This episode—which is number 88—is all about owls. Owls are fascinating birds that have captured our imaginations since the dawn of humankind. They have amazing camouflage that allows them to blend in with their surroundings, and they have several other avian superpowers that set them apart from all other birds.

Owls are divided into two families—Tytonidae and Strigidae—and we'll be discussing both of them today.

Links of Interest

• Owl Notes–Denver Holt Shares the Short eared Owl's Courtship Flight [VIDEO]
• Long-whiskered Owlet (Xenoglaux loweryi) [VIDEO]
• The silent flight of an owl [VIDEO]
• Pellet.com
• What an Owl Knows [BOOK]

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This episode—which is Number 87—is all about some big news in the birding world. The common names for about 150 North American bird species are going to change in the not-too-distant future.

This comes from an announcement made by the American Ornithological Society just a few weeks ago, on November 1st.

I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk about this. It’s a hot topic among birders right now. People have been asking me what I think about all these birds getting renamed. And so here we are.

If you’re hearing about this for the first time, and you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry—I’ll explain.

Yes, this is primarily relevant to birds and the humans who love them in the Western Hemisphere. Mostly North America for now.

But similar changes may be on the horizon for your local birds, wherever you live. So I think you’ll find this interesting, even if you don’t live in the US or Canada.
 

Links of Interest

• American Ornithological Society (AOS) Council Statement on English Bird Names
• AOS Community Congress on English Bird Names [VIDEO]

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This episode—which is Number 86—is all about bird beaks.

This will be an overview of beak anatomy, function, evolution, and diversity.

The head of every bird on Earth is adorned with a beak. A bill. And to the delight of us all, those beaks come in a wild variety of shapes and colors.

Just picture the mugs of toucans, vultures, ducks, parrots, flamingos, and pelicans.

The diversity of beak shapes like these is one of the fascinating things about birds.

Birds use their beaks for all sorts of tasks. These appendages are vital tools, used for getting food, for grooming, for communication, and more.

 
Links of Interest

•  The Mark My Bird Project

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This episode—which is Number 85—is about the Meadowlarks of the world.

And it’s not just those three North American species: the Western, Eastern, and Chihuahuan.

There are actually 8 bird species we call meadowlarks. The other five are found primarily in South America. We’ll be talking about them today, too.

Meadowlarks belong to the New World Blackbird family, Icteridae. This family includes birds like Red-winged Blackbird, Baltimore Oriole, and the Great-tailed Grackle.

There’s a lot to admire about meadowlarks. The 3 yellow-breasted and 5 red-breasted meadowlark species bring color and music to the windswept grasslands of the Americas.

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This is Episode 84. Our topic today is the challenge of saving bird species that are very close to extinction. Species like the Spix’s Macaw, which have tiny global populations—whether in the wild, or in captivity.

Other familiar examples are the California Condor and the Whooping Crane, whose populations bottomed out at 22 and 23, respectively. Rigorous conservation programs have since given these two North American species a fighting chance at long-term survival.

This episode is about species that we almost lost forever, but with great effort we’ve kept them from disappearing.

Many of these species, like the California Condor, aren’t out of the woods yet. They may be in better shape now than they were a couple of decades ago, but they still need lots of help.

In this episode, we’re first going to look at some of the biggest challenges faced by conservationists as they try to save species on the brink.

Second, we’ll talk about the tools and methods used to save birds.

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This is Episode 83. It’s all about birds in the family Odontophoridae. These are the New World quails.

Why is this the family of "New World" quails?

Because there’s a whole mess of birds we call quails that live in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. But those birds all belong to the pheasant family, Phasianidae.

New World quails are shy birds ground-dwelling birds that walk or run around in the daytime, looking for tidbits of food in the leaf litter.

If they sense any kind of stranger danger, they hunker down and hide in bushes or other vegetation. Their first instinct is to sit still and rely on their camouflage, rather than to fly away.

These birds may be shy around strangers, but they’re generally very social with members of their own kind. They’re gregarious little buggers.

In this episode, I go into detail about what New World quails look and sound like, about their diversity, and about the ways they live their lives.

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This is Episode 82. It's all about the ways that scientists track the movements of individual birds.

The focus of today’s episode is not so much about the behaviors of birds, but about the technologies used by researchers to study bird behavior—the methods used to reveal the movements of birds.

And our focus will be on the tracking of individual birds. There are other methods scientists use to record the mass movements of birds, like using radar to track flocks of migrants. 

But today we’re looking at techniques that can reveal the unique paths taken by an individual bird—a sandpiper, a hawk, albatross, pheasant, penguin, or whoever.

 Links of Interest

•  Motus 

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This is Episode 81. It’s all about birds in the family Nectariniidae. These are the sunbirds and the spiderhunters.

If you live in or have gone birding in places like Africa, India, Southeast Asia, or Indonesia, you’re probably familiar with sunbirds. Consider yourself lucky.

But if you have no idea what a sunbird or a spiderhunter is, or if you have only a vague idea, I’m excited to introduce you to this group of wonderful birds today.

Links of Interest

• These sunbirds keep singin' their song [VIDEO]

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This is Episode 80. It's all about flightless birds, and about the evolutionary processes that lead to flightlessness.

Flightlessness in birds is, in my opinion, a fascinating scientific topic. And so here we are with this episode.

Alive on the planet today, there are about 60 bird species that can’t fly. That’s only about 0.54 percent of the world’s approximately 11,000 species.

It turns out there were way more flightless bird species out there before humans started exploring and colonizing every corner of the Earth. It wasn’t just the Dodo that was killed off by people.

In today’s episode, we’ll look at the wonderful diversity of flightless bird species—in both the present and the past. 

We’ll also talk about conservation and—perhaps the most interesting thing—the evolutionary process that leads to flightlessness. How does this weird thing happen in nature? What causes a bird species to give up its greatest superpower?

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This is Episode 79. It's all about the Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).

This is one of North America’s most common raptors. We find these birds from sea to shining sea across the continent.

The Redtail is a generalist predator. It can eat many kinds of prey and thrive in a broad range of habitats. Besides seeing these birds along the highway, you’re likely to spot a Red-tailed Hawk circling in the sky over a field, soaring or flapping slowly.

In this episode, I cover the key traits of the Red-tailed Hawk, it's diet, and its breeding behaviors.

 Links of Interest

• Red-tailed Hawk Project
• Red-tailed Hawk “kiting” [VIDEO]
• Red-tailed Hawk and Great Horned Owl fight over a nest [VIDEO]
• Pale Male, the Famous Central Park Hawk, Is Dead at 32. Maybe.

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