs, mermaids, minotaurs: we have been inventing creatures that are two things at once for as long as we have told stories. Birds do it for real. Dr. Glaucia Del-Rio of the Florida Museum of Natural History studies two Amazonian antbirds that meet where a river runs out, and what their offspring say about where one species ends.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• Why a river can be an impossible barrier for a bird with perfectly good wings, and what researchers found when they carried birds out into the middle of one and let go
• How to spot a hybrid antbird at a glance, once you know which colors belong to which parent
• The German-Brazilian ornithologist an all-women expedition was named for, and the injury she dealt with herself, a long way from any hospital

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Red-capped Manakin audio contributed by David L. Ross Jr., ML57360
• Streak-headed Woodcreeper audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML21543
• American Flamingo audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML172484
• Lawrence's Warbler (hybrid) audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML113786
• Brewster's Warbler (hybrid) audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML76906

Additional photos and video courtesy of Glaucia Del-Rio: Marco Rego, Fabio Schunck, Luis Morais, and Angela Prochilo. Harlequin Antbird photo by Hector Bottai, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

E40. There are only 15 crane species on the planet, and 11 of them are in trouble. Dr. Andy Caven, Director of Central Flyway Programs for the International Crane Foundation, has spent his career on two of them: the sandhill cranes that pour into one stretch of Nebraska's Platte River every spring, and the whooping crane, which came back from the edge and is still nowhere near safe. Scott asks him what it actually takes to keep a bird like that on the landscape, and the answer runs through soggy grassland, private ranches, and one river worth fighting over.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• The number Andy gives for how many cranes stand on that stretch of river, which Scott makes him say twice
• How a bird that was down to a couple of dozen individuals ended up stopping a dam
• What a wet meadow is, and why one is so much easier to lose than to build back

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Mallard audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML136504
• Wilson's Phalarope audio contributed by W. Douglas Robinson, ML474658841
• Swamp Sparrow audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94352

E39. Every August the questions start: there is a cardinal at the feeder with no head feathers, and it looks terrible. Nothing is wrong with it. It is molting, which every bird does at least every year. Dr. Ryan Terrill of the San Diego Natural History Museum studies what a feather endures over a year and what it takes to replace one, and he makes the case that the few weeks a bird spends looking its worst may be the most consequential weeks it has.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• Why the cardinal at your feeder in late summer looks like it lost a fight
• What a bird quietly gives up during the weeks it is growing new feathers
• The hundreds of miles some birds fly for the sake of a new set of feathers

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Northern Cardinal audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML191165
• American Goldfinch audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94457
• Blue Jay audio contributed by Gaetan Dupont, ML173749
• Herring Gull audio contributed by Sarah MacLean, ML165927
• American Herring Gull video contributed by Steve Kelling, ML540908261
• Snow Bunting audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML130973
• Red-tailed hawk audio contributed by David McCartt, ML229578
• White-throated Sparrow audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML219799
• Great Hornbill audio contributed by Linda Macaulay, ML111527
• Flightless Cormorant audio contributed by Linda Macaulay, ML237486

E38. You have pulled one out of a jacket sleeve at a bad angle, picked one up on a walk, and you are almost certainly within arm's reach of a few thousand of them right now. Dr. Cody Limber, who recently finished his PhD at Yale, spent it taking growing feathers apart one cell at a time to find out what they are actually made of. A feather is not a fancy scale, it does not grow the way you would guess, and after all this time nobody can say what the first ones were for.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• The strangest things growing out of birds, and which of them actually count as feathers
• What a feather is actually made of, once you smash one into individual cells and read what every cell was doing
• What a feather actually is, whether it is alive or dead, how it is put together, and the coordination that color and pattern demand

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Eastern Whip-poor-will audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML195774
• Red-bellied Woodpecker audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML306064
• Indian Peafowl audio contributed by Rounak choudhary, ML621021542
• Common Raven audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML132161
• Mallard audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML136504
• Double-crested Cormorant audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML233274
• Zebra Finch (Australian) audio contributed by Vicki Powys, ML226233
• American Herring Gull video contributed by Steve Kelling, ML540908261
• Golden-winged Warbler video contributed by Benjamin Clock, ML476422
• Great Argus audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML71122
• Horned Screamer audio contributed by Paul A. Schwartz, ML58925
• Wild Turkey audio contributed by James (Jim) Holmes, ML73964601

E37. A bird called Wisdom was banded on Midway Atoll in 1956 and is still laying eggs today, which makes her at least 75 and the oldest known wild bird on the planet. She has also outlived the man who banded her, and most of the scientists who tracked her since. Dr. Etienne Rouby studies long-lived seabirds at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at CU Boulder, working with data from the French sub-Antarctic islands where wandering albatross have been followed for more than half a century. Scott asks him what you can learn from a bird that will outlast your career, your funding, and possibly your field station.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• What a fledgling albatross does for the first five years of its life, and why nobody really knows
• The fishing gear change that pulled a colony back from the brink, and how long it took to see it working
• Why a very good year for female albatross is a very bad year for the males

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Snowy Albatross audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML42306
• Black-browed Albatross audio contributed by Jan Hansen, ML650026815

E36. Hummingbirds run one of the fastest metabolisms of any animal with a backbone, which is why we picture them as permanently buzzing. Scott sits down with Dr. Anusha Shankar, assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, who studies how hummingbirds budget energy in a world that keeps moving the goalposts. It turns out the blur at your feeder is the exception, not the rule.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why the same bird might spend three hours a day flying, or thirteen, depending entirely on what the flowers are doing
• What happens overnight when a hummingbird lets itself go cold, and how long it takes to come back
• Seven months in the Ecuadorian cloud forest, and the hummingbirds that sat on the nets and waited

Plus: the doubly labeled water method, a sugar concentration threshold you can taste-test at your own feeder at your own risk, and the reason Anusha gets called the hummingbird pee person.

The "snoring" hummingbird video Scott and Anusha discuss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uEfmQt34Nc

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Ruby-throated Hummingbird audio contributed by Trenton Voytko, ML604314061
• Black Metaltail audio contributed by Pedro Allasi Condo, ML663268821
• Violet-tailed Sylph audio contributed by Paul Coopmans, ML58045
• White-booted Racket-tail audio contributed by Daniel Cadena, ML256331
• Bee Hummingbird video contributed by Timothy Barksdale, ML440270

Black Metaltail photograph by Thibaud Aronson, via iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

E35. Eighteen species of small brown bird on a pile of volcanic rock have taught us more about how evolution actually works than almost anything else on Earth. Not because Darwin figured them out. He didn't. Because a handful of scientists went back, banded every bird on one island, and watched it happen in real time. Scott heads to the Galapagos with Dr. Erik Enbody, Assistant Professor of Computational Biology at Cornell University, to find out how one ancestor became eighteen, why the beak is the only thing worth looking at, and what happens when species that aren't supposed to interbreed start swapping genes anyway.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• The island so small you can band every bird on it, and the drought that killed almost all of them
• One gene that explains 40% of beak size, when nothing in human height explains even 1%
• The finch that does something mind-blowingly villainous and what it says about how far evolution will go

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Large Ground-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85965
• Common Cactus-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML86715
• Small Tree-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85464
• Vegetarian Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML82506
• Galapagos Mockingbird audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML45963
• Española Mockingbird audio contributed by Herb Elliott, ML638777433
• Floreana Mockingbird audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85455
• San Cristobal Mockingbird audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML28656
• Palm Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML88937
• Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
• Vampire Ground-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML86756
• Woodpecker Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML82522
• Paradise Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML127399
• Galápagos Sea Lion audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML125020

E34. Not all birds build one, but for the ones that do, a nest has a single job and a shockingly wide range of ways to get it done. Dr. Vanya Rohwer, Curator of Birds and Mammals at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates, joins Scott to walk the far end of that spectrum, from nests made entirely of spit to a colony structure heavy enough to snap the tree it sits in.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• The complete and comical inventory of one hamerkop nest, read aloud, contents included
• What a bird does when you hand it a nest somebody else already built
• Why a shed snakeskin in a tree cavity is a calculated decoration

New episodes every Thursday. If the show is doing it for you, leave a rating or hit follow.

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But… Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• American Robin audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML206448
• Baltimore Oriole audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML219606
• Black-legged Kittiwake audio contributed by Roger Charters, ML202491
• White-nest Swiftlet audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML36421
• Cliff Swallow audio contributed by James (Jim) Holmes, ML92053871
• Chimney Swift audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML107413
• Hamerkop audio contributed by Anonymous, ML97562
• Eastern Whip-poor-will audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML195774
• Montezuma Oropendola audio contributed by David L. Ross Jr., ML215446
• Western Grebe audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML195029
• Rufous Hornero audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML132447
• Northern Yellow Warbler audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML516692
• Sociable Weaver audio contributed by Jacob Henry, ML637193738
• Great Crested Flycatcher audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94314
• Blue-gray Gnatcatcher audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML534430
• White-breasted Nuthatch audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML306062

E33. When the air temperature climbs past a bird's own body temperature, staying cool stops being free and starts to cost them water they may not have. Dr. Blair Wolf, University of New Mexico, has spent his career studying how desert birds survive heat that should kill them, and what happens when it finally gets too hot.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why some backyard birds can shrug off oven-like temperatures while others just a few feet away don't make it
• The strange, water-saving trick birds use to dump heat without a single drop of sweat
• What the birds dying in these heatwaves are trying to tell us about what's coming

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• White-winged Dove audio contributed by Raphaël Nussbaumer, ML571978241
• Verdin audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML197163
• Black-throated Sparrow audio contributed by James (Jim) Holmes, ML573935831
• Black-throated Sparrow video contributed by Benjamin Clock, ML483211
• Mourning Dove audio contributed by James (Jim) Holmes, ML583603101
• Mourning Dove audio contributed by Anonymous, ML658417476
• Palm Cockatoo audio contributed by Emma Greig, ML201266
• Rosy-faced Lovebird audio contributed by Derek Solomon, ML168222
• Common Eider audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235534