Okay, But... Birds

E32. Wildfire smoke is blanketing more of the map every year, and it turns out a smoky sky changes everything for birds, from how they breathe to whether we can find them at all. Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, Research Scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is back to walk Scott through what all that haze is doing to the birds living in it.

In this episode:

• Birds don't breathe the way we do, and that single fact shapes everything about how smoke hits them
• Stay, shift, or go: the framework for what a bird actually does when the air turns toxic
• When the birds go quiet, it isn't always because they left

Data collection for Project Phoenix is open now through the end of November. If you're on the West Coast, you can sign up at projectphoenix.study and log a 10-minute count from wherever you are, even your own window.

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:

• Northern Yellow Warbler audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML516692
• Black-Crowned Night Heron audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML225814
• Tufted Titmouse audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML100712
• Cooper’s Hawk audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94518
• Bornean Orangutan audio contributed by John MacKinnon, ML82019
• American Robin audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML206448

E31. If a bird sings a phrase worthy of Beethoven, is that music, or just biology in a nice outfit? Dr. Hollis Taylor, a violinist, composer, and ornithologist, has spent more than two decades recording and transcribing the songs of the Pied Butcherbird, an Australian songbird whose vocal life keeps blurring that line.

In this episode:

• How a single pied butcherbird can sing for seven hours through the night, almost never repeating itself, then return the next spring with a brand new repertoire
• What a violin can and can't reproduce when it tries to follow a butcherbird, from steep glissandos to rattles a human instrument simply cannot make
• The case for birdsong as music

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:

• Winter Wren audio contributed by Matthew D. Medler, ML136183
• Hermit Thrush audio contributed by Matthew D. Medler, ML169025
• Wood Thrush audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML168331
• White-throated Sparrow audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML219799
• Australian Magpie audio contributed by Emma Greig, ML218159
• Willie-wagtail audio contributed by Cedar Mathers-Winn, ML188954
• Humpback Whale audio contributed by Flip Harrington, ML123414

Pied Butcherbird song and composition excerpts courtesy of Dr. Hollis Taylor (piedbutcherbird.net, piedbutcherbird.com).

E30. That wall of birdsong outside your window at sunrise has a name, a structure, and a surprising amount of drama. This week Scott talks with Dr. Dan Mennill, a professor at the University of Windsor who wires whole forests with microphones to eavesdrop on the entire neighborhood at once, about what the dawn chorus is actually for, and what it means when it starts to thin out.

In this episode:

• Why dawn, why so loud, and who gets to sing first (hint: it's not about who's the best singer)
• What 16 microphones and kilometers of cable revealed about birds negotiating in real time
• What happened when one field site went quiet, and why that quiet is louder than it sounds

Listen now, then tell us what your morning chorus sounds like.

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:

• Soundscape contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML516838
• Black-throated Green Warbler contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML79475
• American Redstart contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML100804
• Tufted Titmouse contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML100712
• Northern Cardinal contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML191165
• Northern Flicker contributed by William V. Ward, ML3
• Black-capped Chickadee contributed by Bob McGuire, ML197114
• American Robin contributed by Bob McGuire, ML206448
• Alder Flycatcher contributed by Mike Andersen, ML132247
• Savannah Sparrow contributed by Gerritt Vyn, ML137843
• Chipping Sparrow contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML534466
• White-crowned Sparrow contributed by Bob McGuire, ML207181
• Red-tailed Hawk contributed by David McCartt, ML229578

E29. Standing at 11,000 feet, lungs burning, Scott watched birds go about their afternoon in the exact thin air that had nearly taken him out. This week he sits down with Dr. Chris Witt, evolutionary biologist at the University of New Mexico and curator of birds at the Museum of Southwestern Biology, who has spent his career figuring out how birds make a living in the thinnest air on Earth. From the hummingbird blood that rewrites itself to match a mountainside to a five-pound coot that has no business existing, this one is about the birds thriving where our bodies would quit.

In this episode:

• Why a single Andean slope can stack dozens of hummingbird species right on top of each other, each locked to its own band of elevation
• How the same oxygen-grabbing protein keeps evolving the same way, over and over, in a pattern so predictable it runs in reverse
• The record-holders pulling off things up high that sound like they shouldn't be possible

Chris doesn't just tell us about these birds, he shows us, so you may want to watch this one.

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:

• House Finch audio contributed by William R. Fish, ML12932
• Giant Coot audio contributed by Steven L. Hilty, ML56377

E28. A bird's brain is the most expensive thing it owns, and evolution doesn't hand one out for free. Dr. Carlos Botero, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has spent a decade tracing what variable, unforgiving environments actually do to bird cognition, and the answer flips a lot of conventional wisdom on its head.

In this episode:

• Why the harshest places on Earth produce two kinds of birds: the puzzle-solving geniuses and the brute-force survivors, with almost nothing in between
• How big brains might not have evolved for the reasons we always assumed
• Why being one of the smartest birds in the sky can come with a hidden cost

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:

• Willow Ptarmigan audio contributed by Leonard J. Peyton, ML50031
• American Crow audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML229089
• Blue Jay audio contributed by Gaetan Dupont, ML173749
• Black-capped Chickadee audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML202239
• Snowy Owl audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML138288

E27. They’ve been called "rats with wings," but pigeons are actually elite athletes, historical icons, and evolutionary marvels. Scott chats with Dr. Elizabeth Carlen, a postdoc at the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis, to look past the common stereotypes and uncover the remarkable biology of the Rock Pigeon.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• The deep historical bond between humans and pigeons and how domestic birds successfully transitioned back into the wild.
• How pigeons navigate the constant threat of specialized hunters like Peregrine Falcons and Red-tailed Hawks.
• How mapping the DNA of feral pigeons across the Northeastern US revealed that their population structure surprisingly mirrors human geography, and what flight distances can tell us about their urban evolution.

If you enjoy this one, follow Okay, But… Birds and share it with a friend who needs to give pigeons a second look.

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:

• Blue Jay audio contributed by Gaetan Dupont, ML173749
• Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) audio contributed by James Kimball, ML3891
• Peregrine Falcon audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML136378
• Red-tailed Hawk audio contributed by David McCartt, ML229578

E26. We borrowed a phrase from human dating and tried to pin it on birds. Turns out they never needed the rulebook. Dr. Wenfei Tong, biologist and author of Bird Love, joins Scott to unpack what bird partnerships actually look like once you stop projecting our scripts onto them, from females who run the territory to males who guard their paternity in deeply weird ways.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why the drabbest little brown bird in the garden has one of the wildest sex lives in the animal kingdom
• How a female calls the shots when she holds the better real estate, and what the males do about it
• The cloacal pecking payoff you have to hear to believe

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:

• Laysan Albatross audio contributed by Ted Miller, ML117679
• Black-capped Chickadee audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML202239
• Spotted Sandpiper audio contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML516963
• Northern Jacana audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML140224
• Red-necked Phalarope audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235440
• Black Coucal audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML3084
• Papuan Eclectus audio contributed by Thane Pratt, ML169808
• Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML249827
• Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94215
• Red-capped Manakin audio contributed by David L. Ross Jr., ML57360
• Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
• Greater Flamingo audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML2443
• Dunnock audio contributed by Niels Krabbe, ML249162

E25. The blue-footed booby has become an internet personality: cartoon feet, a goofy strut, a name that practically begs to be a punchline. But Scott sat down with Dr. Carlos Zavalaga, Universidad Científica del Sur, and one of the people who first taught him how to study seabirds in Peru, and the "fool" reputation falls apart fast. Get a booby in the air or underwater and you're watching one of the most specialized hunters in the bird family tree.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• How six-plus booby species carve up the same ocean without starving each other out
• What 20 years of GPS loggers, depth tags, and bags of fresh fish revealed about who eats what
• Why El Niño, avian flu, and overfishing keep stacking the deck against these birds

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:

• Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
• Red-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85911
• Brown Booby audio contributed by Gerritt Vyn, ML136211
• Masked Booby audio contributed by Chandler Robbins, ML32604
• Nazca Booby audio contributed by Oliver H. Hewitt, ML31543
• Peruvian Booby audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML29399

E24. Flight is the thing we associate most with birds, so what does it mean when a lineage gives it up? Dr. Scott Edwards, Harvard, joins Scott to unpack how flightlessness evolves, why it keeps happening across the bird family tree, and what the genome reveals about how a bird loses the ability to fly.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• How losing flight reshapes a bird's body, from feathers to forelimbs to that one famously enormous egg
• Why the answer wasn't where geneticists expected to find it
• What an extinct giant and a tiny tropical relative can tell us about where moa actually came from

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:

• Falkland Steamer-Duck audio contributed by Maurice A. E. Rumboll, ML4114
• Great Tinamou audio contributed by David L. Ross, Jr., ML57320

E23. Across sub-Saharan Africa, wild birds and people work together to find honey. No taming, no breeding, no domestication… just a partnership thousands of years in the making. Behavioral ecologist Dr. Jessica van der Wal, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, joins Scott to unpack what's actually happening when a honey hunter calls and a greater honeyguide answers.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• What each side gets out of one of the only known mutualisms between humans and a wild animal, and why this bird in particular evolved to seek us out
• The remarkable signal the honeyguide uses to communicate with people, and what playback experiments revealed when researchers tested it across very different communities
• What happens to a partnership built over generations when one side starts buying honey at the store

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:

• Greater Honeyguide audio contributed by Jennifer F. M. Horne, ML55972

Additional media courtesy of Dr. Claire Spottiswoode and Dr. Jessica van der Wal