Okay, But... Birds

E22. Folklore says birds know a storm is coming before we do. Scott talks with Dr. Gunnar Kramer, Iowa State University, about what's actually happening when a tiny warbler decides it's time to fly, or time to bail.

In this episode:

• Why the question itself might be slightly wrong, and what's really going on inside that bird
• A storm, some missing warblers, and a discovery nobody set out to make
• What 300 birds falling out of the sky over Texas can tell you about how much fuel is in the tank

Listen, follow, and tell a friend who’s a little superstitious.

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:

• Yellow-billed cuckoo audio, Wil Hershberger, ML94446
• Barnacle goose audio, Bob McGuire, ML235525
• Golden-winged warbler video, Benjamin Clock, ML476422
• Blue-winged warbler video, Eric Liner, ML469433
• Yellow-billed cuckoo video, Larry Arbanas, ML466566
• Eastern kingbird audio, Wil Hershberger, ML534398
• Tennessee warbler audio, Wil Hershberger, ML85236
• Tennessee warbler video, Eric Liner, ML466381
• Wood thrush video, Benjamin Clock, ML471755

E21. We're talking sense and scents with Dr. Danielle Whittaker, Oregon State, and author of The Secret Perfume of Birds, who spent a decade unraveling a 200-year-old myth that started with John James Audubon and a dead pig under a bush.

In this episode:

• The bird that smells like a fresh-baked sugar cookie
• Why preen oil is a dating profile written in chemistry, and how seabirds use the same chemical cue that's now leading albatross parents to feed their chicks plastic
• The bonus myth Danielle wants gone

New here? Listen, follow, and tell a friend who still thinks birds can't smell.

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:

• Brown-headed Cowbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94262
• Dark-eyed Junco audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94361
• Red Knot audio contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML516895
• Crested Auklet audio contributed by Sampath Seneviratne, ML132014
• Laysan Albatross audio contributed by Ted Miller, ML117679

E20. Less than 1% of what's in a museum is actually on display. So what's happening with the other 99%? Scott talks with Dr. Sushma Reddy, Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the Bell Museum and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, about the extraordinary scientific afterlife of a specimen in a drawer.

In this episode:

• How birds collected 150 years ago are answering questions their collectors never imagined, from air pollution to insect decline
• Why falcons turned out to be closer to parrots than hawks, and what other surprises fell out of the bird family tree
• The case for making museum collections more open, especially to scientists from the places these specimens originally came from

If you have a few seconds, please follow, rate, and leave a review for the show. It makes a huge difference in helping others discover it. Thanks for listening!

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:

• Bald eagle sound contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML 200943
• Red-tailed hawk sound contributed by David McCartt, ML 229578
• Gyrfalcon sound contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML 516973
• Kea sound contributed by William V. Ward, ML 8523
• Small ground finch sound contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML 86711
• Iiwi sound contributed by Doug Pratt, ML 5888
• Sickle-billed vanga sound contributed by Anonymous, ML 100013

E19. More than 55 million Americans feed birds, and it's not exactly clear the birds asked us to. Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, Research Scientist and Project Leader of FeederWatch at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, joins Scott to unpack what four decades of data tell us about whether feeding birds helps them, hurts them, or is really just for us.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why bird feeding is mostly for us, and the handful of moments when it actually tips the scales for birds
• What forty years of FeederWatch data reveal about shifting ranges, feeder dominance, and the bird that definitely should not be bossing everyone around
• How to keep your yard from becoming an ecological trap, plus the best way to feed birds that doesn't involve a feeder at all

Ready to join the longest-running winter bird monitoring program in North America? Sign up for Project FeederWatch's 40th season at feederwatch.org. You don't even need a feeder.

Want more exclusive clips from this and future episodes. Signup for our newsletter, Bird Droppings, at okaybutbirds.com to get bonus content not available anywhere else!

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:

• European robin audio contributed by Matthew D. Medler, ML140049
• Cooper's hawk audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94518
• American crow video contributed by Jay McGowan, ML472843

E18. Turns out "bird brain" is less of an insult and more of a compliment. Scott sits down with Dr. Alex Kacelnik, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford, to dig into one of the most mind-bending questions in animal behavior: are birds actually building and using tools, or are we just projecting?

In this episode you'll hear about:

• The experiment that left researchers completely flabbergasted and rewrote what we thought we knew about animal intelligence
• Why flexibility, not raw smarts, is the real test of a thinking mind
• Whether the drive to use tools is something birds are born with, learn, or some surprising combination of both

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:

• Woodpecker Finch audio contributed by Robert Bowman, ML82522
• New Caledonian Crow audio contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML188764
• Hawaiian Crow audio contributed by Tim Burr, ML218670
• Hawaiian Crow video contributed by Timothy Barksdale, ML425081
• Kea audio contributed by William V. Ward, ML8523

E17. From sparrow songs that go viral across a continent to cockatoos that watch each other to learn how to open bins, Dr. Lucy Aplin, Australian National University / University of Zurich, studies how birds learn from each other and why it matters. Doing it for the culture? Yep. Birds are that impressive!

In this episode you'll hear about:

• How a new white-throated sparrow song spread over 3,000 kilometers in just two decades, replacing a tune that had been stable since the 1950s
• The experiment that proved wild great tits can establish lasting cultural traditions through their social networks
• Why losing a population of birds might also mean losing knowledge that took generations to build

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-throated Sparrow audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML219799
• White-throated Sparrow audio contributed by Jocelyn Lauzon, ML121581051
• Great Tit audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML36198
• Eurasian Sparrowhawk audio contributed by Ben F. King, ML335224
• Regent Honeyeater audio contributed by Vicki Powys, ML223277
• Pink-footed Goose audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235508

E16. What if the secret to raising more babies was to never raise a single one yourself? Dr. Chris Balakrishnan, Associate Adjunct Professor of Biology at East Carolina University and co-founder of Nerd Nite, has spent his career studying the strangest birds on the planet: the ones that outsource parenthood entirely.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• The evolutionary arms race between brood parasites and their hosts, from mimetic eggs to alien-looking chick mouth patterns
• How the "password hypothesis" explains how brown-headed cowbirds avoid imprinting on the wrong species
• Why host-switching in African parasitic finches can drive the rapid formation of new species

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:

• Brown-headed Cowbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94262
• Brown-headed Cowbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML516718
• Redhead audio contributed by Jessie Berry, ML139672
• Canvasback audio contributed by Arthur A. Allen, ML3537
• Greater Honeyguide audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML140981
• Pin-tailed Whydah audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML14489
• Village Indigobird audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML14484
• Zebra Finch (Australian) audio contributed by Vicki Powys, ML226233
• Prothonotary Warbler audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML85158
• Kirtland's Warbler audio contributed by Rudolph Little, ML13982

E15. Most people picture a bird-friendly yard and imagine feeder, birdbath, maybe a decorative birdhouse with mortgage vibes. And feeders are great. But a feeder can give you the illusion of helping birds without creating the thing birds need most: habitat.

In this episode, Dr. Doug Tallamy, Professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, joins Scott to explain why your yard is conservation infrastructure in disguise, and what it actually takes to turn it into a place birds can live, breed, and thrive.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why "plant natives" is just the beginning, and which keystone plants actually move the needle for birds
• The surprising reason a beautiful all-native garden can still function like a food desert
• What Homegrown National Park is, and how your yard fits into a continent-wide conservation strategy

Ready to do more than feed birds? Join the Homegrown National Park pledge at homegrownnationalpark.org and start shifting your patch of earth.

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:

• Chestnut-sided warbler audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML191085
• Northern parula audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML79471
• Carolina chickadee audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML100756
• Oriental pied-hornbill audio contributed by Warren Y. Brockelman, ML170843
• Northern cardinal audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML249823
• Black-capped chickadee audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML202239

E14. What do feathers, toothless beaks, and a 66-million-year-old asteroid have in common. Paleontologist Dr. Daniel Field, University of Cambridge, joins Scott to unpack how birds evolved from dinosaurs, and why defining "bird" is trickier than you think.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why Archaeopteryx had half the features of a modern bird and lacked the other half, and what that tells us about 150 million years of evolution
• The "Wonderchicken," a tiny fossil from the border of Belgium and the Netherlands that rewrote what we know about birds surviving the asteroid impact
• How micro CT scanning lets scientists digitally peer inside rocks to study fossils at micron scale without ever touching them

Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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:

• Great Spotted Kiwi, William V. Ward, ML810
• Southern Cassowary, Linda Macaulay, ML57219
• Elegant Trogon, David L. Ross, Jr., ML199536
• Green Heron,, Bob McGuire, ML229117

Asteriornis imagery and video courtesy of Dr. Daniel Field, University of Cambridge.

E13. Some birds skip having their own families and spend years helping raise their siblings instead. It sounds like altruism, but it's probably more complicated than that. In this episode, host Dr. Scott Taylor is joined by Dr. Nancy Chen, UCLA, to unpack the notion that it takes a village to raise a child chick.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• Why some birds spend years as unpaid helpers before starting families of their own
• What the Florida Scrub-Jay's 50-year study at Archbold Biological Station revealed about cooperative breeding
• Whether helping your siblings is really altruism or just evolution doing it’s thing

If you enjoy this one, follow Okay, But... Birds and share it with a friend who thinks family is complicated.

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:

• Florida Scrub-Jay audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML229211
• American Crow video contributed by Jay McGowan, ML472843
• Superb Fairywren audio contributed by Vicki Powys, ML233810
• Superb Starling audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML14855
• Red-necked Phalarope audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235440
• Northern Jacana audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML140224