Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the contact lens that's definitely in the
Speaker 1: wrong eye. Alie Ward back with a long awaited episode.
Speaker 1: I've had my sight set on this ologist. I've been
Speaker 1: waiting to have her on literally for years. She's a
Speaker 1: busy dame. She's all over the news, she's leading movements,
Speaker 1: she's communicating science. She's tomping through salt marshes checking on
Speaker 1: little birdies, collecting data, and then just getting a dang
Speaker 1: master's degree in it. So this ologists got her bachelor's
Speaker 1: in zoo and wildlife biology from Alone University and just
Speaker 1: got her masters studying bird conservation at Georgia Southern University.
Speaker 1: I need to calm down. I need to chill out.
Speaker 1: I'm so thrilled for her. I'm so excited about this.
Speaker 1: We finally got to do this interview now that she
Speaker 1: has like two seconds to breathe. I've followed her on
Speaker 1: Twitter for a few years, and I've always had just
Speaker 1: a huge science crush on her. I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: have her on the show. She's hilarious and warm and smart,
Speaker 1: and she's so dedicated, so informative. We've done ornithology already,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't sure which ology would be the most appropriate.
Speaker 1: So we chatted before we rolled on the interview. When
Speaker 1: people think of wildlife ecology, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: them are like, I love being outdoors, I love where
Speaker 1: human animals. How can I be a wildlife you know,
Speaker 1: without being a veterinarian or someone who ends up on
Speaker 1: a tiger documentary? Right right, anything under that umbrella, like
Speaker 1: or the wildlife ecology umbrella would be totally cool.
Speaker 2: All right, cool, we can focus it on field work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's a lot of talk of fieldwork, and
Speaker 1: also there's a lot of cackling on my end because
Speaker 1: she makes me cackle a lot. But before we get
Speaker 1: the interview, a quick thank you to everyone who's submitted
Speaker 1: questions for this ologist. At patreon dot com slash ologies,
Speaker 1: it costs just a dollar a month to join that
Speaker 1: behind the scenes family. Thank you to everyone who sends
Speaker 1: the podcast to friends and families and exes and bumble matches.
Speaker 1: Everyone who subscribes that helps so much, and everyone who
Speaker 1: rates and leads reviews keeps it up in the charts. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, I creep on them like someone hiding in
Speaker 1: a bush with a pirate telescope, and then I pick
Speaker 1: one to read each week. This week, thank you to
Speaker 1: Radar the Cat who wrote imagine getting a pedicure with
Speaker 1: your girlfriend while howling with laughter about toadspooping. You will
Speaker 1: laugh out loud the most unlikely, hidden and obscure scientific
Speaker 1: marvels and cry sometimes too. So thanks to everyone who
Speaker 1: left for reviews this week. I saw them all. They
Speaker 1: warmed my paternal heart. Okay, onward, Wildlife ecology. What is
Speaker 1: this field?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: It involves studying animals in their natural habitats and figuring
Speaker 1: out what effect people have on animals and then coming
Speaker 1: up with scientifically sound solutions for conservation and to protect them.
Speaker 1: So critter learners and protectors. Some wildlife ecologists are out
Speaker 1: in the field a bunch checking on their animals. And
Speaker 1: one thing I love so much about this ologist's psychom
Speaker 1: is how she brings us into the field with her.
Speaker 1: So in this episode we talk about seaside sparrows, wetlands, saltwater, marshes,
Speaker 1: fluffy mud, getting laughed at by birds, sweat swamps, nests, snails,
Speaker 1: whether or not you should ditch your bird feeder, midnight minx,
Speaker 1: and practical fieldwork dilemmas that will shock and maybe change
Speaker 1: you forever. So gear up, hunger down, and get ready
Speaker 1: to observe the majesty of bird nerd ornithologist, zoologist, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite scientists and someone I'm honored to possibly
Speaker 1: introduce you to. Wildlife ecologist Karina Newsom.
Speaker 2: My name is Karina Newsom, and I see her pronouns awesome.
Speaker 1: You are a wildlife ecologist?
Speaker 2: Correct, yes, yes, yes, indeed, how.
Speaker 1: Many ologists have you been because you've also been a zoologist,
Speaker 1: you're an ornithologist, Like, let's count how many how many
Speaker 1: we call you?
Speaker 2: It's been a few ologists. I think. I started out
Speaker 2: in the realm of wildlife, messing with beetles like a
Speaker 2: beatle hotologist. There is a more official name for.
Speaker 1: That coleopterology, study of beatles and weavils. Say it with
Speaker 1: me now.
Speaker 2: And then I moved over to zoo keeping and focusing
Speaker 2: on zoo science, so you know, zoology may be a
Speaker 2: more appropriate term there. And then now ornithology has become
Speaker 2: really my whole life, and so most of the work
Speaker 2: that I do now, whether it's you know, field science
Speaker 2: or it's community outreach, it's centered around ornithology.
Speaker 1: When did you kind of end up if you will
Speaker 1: migrating down that ornithological path. How did you feel when
Speaker 1: you started in the zookeeper world? Can you tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so birds really started singing my name. We just
Speaker 2: want to roll with the punts here. When I was
Speaker 2: forced to take ornithology and undergrad, which I was definitely
Speaker 2: not excited about because I knew nothing about native birds,
Speaker 2: and that's what the kind of class was focused on.
Speaker 2: It was a field class. But when I got into
Speaker 2: the class and I was introduced to the blue jay,
Speaker 2: something about the blue jay is so magical, the beautiful colors,
Speaker 2: the mimicry, the cognition, all of it together, I really,
Speaker 2: you know, immediately was fixated on birds and have been
Speaker 2: chasing them ever since. And so even though I didn't
Speaker 2: necessarily study birds until further down the line in grad
Speaker 2: school recently, starting in twenty eighteen, that's essentially when my
Speaker 2: migration direction was oriented. That ornithology class set me on
Speaker 2: my course.
Speaker 1: Was it something also about their behavior? Blue jays are corvids, right.
Speaker 2: Mm hm oh yeah, yeah, And I know, you know Kaylee,
Speaker 2: who's the corvid queen.
Speaker 1: See the twenty eighteen Corvid Sanatology episode with doctor Kaylee
Speaker 1: Swift aka Corvid Research. On Twitter, we discuss crow funerals.
Speaker 1: They sometimes involve small orgies with the dead. Yes, but yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: Along with pros and ravens, blue jays are a corvid.
Speaker 2: Corvids in general are simply the most incredible birds, and
Speaker 2: they are also the birds that I think get the
Speaker 2: most hate, you know, between the ravens and the crows.
Speaker 2: People think the blackbirds are kind of bad omens associated
Speaker 2: with death, you know, think about the birds the Hitchcock movie.
Speaker 4: All this, right, they're not aggressive, creatiousness. They bring beauty
Speaker 4: into the world the chaos. Some people don't like blue
Speaker 4: jays because they can oftentimes scare other birds off the
Speaker 4: feeder because they either directly kind of just like push
Speaker 4: birds off, or they can mimic the sounds of raptors nearby,
Speaker 4: and so the birds think there's a threat that's not there.
Speaker 4: But you know, they can very much manipulate their environment
Speaker 4: to get access to the food.
Speaker 2: But to me, that's just like a mark of their
Speaker 2: incredible cognition and like there's no end to the tunnel
Speaker 2: that is corvid's and then we're always learning so much
Speaker 2: about them. They can use tools, they can build tools,
Speaker 2: like there's just really no limit.
Speaker 1: I know that they always take the peanuts that I
Speaker 1: put out for their crows and the ravens first. They
Speaker 1: were always like I'm in and them out and they
Speaker 1: get all the peanuts and I'm like, well, I was
Speaker 1: leaving those out for whatever bird got them first. So
Speaker 1: blue jays, you were less afraid to get the peanut.
Speaker 1: Peanut is yours.
Speaker 2: Every picture you see of a blue jay there's a
Speaker 2: peanut or two in its mouth, So that makes sense
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the ballsy bird gets the nut. I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's something about what it is. But what did like,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about where you grew up.
Speaker 1: You're from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: I'm from Philadelphia, which in theory is in Pennsylvania. But
Speaker 2: if you're from Philly, do you not associate with Pennsylvania?
Speaker 2: I got no idea stand.
Speaker 1: It up in the What is it like for someone
Speaker 1: growing up in Philly? Like what kind of wildlife or
Speaker 1: what kind of animals or zoos did you grow up with?
Speaker 2: So as an adult, I'm realizing that there was a
Speaker 2: lot more wildlife around that I was aware of. I
Speaker 2: didn't really have like environmental educators in my academic or
Speaker 2: you know, educational experience as a kid, so I was
Speaker 2: not aware of it. But apparently we got everything from
Speaker 2: like coyotes to big old snapping turtles to all kinds
Speaker 2: of birds. Growing up. The only thing that I really
Speaker 2: noticed were like the robins every few years, you know,
Speaker 2: when they would migrate through. My mom would be like,
Speaker 2: the robins are back, and that was really all that
Speaker 2: I noticed about the birds. And of course we would
Speaker 2: occasionally see a nice gray squirrel. We also would like
Speaker 2: find these brown little snakes, which I still don't know
Speaker 2: what they are, and my memory they're just kind of
Speaker 2: like seared in my mind as a brown snake that
Speaker 2: we would find in a field. So I didn't think
Speaker 2: there was a whole lot growing up, but apparently there is.
Speaker 2: But we do have a really awesome zoo called the
Speaker 2: Philadelphia Zoo, which is the first zoo in the country actually,
Speaker 2: which is not great historically, right, zoos not start out
Speaker 2: as like honorable institutions whatsoever for people or wildlife, but
Speaker 2: they are now real conservation leaders in the realm of
Speaker 2: wildlife conservation. And that's actually where I got my start
Speaker 2: in wildlife conservation. When I was offered an internship at
Speaker 2: the zoo. There was a sister of a friend from
Speaker 2: my church who was the lead carnivor keeper at the
Speaker 2: Philly Zoo. And she was a black woman from like
Speaker 2: my general neighborhood. And it was just it was almost
Speaker 2: like my stars aligned and that's that's how I ended
Speaker 2: up getting through the gates.
Speaker 1: And she was a carnivor keeper.
Speaker 2: The lead the lead cartivor keeper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of meat freezers were involved, Like.
Speaker 2: So she would she really, She took me behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: showed me literally everything from the meat freezer is to
Speaker 2: like the stacks of paperwork to like reading in danger carnivors.
Speaker 2: Like she she specialized in giant river otters. Actually yeah,
Speaker 2: and like I still have a note in my purse
Speaker 2: that was ten Oh my god, that was ten years ago.
Speaker 2: She wrote a note for me when I was eighteen,
Speaker 2: like if you want to study giant outers because that
Speaker 2: was really into it. She was like, call this number.
Speaker 2: It links you to South America, to this woman who
Speaker 2: I have that note with me to this day, just
Speaker 2: in case the birds turn on me.
Speaker 1: But what a passport just into like if you're into this,
Speaker 1: there's a home for you.
Speaker 2: Look seriously and I can't never forget it.
Speaker 1: At the zoo. Did you ever get to put on
Speaker 1: the headset and be like and this is you know?
Speaker 2: You know I did. I put on that mic. Yes,
Speaker 2: So whenever I had the opportunity to to like either
Speaker 2: yell or put on some sort of like voice amplifier,
Speaker 2: I absolutely did it. It was it was weird because
Speaker 2: I was absolutely I lied my way through the interview
Speaker 2: for that because I should.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: They're like, do you like talking in front of people?
Speaker 2: I had never spoken in front of a crowd of
Speaker 2: more than five people in my life. Oh I love Yes,
Speaker 2: I love crowds. And they're like, you know, do you
Speaker 2: like kids? Can't stand kids, couldn't put me in the
Speaker 2: nursery at church, could do not put me near a job.
Speaker 2: I was like, yes, I love the children, you know.
Speaker 2: And I got the job and I was I went
Speaker 2: in shaking and sweating. But like I by the end
Speaker 2: of my first internship, I when I tell you the microphone,
Speaker 2: the amplified voice, me gathering crowds to tell them about
Speaker 2: what look that was like where I thrived? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: what did you love so much about it? I like,
Speaker 2: I started to realize that, like excitement was infectious. So
Speaker 2: I was never faking how excited I was about the
Speaker 2: information I was sharing, And I realized that when I
Speaker 2: was very obvious about how excited I was. At first,
Speaker 2: I tried to be reserved, but when I really started
Speaker 2: to kind of let it out and let it loose,
Speaker 2: I was like, everybody in this room is excited now, Okay,
Speaker 2: So we just kind of kept feeding my energy around
Speaker 2: the educating of the public about wildlife and so it yeah,
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: It was incredible, and you still obviously are doing that
Speaker 1: on Twitter and on Instagram, like you're one of my
Speaker 1: favorite science follows. You're one of those like very much
Speaker 1: hashtag ff This person immediately can rich your timeline. You
Speaker 1: are welcome seriously follow hood Naturalist on all platforms. You
Speaker 1: are welcome in advance. Karina is amazing. Okay. So she
Speaker 1: got her bachelor's in zoo and wildlife biology and went
Speaker 1: back the zoo route doing environmental education there. But she
Speaker 1: says that life can be tough as you're working your
Speaker 1: way up the ranks in zoos. Though you may love
Speaker 1: the job, you could have just graduated college but making
Speaker 1: nine bucks an hour. So she had already begun doing
Speaker 1: research as a senior in college, answering questions about carnivorous beetles,
Speaker 1: and she decided to head to graduate school. And you know,
Speaker 1: in a zoo, you take animals and you put them
Speaker 1: in your environment, but when it comes to field work,
Speaker 1: you were doing the exact opposite, pretty much by nature.
Speaker 2: What was your.
Speaker 1: First kind of field work expedition?
Speaker 2: So my first entrance into field work was actually in
Speaker 2: graduate school. So after graduating undergrad, I had worked as
Speaker 2: a zoo keeper for almost four years, and you know,
Speaker 2: as I said, always kind of oriented toward birds. I
Speaker 2: was like, whatever I do next, I wanted it to
Speaker 2: be about birds and studying birds. And so when I
Speaker 2: started applying to grad school and looking for an advisor,
Speaker 2: I found one who was studying the kind of research
Speaker 2: I wanted to do. She was in South Georgia, and
Speaker 2: so I did a phone interview with her, and she
Speaker 2: saw my resume that had never been in the field before,
Speaker 2: which was it was just concerning can be concerning, particularly
Speaker 2: in a place like South Georgia, where it's super hot,
Speaker 2: the insects are otherworldly, and there's just a number of
Speaker 2: factors that might scare someone away, but she took a
Speaker 2: chance on me. Right. So this city girl, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, really kind of like not about surprising bugs,
Speaker 2: went down to South Georgia and started field work. And
Speaker 2: so I took the call. I answered the call, and
Speaker 2: I went down to South Georgia to start studying birds
Speaker 2: and my first field season, I have to say. So
Speaker 2: I was living in It's bizarre because it's not just
Speaker 2: the work in field work that can be challenging exciting, right,
Speaker 2: also the field housing where you live to do the
Speaker 2: field words is its own plot line.
Speaker 1: Buckle up for a situation many of us haven't considered
Speaker 1: when it comes to the challenges of being a wildlife phycologist.
Speaker 2: So I was living in South like on the coast
Speaker 2: of Georgia, studying this little bird called the seaside sparrow.
Speaker 2: And I was living on this massive property. It was
Speaker 2: actually a previous slave plantation. That's a whole other thing,
Speaker 2: oh my god. But it was five thousand acres of
Speaker 2: straight up woods and I was in a small cabin
Speaker 2: in the middle of it, like smack dab. And I
Speaker 2: had never been in the forest in my life, like
Speaker 2: for that long, living subjected to the whipper wills and
Speaker 2: the chimney swifts that were procreating in the chimney. You know,
Speaker 2: both birds, right, I love them when I tell you
Speaker 2: they got into my head. Ali, fieldwork is a is
Speaker 2: a whole, it's a it's its own world.
Speaker 1: Let's back up a second. How, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a really naive question, but how and how do you
Speaker 1: end up staying on a former slave plantation?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How does that? Who decides that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So for students, graduate students or undergraduate students, when
Speaker 2: you're doing field work and you know, not close to
Speaker 2: where you live, you have to find field housing and
Speaker 2: usually you can either pay for it, you know, like
Speaker 2: rent an apartment or something like that. But if you
Speaker 2: don't have money for that, I was, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't have money to pay two rents, right. I had
Speaker 2: my own apartment back near my school, and my professor
Speaker 2: it was her first year. Usually professors don't even take
Speaker 2: students in their first year, but she took me. So
Speaker 2: there wasn't really money to pay for me to live
Speaker 2: somewhere else. And so there is this massive government owned
Speaker 2: wildlife management area where they house people doing research on
Speaker 2: Georgia's coast and it just happened to be an area
Speaker 2: that was reclaimed from the owner's previous owners of it,
Speaker 2: and before that it was a slave plantation. And because
Speaker 2: of the weird culture and like very toxic and kind
Speaker 2: of upsetting culture on the coast of Georgia, like they
Speaker 2: want to preserve a lot of the structures, and they
Speaker 2: want to preserve all the houses, and they want to
Speaker 2: preserve the way it used to be. And I'm just
Speaker 2: like excited, right, So I was just thankful to have
Speaker 2: somewhere to live. But I was like, this is kind
Speaker 2: of like very disturbing. Right. You could literally see the
Speaker 2: houses where like my enslaved ancestors were forced to live
Speaker 2: to work this land that I'm now recreating on and
Speaker 2: kind of like having a blast looking for birds and
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like it just was. It
Speaker 2: was surreal and disturbing. Sometimes it obviously was prompted me
Speaker 2: to be pretty reflective about just the fact that I
Speaker 2: was doing what I was doing, especially you know where
Speaker 2: I was doing it. No one seemed phased by it,
Speaker 2: Like no one I ever spoke with there was ever
Speaker 2: said anything about it. But I you know, I knew
Speaker 2: it was going on. It was very obvious look, it was.
Speaker 2: It was weird. I still haven't even fully processed that
Speaker 2: that situation. Yeah, but it was disorienting a little.
Speaker 1: Yeah, were there any other people of color that were
Speaker 1: doing field work with you or was that isolating? Like
Speaker 1: double and from a social level as well.
Speaker 2: The young woman who was helping me collect data that
Speaker 2: summer is with a black woman, and so we were
Speaker 2: kind of weathering it together. And I told her before
Speaker 2: she moved there, like, hey, this is what's up. My
Speaker 2: advisor also do the same thing. Before I agreed to
Speaker 2: even be in her lap. She was like, this is
Speaker 2: where the research is happening. This is what I've seen,
Speaker 2: this is what racist white people have felt comfortable saying
Speaker 2: around me when I'm down here. Like she gave me
Speaker 2: the whole rundown, So I didn't go in, you know,
Speaker 2: not knowing what I was getting into. We basically like
Speaker 2: stuck it out together, and we're extremely cognizant of the
Speaker 2: way that white people were kind of interacting with the
Speaker 2: land and like seemed oblivious as to its history or
Speaker 2: at least undisturbed by it. But yeah, it was kind
Speaker 2: of like we had each other's backs out there, and
Speaker 2: the wild thing ally is that the following year twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: this past summer, I was going to live there again,
Speaker 2: but they were going to put me in the actual
Speaker 2: house where they had the enslaved people, like that's where
Speaker 2: I was going to have to live. And I was like,
Speaker 2: y'all have y'all have lost your minds? Yeah, like if
Speaker 2: y'all don't, man it just the whole situation is just
Speaker 2: very unsettling down there, to be honest.
Speaker 1: I remember you posting about that and yeah, being gutted
Speaker 1: that that was another thing that you had to consider. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the wake of a pretty tense election year as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just like thank you because I didn't have
Speaker 2: to live there because you and the ologite to the way,
Speaker 2: is that what we're called? Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. I
Speaker 2: thought I messed it up, like really like rally behind
Speaker 2: me donated money so that I did not have to
Speaker 2: live in that like you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: that was going to be awful and I was able
Speaker 2: to stay, you know, in a safe place, and so
Speaker 2: I'm very extremely grateful, so grateful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, yes, Ologites may have seen Karina's post regrammed last summer,
Speaker 1: and for as much as social media could suck a
Speaker 1: lot of us dry on the day to day. Just
Speaker 1: knowing that we can use it to rally around someone
Speaker 1: who deserves better is really powerful. So thank you to
Speaker 1: all the ologites who saw that post and who tossed
Speaker 1: in a few bucks to get fellow ologite and ologist
Speaker 1: Karina into better housing for field work. It would be
Speaker 1: so amazing if people getting a master's didn't have to
Speaker 1: pay double rent or stay somewhere dangerous or traumatizing. But yes,
Speaker 1: when you think about a wildlife ecologist, you may envision
Speaker 1: things like test tubes and pipettes and butterplanets, but the
Speaker 1: day to day realities can be much more complex when
Speaker 1: you're doing field work in South Georgia or wherever you are.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit, like, what is
Speaker 1: the day like for a wildlife ecologist? I'm picturing. I'm picturing.
Speaker 1: Your alarm goes off at four thirty, you are dressed
Speaker 1: with some sort of rubber pants on, and you have
Speaker 1: a thermos of coffee. By five am you're at the door.
Speaker 2: True, that is true on Sundays, however, actually no coffee
Speaker 2: because you'll get the runs in the marsh and you
Speaker 2: don't want the runs so I was working in a
Speaker 2: coastal salt marsh, tidal salt marsh. The high tide happened
Speaker 2: twice a day where I was on the Atlantic coast,
Speaker 2: and so your life is dictated by the tides, and
Speaker 2: high tides shift by an hour every day, and you
Speaker 2: don't want to be there on either side of the
Speaker 2: high tide. You could very easily drown in like two
Speaker 2: feet of water because of the way the marsh mud
Speaker 2: is set up. Because when you're walking in the marsh,
Speaker 2: you are in mud all the time. But sometimes that
Speaker 2: mud just lets go of you, breaks your trust completely,
Speaker 2: and you sink up to like your waist. Right if
Speaker 2: you're by yourself, which is what I was for a
Speaker 2: lot of the time, especially twenty twenty, as you try
Speaker 2: to get out, you can sink yourself in more. And
Speaker 2: this is with no water. Think imagine there's two feet
Speaker 2: of water to work with, right, you could literally drown.
Speaker 2: So anyway, the point being you don't want to be
Speaker 2: out there near high tide. So some days high tide
Speaker 2: was at a certain hour. That meant that I had
Speaker 2: to get up really really early in the morning, never
Speaker 2: before the birds though, So that was good. I don't
Speaker 2: have to be awake before the birds because they get
Speaker 2: up early, but right around when birds start getting active
Speaker 2: at sunrise, which is usually around like five thirty six am.
Speaker 2: And so some days I would be out there really
Speaker 2: early if the tides were lowest at that time. And
Speaker 2: then some days it was like, oh, no, low tide's
Speaker 2: going to be in the middle of the day, like
Speaker 2: where there's not a cloud in sight, no sea breeze.
Speaker 2: You'll see the sea, but we're not going to give
Speaker 2: you any breeze.
Speaker 1: So Crana says it was intense and news to me.
Speaker 1: If you zoom on a map of eastern Georgia and
Speaker 1: then you zoom in a little further, you'll see that
Speaker 1: the coast aligne isn't so much a line as it's
Speaker 1: like an ombree like a balliage of sea fading from
Speaker 1: ocean to barrier islands to estuaries and tributaries that feather inland.
Speaker 1: So toggle you're zoomedm map to a satellite view, and
Speaker 1: you will see patches of tall marsh plants called cord
Speaker 1: grass between these threads of creeks and waterways that reach
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty miles inward. It's a giant, fertile wetland
Speaker 1: left after the Last Ice Age twelve thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: once exploited for rice farming, but rising and falling twice
Speaker 1: a day and just teeming with life.
Speaker 2: When I tell you, there is no place like Georgia's coast,
Speaker 2: there is no place like Georgia's salt marshes. It is
Speaker 2: golden out there alley, golden never seen.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know what the difference is between
Speaker 1: a marsh and a bog, and a swamp and a land.
Speaker 2: What is it? So marshes are a kind of wetland.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes swamps tend to be freshwater. Coastal salt marshes are saltwater.
Speaker 2: They're tidle. As I said just now, So there is.
Speaker 2: It is an extremely dynamic environment. Something is always changing,
Speaker 2: whether it's water flowing. And when I tell you when
Speaker 2: the tide is going out or coming in, that water
Speaker 2: is rushing in alley. It is watching. It is like
Speaker 2: am I in a movie like this can't like you'll
Speaker 2: literally just see the water like pouring into the creeks.
Speaker 2: It's like this is Things live here, Things survive here
Speaker 2: and have adapted to like thrive right. Salt everywhere, water
Speaker 2: rushing in and out constantly in one direction or the other. Man,
Speaker 2: It's yeah.
Speaker 1: Obviously there are sparrows there, but what other kind of
Speaker 1: critters are in there? Like if you had to give
Speaker 1: me a who's who of like who's going to be
Speaker 1: at the salt marsh party?
Speaker 2: And this is actually the problem because I will get
Speaker 2: so distracted out there. I'm like, I'm here to find nests.
Speaker 2: I need to find the nests. But look at this crab.
Speaker 2: So in the invertebrate section you have your periwinkle snails,
Speaker 2: which are apparently not native, which is a problem, but
Speaker 2: very cool to look at. They are in the millions
Speaker 2: out in the marsh, like, sliding up and down the grass,
Speaker 2: moving in the mud.
Speaker 1: These little sea snails, by the bye, are not a
Speaker 1: purplish blue like they're floral homonyms. I looked it up
Speaker 1: expecting to find a bunch of blue snails, but they're
Speaker 1: actually kind of mud colored. And their name comes from
Speaker 1: a root meaning spiral muscle. So they slide up and
Speaker 1: down the marsh's cord grass, asping fungus off of the blades,
Speaker 1: which first off licking dinner off a blade. Incredibly goth,
Speaker 1: very intimidating, but the cord grass is kind of like, actually,
Speaker 1: your spiny tongues are leaving me more susceptible to worst fungus,
Speaker 1: if you don't mind. But the snails are abundant and
Speaker 1: very cute, and some people eat them.
Speaker 2: They would definitely be at the salt Marsh cookout. You
Speaker 2: have the fiddler crabs, which are these stars of the show, Ali.
Speaker 2: So fiddler crabs as you might not have, like the
Speaker 2: one have one big claw and one small claw. The
Speaker 2: males do, and they are carricter. I'm like, crabs are characters, Ali,
Speaker 2: and you add one big claw and it's just like
Speaker 2: I could watch this crab all day, sun beating down,
Speaker 2: sunscreen melted off me. I could sit here all day.
Speaker 2: And they come in beautiful colors and they just have
Speaker 2: like drama between each other. You'll see them chasing each other.
Speaker 2: It's just like telenovela or crabs. And so it's just
Speaker 2: so much happening in the crab world. And there's different
Speaker 2: species of crabs out there as well, but fiddler crabs
Speaker 2: take the cake. And then in the mammal category you
Speaker 2: have not as many different kinds, but you have raccoons.
Speaker 2: You have rice rats, which are rats that are adapted
Speaker 2: to this like semi aquatic environment and mink. Mink are
Speaker 2: super secretive. They are all kind of secretive mink you
Speaker 2: will probably never see with your eyeballs. I only ever
Speaker 2: saw them on the camera trap. But rice rats they
Speaker 2: build their nests in the marsh, and I've like seen
Speaker 2: little babies like running around and they killed the seaside sparrows.
Speaker 2: So in theory, I'm supposed to be like, ah, you
Speaker 2: know or whatever, but I love I love them all.
Speaker 2: I love the rice rats. These stuckers can swim too.
Speaker 2: They swim across a fast moving RiPP I mean beeline
Speaker 2: across no problem.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask how they stay out of the tide,
Speaker 1: but they just don't the tide.
Speaker 2: They go in it. So yeah, they're not playing.
Speaker 1: I loved up rice rats. And they look like rats
Speaker 1: but with a very boopable little nose and a white belly.
Speaker 1: And also they'll paddle across a swamp giving not a
Speaker 1: fuck in the world, something that your motorcycle riding uncle
Speaker 1: is probably too scared to do.
Speaker 2: And then in the bird realm, of course, like like
Speaker 2: you said, the seaside sparrows, which is what I studied,
Speaker 2: but I mean every size color shape. You can imagine
Speaker 2: great egrets which are all white, yellow beaks. You have
Speaker 2: rosate spoonbills which are pink and have spoon shaped bills.
Speaker 2: You have woodstorks that sound like death came back to
Speaker 2: life when they vocalize. Sometimes you get like a tricolored
Speaker 2: heron which they just sneak up on you. Usually you
Speaker 2: can kind of hear birds beating their wings around you
Speaker 2: to like warn you they're coming. These bad boys will
Speaker 2: just be behind you. You don't know it, and they
Speaker 2: let out a nice heron squawk, which sounds very much
Speaker 2: like a dinosaur. Very interesting creatures out there, and.
Speaker 1: What kind of like I don't even know how you
Speaker 1: start your field work because like how far are you
Speaker 1: tramping out? And are there nest sites that you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's nest number twenty six A, this is nest number
Speaker 1: twenty sixteed. How do you even get the lay of
Speaker 1: the land?
Speaker 2: You got a spot on, So just to kind of
Speaker 2: give you a picture of what the marsh looks like,
Speaker 2: there's a big old you know, all this grass that's
Speaker 2: lining basically the ocean and there's these little creeks that
Speaker 2: cut into it from the big water around the marks
Speaker 2: and seaside sparrows put their nests on the creek and
Speaker 2: there's usually one pair in there for one nest at
Speaker 2: a time per creek.
Speaker 1: So think of the creeks in the marsh like freeways
Speaker 1: and saltwater. Sparrows are kind of making their nests on
Speaker 1: the shoulder of the road, just like beepe pull over,
Speaker 1: make a house, have some babies.
Speaker 2: So it's not just like walking directly out into the marsh.
Speaker 2: It's walking up and down each side of these creeks
Speaker 2: looking for nests, which I actually you know, it's so funny.
Speaker 2: While I was doing this the research, I was like
Speaker 2: how far am I walking every day? But I was
Speaker 2: afraid that if I actually knew the number, I would
Speaker 2: like not be able to do it anymore because I
Speaker 2: would be freaked out. So I forgot to calculate how
Speaker 2: far I was walking every day. I'll have to find
Speaker 2: that out, but a lot, a lot, And I usually
Speaker 2: there is about four to six hours that you have
Speaker 2: between high tides where the water is like not dangerous,
Speaker 2: and so in that five six hour period, I would
Speaker 2: be walking up and down these tidle creeks, usually about
Speaker 2: fifteen of them or so, looking for nests. And just
Speaker 2: like you said, like each one is labeled with some
Speaker 2: kind of number letter combination GPS mark, so I know
Speaker 2: where it is. You know, some measurements taken, like how
Speaker 2: many eggs are in here? How high is this nest
Speaker 2: off the ground because they build their nests kind of
Speaker 2: elevated in the grass, and looking for these nests feels
Speaker 2: basically impossible, and I don't even know how I graduated.
Speaker 2: They're made of marsh grass and they're hidden by marsh grass,
Speaker 2: so it's literally like there's nothing about the nest that
Speaker 2: isn't the marsh, but you're looking through.
Speaker 1: The So the birdies make these nests side note with
Speaker 1: an overhanging dome to hide the off white and chocolate
Speaker 1: speckled eggs because when the tides rise, their little eggy
Speaker 1: babies might just float and bob away for a bit,
Speaker 1: so the top of the dome nest keeps them from
Speaker 1: drifting off. So just imagine you're a new parent, the
Speaker 1: bassinet containing your triplets or quadruplets just periodically floods from
Speaker 1: the bottom like a rowboat with a weak naturally smack
Speaker 1: a top on there so they don't flood away when
Speaker 1: you're off eating bugs. But when you're out doing field
Speaker 1: work looking for nests made of grass in the grass
Speaker 1: and you can't see them, what are their senses can
Speaker 1: you use? I would give up and use my blood
Speaker 1: as money to consult an oracle, but Koreena is a
Speaker 1: better field scientist and I am.
Speaker 2: So I would have to use the behavior of the parents.
Speaker 2: So I'd be walking through the marsh and as soon
Speaker 2: as I heard this like chipping sound, it's like chip
Speaker 2: chip chip, I was like, okay, it's a game of
Speaker 2: Marco Polo now, and so I'm like moving around making
Speaker 2: some sounds to kind of prompt the parents to basically
Speaker 2: let me know when I'm close, and they would get
Speaker 2: real excited when you get close to the nest, and
Speaker 2: that's how you zero in on its location. And I
Speaker 2: have literally walked in circles for three hours before looking
Speaker 2: for a nest because I heard you it. Yeah, oh
Speaker 2: my god. There have been some extreme kind of like
Speaker 2: Marco Polo standoffs out in the marsh, but yeah, that's
Speaker 2: kind of what it looks like to go look in
Speaker 2: for those seasides nests.
Speaker 1: Do they have a vocalization that means that they're laughing
Speaker 1: at you?
Speaker 2: Listen when I tell you about the end of my
Speaker 2: field season, I was convinced that every animal out there
Speaker 2: was against me, and that the Seaside Sparrow has hired them.
Speaker 2: So I would have been surprised if they had laughing
Speaker 2: at me sounds. I'm sure they. I'm sure they did.
Speaker 1: What are you and what are you looking for? Are
Speaker 1: you looking to see? Like how many eggs do they have?
Speaker 1: Has anyone parasitized them? What are you writing down? And
Speaker 1: is it a clipboard or moleskin or what horor your
Speaker 1: phone notes?
Speaker 2: Good question. So my overarching question for the Seaside Sparrow
Speaker 2: was understanding nest predation and how it varied across the
Speaker 2: landscape as you get closer to certain variables like closeness
Speaker 2: to the road nearby roads or closeness to the water
Speaker 2: body that the marsh was lining. To see if there
Speaker 2: was a spatial pattern to where nest predation threat was highest,
Speaker 2: and so I would use a write in the rain
Speaker 2: notebook that is waterproof and thank god because it literally
Speaker 2: just caked in My My advisor was like Kreda, how
Speaker 2: do you do this to your I said, look, the
Speaker 2: mars done it to me first, okay, but yeah, So
Speaker 2: I would write down all the information I was collecting,
Speaker 2: nest height, number of eggs, and I would go back
Speaker 2: every few days and check on nests that I had
Speaker 2: already found to see if there had been any nests lost.
Speaker 2: And some nests even have video cameras on them, so
Speaker 2: that I could identify the species of predator that was
Speaker 2: depredating those.
Speaker 1: Nests, what was eating them?
Speaker 2: Ooh, when I tell you drama unfolds, I thought the
Speaker 2: crabs had a monopoly on the drama. Absolutely not. So
Speaker 2: I was studying specifically mammalian predators, right, but obviously, like
Speaker 2: when you have a camera on a nest, you get
Speaker 2: all of the plot line. So I was finding mammals
Speaker 2: like the ones I mentioned, like raccoons, marsh rice rats,
Speaker 2: as well as American mink. But come to find out,
Speaker 2: marsh wrens Okay, wrens are known for being extraordinarily territorial
Speaker 2: during the breeding season. They will do anything to kind
Speaker 2: of keep control of the resources around their nests the space.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So one day, you know, and my advisor was like,
Speaker 2: I think marsh frends are a killing seaside squrow eggs.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, and she never put a camera
Speaker 2: out there. I put a camera out there, Allie. When
Speaker 2: I tell you I saw a marsh fren fly over
Speaker 2: to the nest, I said, wait, so I'm just watching
Speaker 2: hours and hours of video, right, So it seemed like
Speaker 2: it had been watching the mother because it came as
Speaker 2: soon as the mother left the nest. So I assume
Speaker 2: go find food. So first it lands on the edge
Speaker 2: of the nest and it's like looking at the eggs.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what do you about to do? It starts
Speaker 2: when I tell you, like, take with this whole chest,
Speaker 2: poking holes in the eggs. I'm talking about like bam bam,
Speaker 2: bam bam, and just not just one, like one would
Speaker 2: have been more than enough to kill the egg. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about bam bam bam, bad man. Right, And then
Speaker 2: it isn't up there right, It starts drinking the egg.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, okay, now you're a predator as well.
Speaker 2: And then Ali, it picks the egg up and just
Speaker 2: throws it out of the nest. When I tell you, wow,
Speaker 2: I because I had found there have been several instances
Speaker 2: where there would be an active nest with like several
Speaker 2: eggs in it, and then I'll come back and check
Speaker 2: it out the next time, and it wouldn't be like
Speaker 2: there would be egg fragments, you know, and like a
Speaker 2: you know, a yoki inside like a rat had made
Speaker 2: a meal of an egg. They would just be gone,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, what what is happen? Like I literally
Speaker 2: could not figure out what why that was happening. Turns out,
Speaker 2: these little wrens that are half the size of a
Speaker 2: seaside sparrow, they are competitors that stop at absolutely nothing,
Speaker 2: nothing at all.
Speaker 1: Bam, killing, bam, drinking, bam, getting rid of the evidence.
Speaker 1: Ren life is like a Salt Marsh mad Max Apocalypse
Speaker 1: film about a zombie hi on Flakka who was also
Speaker 1: undercover in the CIA, which is a film heads up
Speaker 1: I would pay to see. Was this the first time
Speaker 1: that it had really been observed because you had camera traps?
Speaker 2: That's right? Yeah, So other other wrens species, like I
Speaker 2: think I'm gonna say, like maybe Carolina rens and I
Speaker 2: think houserens have been observed doing this kind of behavior
Speaker 2: where they're killing eggs, sometimes killing the already hatched offspring
Speaker 2: of even other of their own species to kind of
Speaker 2: maintain control of the monopoly on the resources. But it
Speaker 2: had never been noted in the marsh reun Like we
Speaker 2: all assumed that's what was happening. It was like, all
Speaker 2: of your cousins are doing this, you're probably doing it too,
Speaker 2: but it had never been recorded or noted before published before.
Speaker 2: So I think I'm gonna try to publish that observation
Speaker 2: just to be like, yep, we were all what we
Speaker 2: thought was happening, is what's happening with the mars rent.
Speaker 1: And you know, do wildlie forcologists? Do you ever have
Speaker 1: to help control invasive populations like with starlings or anything like.
Speaker 2: That, or so some people are tasked with the management
Speaker 2: of invasive species and sometimes even the management of native species,
Speaker 2: for example predators. Right, if there's like particularly vulnerable populations
Speaker 2: of say some shore bird, right, wildlife ecologists and wild
Speaker 2: life managers might go out and set up basically physical
Speaker 2: barriers to prevent even native predators like you know, like
Speaker 2: a raccoon or something like that, from being able to
Speaker 2: access the nests of these birds, just to add a
Speaker 2: layer of protection because their populations aren't doing well, so
Speaker 2: there's definitely times when that kind of management goes into play.
Speaker 2: The starlings didn't went on to do with the marsh,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I think the starlings look at the marsh
Speaker 2: and was like, y'all got that, We got everything else,
Speaker 2: so y'all got the marshy So I never had to
Speaker 2: I had never seen a starling out in the Salt
Speaker 2: Marsh or anywhere near the.
Speaker 1: Mars Starlings side note dark iridescent and white spotted birds
Speaker 1: whose beaks are dark in the winter and yellow in
Speaker 1: the summer, and they're invasive in the US. They're all
Speaker 1: related to sixty that were set loose in Central Park
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds by a German guy named
Speaker 1: Eugene Scheifelin, who also introduced the house sparrow to the US.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eugene, But those sixty released starlings now number in
Speaker 1: the hundreds of millions across all fifty states. They do
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in damage yearly to crops and buildings,
Speaker 1: and they tend to gather in these big, noisy flocks
Speaker 1: whose swooping flights look like a lava lamp in the
Speaker 1: sky or airborne choreography. They're called murmurrations. Now. I've also
Speaker 1: heard murmurs that they edge out native species so much
Speaker 1: that some ecologists straight up kill them when they see
Speaker 1: them no hesitation. So where can you see them? Apparently
Speaker 1: not in the marsh. They're not up for twice daily
Speaker 1: flooding where there are very few pizza crusts to peck at.
Speaker 2: I only really saw them in the dollars starre parking
Speaker 2: lots ooh near the marsh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just learned about them recently. I was like,
Speaker 1: what's this pretty iridescent bird? I had no idea that
Speaker 1: they were like that. There was so much drama with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but speaking of things that was speaking of spieled work,
Speaker 1: can you tell me a little bit about mosquitoes? How
Speaker 1: do you do your work without constantly checking to see
Speaker 1: if there are things biting different parts of your body?
Speaker 2: It's actually not mosquito. I mean, mosquitos are their own thing,
Speaker 2: but sand nets, biting nets are the thing they're they're
Speaker 2: like it right, and they're so tiny that, like you know,
Speaker 2: usually you can put like a mosquito net on to
Speaker 2: deal with mosquitos. These are so small that they fly
Speaker 2: right through any mesh that you might think about putting
Speaker 2: on your body, and so you basically have to just deal,
Speaker 2: you like, you just have to look at them eat you.
Speaker 2: That's it. And so I would you would literally we
Speaker 2: would have a net out in the missed neet where
Speaker 2: we would catch the birds and immediately run out there
Speaker 2: because the gnats would eat them alive if we didn't,
Speaker 2: and we would, you know, take the birds out of
Speaker 2: the net, you know, start processing the birds, meaning like
Speaker 2: measuring them and taking the information that we needed, and
Speaker 2: the gnats would literally be on your exposed skin in
Speaker 2: the hundreds like oh go. One time, my advisor I
Speaker 2: was not with her for this, Thank the Lord, because
Speaker 2: I would have made a scene. My advisor was out
Speaker 2: in the marsh during the winter doing the same thing.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Hunter, Doctor Elizabeth shout out to her, there is
Speaker 2: I do not know any more badass field field work
Speaker 2: biologist on the planet. She was out there. The gnats
Speaker 2: ally were on her eyeball. No, no, I Ali.
Speaker 1: No, no. I would take my diploma, I would give
Speaker 1: it back to the university and I would just go
Speaker 1: and I would work it best by I would just
Speaker 1: be like I sell, I sell washing machines. Now you
Speaker 1: like life change? No, No, I wouldn't on the eyeballs.
Speaker 2: On the on the on the cornea. I'm using that.
Speaker 1: I'm using those eyeballs. Thank you.
Speaker 2: When I she showed me pictures like someone was like
Speaker 2: around her and took pictures of like the gnats just
Speaker 2: on her everywhere. I have never seen anything like all life.
Speaker 2: I was like, you would be really disappointed in me, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: because like, under no circumstance, do you hear me? Like
Speaker 2: my plan B wasn't best Pie, it was actually home
Speaker 2: depot because I'm like, I shine and orange and I
Speaker 2: love I love the wood section, so like I'm more
Speaker 2: than happy to like switch over right, Like.
Speaker 1: I mean, doctor Elizabeth, let's get you some goggles. We're
Speaker 1: getting you goggles. It's like the best goggles possible, Christian Dure.
Speaker 1: I don't know who makes the most, like Louis Vuton goggles,
Speaker 1: Like we're doing it. I don't care if we need
Speaker 1: to dazzle them. We're getting you goggles. If people are
Speaker 1: out there chopping challatts with goggles, this woman deserves them.
Speaker 1: Oh the world, yeah it Skinned Crawley. I have so
Speaker 1: many questions from patrons by the way who just love you?
Speaker 1: Can I ask you send me a lightning round? Okay,
Speaker 1: some people just wrote in. This is my favorite when
Speaker 1: some people just write in, not with a question, but
Speaker 1: just big fan of Karina's work. They're just big fans
Speaker 1: and that they follow you. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: like you're reading your Yelp reviews at your funeral, You
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like someone doesn't do this, Uh no,
Speaker 1: Diana Teeters, there's no questions, but I just want to
Speaker 1: express how awesome you are and just how excited I
Speaker 1: am for your episode. Just saying a lot of love
Speaker 1: for you. But before we get to them, let's toss
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Speaker 1: possible by sponsors. Okay, back to work fielding. Your questions
Speaker 1: about field work. First time question asker Joanna McHugh, good question.
Speaker 1: How many times have you gotten stuck in pluff mud?
Speaker 1: And I don't know what pluff mud is, but I
Speaker 1: want to ask you is that a term? Is it
Speaker 1: fluffy mud?
Speaker 2: Basically it's like very loose mud. Yep, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know how many times, because after a while,
Speaker 2: it's like your brain is almost an autopilot and you
Speaker 2: don't even notice when you have fallen. But like it's
Speaker 2: a situation where like you fall in right and at
Speaker 2: first you feel almost betrayed by the mark. It's like
Speaker 2: I been out here sweating my behind off right like,
Speaker 2: and you got to do this to me. Eventually you
Speaker 2: don't even notice, but you know you have to army
Speaker 2: crawl out of it, so you fall in up to
Speaker 2: your waist and then you basically lean over and pull
Speaker 2: yourself out using grass the things around you. Yeah, many
Speaker 2: many times it built characters.
Speaker 1: What I'll say, do you have to do specific exercises
Speaker 1: to like build up the muscles that pull you out
Speaker 1: of pluff?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, to even just walk because the way that
Speaker 2: I described walking in the marsh, it's like walking upstairs
Speaker 2: for six hours. And so I went out there without
Speaker 2: having trained at all, and I was out there for
Speaker 2: an hour and thirteen minutes ali and I was like,
Speaker 2: I can't do this. I can't do it. And so
Speaker 2: that was just like you know, when I first got
Speaker 2: there and Elizabeth was like, you might have to, you know,
Speaker 2: do some training. That's what I do. So that's what
Speaker 2: I did. I literally started running on the treadmill, which
Speaker 2: is not a thing that I running little treadmill, doing
Speaker 2: the stairsteppers all that. Do you get my hip flexes right?
Speaker 2: Because you got it? Yeah, you gotta work out. And
Speaker 2: it was interesting because there was a period of time,
Speaker 2: like after my last Feal season was over, where I
Speaker 2: had to go back out and just check on something.
Speaker 2: And there had probably been about three weeks to a
Speaker 2: month between then and the last time I was in
Speaker 2: the marsh. When I tell you, I was seeing stars
Speaker 2: within minutes of being out there. I was like, oh see, yeah,
Speaker 2: like the march, you cannot let the marsh leave your blood.
Speaker 1: And if you're listening to this and thinking I love biology,
Speaker 1: I love wildlife, but my body can't do that. What
Speaker 1: about disability access for scientists? So I did some research
Speaker 1: and I hear that consulting firms need project managers to
Speaker 1: track and plan field work. There was also something called
Speaker 1: gis a geographic information system that acts as a framework
Speaker 1: for gathering and managing and analyzing data. And we have
Speaker 1: a really cool episode coming up with a scientist named
Speaker 1: Emily Ackerman who is a systems biologist, So stay tuned
Speaker 1: for that very soon. Naomi Ti is a new question
Speaker 1: asker and wants to know what's the strangest thing that
Speaker 1: you've found in the marsh? Have you ever found anyone's
Speaker 1: car keys, or like a buried treasure.
Speaker 2: I wish I found. So there are multiple times where
Speaker 2: I was like, is that a body? And then it wasn't.
Speaker 2: I think that's the strangest thing that I probably found.
Speaker 2: I mean, not interesting stuff, but just like large thing
Speaker 2: that like like how did water carry this? But I
Speaker 2: guess water can carry basically anything like huge cement like
Speaker 2: blocks and you know, pipes and just things that seem
Speaker 2: like should have sank immediately upon entering the water. The
Speaker 2: water just brought right to the marsh. So that's why
Speaker 2: you want to take care of your watersheds.
Speaker 1: A watershed is essentially the pathways leading to the ocean
Speaker 1: or to big bodies of water. And I always get
Speaker 1: the word watershed mixed up with water shipped down, which
Speaker 1: was a nineteen seventy two novel about some psychic rabbits,
Speaker 1: which in writing this aside, I learned was a story
Speaker 1: that the author made up on long car rides until
Speaker 1: his daughters forced him to write it all up in
Speaker 1: a novel, and it was rejected by seven publishers before
Speaker 1: going on to sell over fifty million copies. So this
Speaker 1: aside is your weird creepy sign to just go work
Speaker 1: on that thing that you want to work on, just
Speaker 1: creeping in your brain. Go do it. Word to the
Speaker 1: wise for sure. Paige McLaughlin wants to know what sets
Speaker 1: a sparrow apart from other birds, as in, what makes
Speaker 1: a sparrow a sparrow and not a finch or a
Speaker 1: swift or a wren in this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there are a lot of things physically morphologically
Speaker 2: about a sparrow that's different from any other song bird.
Speaker 2: Some of the differences are in diet. So sparrows are
Speaker 2: known for eating a lot of plant material. They'll eat
Speaker 2: both depending on the time of the year, but they do.
Speaker 2: They're really good at eating a lot of plant material, seeds,
Speaker 2: things like that. Seaside sparrows are different because they do
Speaker 2: have a really heavily like invertebrate diet being in the marsh.
Speaker 1: Okay, so remember the salty, floody marsh is hard living
Speaker 1: man in some cases, but there's less competition for bug
Speaker 1: launches for these small, little brown and cream colored seaside sparrows.
Speaker 2: They also physically look a little different. They have a
Speaker 2: beak shape that's a little different from say a finch
Speaker 2: or a swift, which is like a strictly insect eating bird.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of the physical characteristics of a
Speaker 2: sparrow versus any other bird are about how it finds food.
Speaker 2: A lot of that out of that birds have physically
Speaker 2: are about finding food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Mike Simanski wants to ask why are they
Speaker 1: so dang and cute? And also does the small strip
Speaker 1: of yellow near their beaks or any evolutionary purpose?
Speaker 2: Oh, he know, it's about the yellow strip. I love it,
Speaker 2: so they Yeah, they are definitely slept on. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people think of seaside sparrows and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: it looks like every other what I would imagine to
Speaker 2: be small bird, sparrow bird, you know, but that yellow bands,
Speaker 2: yellow blop right above its eye definitely pops. I don't
Speaker 2: know that it has any evolutionary purpose that we are
Speaker 2: aware of. Right, it's such a small feature. I imagine
Speaker 2: that there is some amount of selection that that obviously
Speaker 2: made it stay. Males I think have a more prominent
Speaker 2: yellow spot on their face. And yeah, outside of that,
Speaker 2: I am not aware of it serving any particular evolutionary purpose.
Speaker 1: Perhaps one day you'll be the first to publish a
Speaker 1: paper on it.
Speaker 2: What is this yellow stripe about?
Speaker 1: I know, so this yellow patch, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: imagine it looks like if a brownish bird just had
Speaker 1: a fabulous mustard colored eyebrows just a little popa color.
Speaker 1: It's technically called a supercilium, which is another word for eyebrow,
Speaker 1: which is also the origin of the word supercilious, which
Speaker 1: means haughty. Also, if anyone is a professional eyebrow scientist
Speaker 1: or groomer, please call yourself a superciliologist. And I looked
Speaker 1: up on Google scholar for a minute trying to find
Speaker 1: the function of this mustard supercilium when I learned that
Speaker 1: in seaside sparrows is actually called a super laurel because
Speaker 1: it doesn't extend past the eye. But honestly, I'm still
Speaker 1: excited to talk to an eyebrow expert, maybe just privately.
Speaker 1: One on Matt Thompson had a great question. He is
Speaker 1: a student studying wildlife ecology and wanted to know if
Speaker 1: there are any interesting symbiotic relationships with sparrows and other
Speaker 1: birds in the marsh. Lends any of them friends?
Speaker 2: M I you know, I like to say friendship, and
Speaker 2: I don't like to say that is the person I'm
Speaker 2: saying it. Friendships don't really happen in the marsh. It's
Speaker 2: just like mutually a short distruction.
Speaker 1: I'm not there to make friends.
Speaker 2: When it comes to symbiosis, I am not with the birds,
Speaker 2: definitely not any necessarily like symbiotic relationships. Competition is the
Speaker 2: main social interaction that the songbirds in the marsh are having,
Speaker 2: especially during the breeding season.
Speaker 1: And on that note of songbirds, myless R and Lizzie
Speaker 1: Martinez both wanted to ask if well, Mylas wants to know,
Speaker 1: can you give us your best sparrow call? And do
Speaker 1: birds actually respond if you make the noise good enough?
Speaker 1: And then Lucy wants to know what's your favorite bird sound?
Speaker 2: You know? All right, so the song is too complex
Speaker 2: for me, but I'm going to give it a try
Speaker 2: of fantasy side spreau. So it's like, I can't do
Speaker 2: what else are if that?
Speaker 1: Where it's call? And then at the end it went
Speaker 1: I can't do it.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry with the.
Speaker 1: Fuck the best bird call ever? Some bird just buzzed
Speaker 1: out laughing in the middle of its call, and someone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm getting hornier every second. Who's doing that?
Speaker 2: That was good?
Speaker 1: That was good. I have a sparrow sitting on the
Speaker 1: windowsill right now and being like, Hey, who's in there?
Speaker 1: Who is it?
Speaker 2: Also?
Speaker 1: Here is what the seaside sparrow does sound like, so
Speaker 1: that's a little cutie she studies. But patron Katie Courtwright
Speaker 1: asked about birding by ear and first time asker Lucy
Speaker 1: Martinez wants to know what is your favorite bird sound?
Speaker 2: My favorite bird sound probably let me think about this. Yes,
Speaker 2: is it's not in the marsh unfortunately, but the wood thrush. Oh,
Speaker 2: it literally sounds like a flute like like and I'm
Speaker 2: not kidding, like you would think that there is a floutist,
Speaker 2: a classically trained floutist behind you in the forest, and
Speaker 2: you wouldn't even be you wouldn't even be like uncomfortable
Speaker 2: with that, just like, oh, yeah, that works. But it's
Speaker 2: the wood thrush. They have the most beautiful song on
Speaker 2: this planet.
Speaker 1: I once was in a park and a man playing
Speaker 1: a saxophone came out of the bushes and just walked
Speaker 1: through the park. It was kind of magical, but it
Speaker 1: was also like it was a little bit uncomfortable. But
Speaker 1: I had been.
Speaker 2: A soft instrument.
Speaker 1: It was really it was really, it really changed my
Speaker 1: whole day. I had been crying earlier that day because
Speaker 1: I had one dollar in my checking account and I
Speaker 1: had to have a big gulp for lunch and so
Speaker 1: I went to the park to have some privacy to cry,
Speaker 1: and some guy just came out of the bushes playing
Speaker 1: the sax.
Speaker 2: That almost you know what I mean? That seems like
Speaker 2: a trajectory changing experience. What in the world.
Speaker 1: I know, I know it was such a good one,
Speaker 1: But if it had just been if it had been
Speaker 1: a bird, I wouldn't have been mad either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I hear you. But the man in this
Speaker 2: case saxophone.
Speaker 1: To a man with a saxophone. We got one question
Speaker 1: from a couple of people, Julia split Orf and Korean
Speaker 1: Fillian and Killian Dixon all want to know is it
Speaker 1: true that touching a bird's nest means that the bird
Speaker 1: will abandon it entirely? Will you mess with a nest?
Speaker 1: And the parents are like, we're out bite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that is a that's a common question. That
Speaker 2: can be the case for other groups of animals, like
Speaker 2: some mammals, but birds are not that way. Bird banding
Speaker 2: and studying nesting is a really widespread kind of field
Speaker 2: of study, and there is never there has never been
Speaker 2: any pattern of nest abandonment because humans have handled the offspring.
Speaker 2: Birds can smell, so birds are able to detect smells
Speaker 2: around them. I'm not sure if they can tell if
Speaker 2: it's on their chicks or not, but yeah, no, they
Speaker 2: will come back to the nest immediately. Sometimes while you're there,
Speaker 2: if you're making them mad enough, they will come and
Speaker 2: try to show you off.
Speaker 1: Do sparrows ever abandoned nests for any reason?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the nest abandonment does happen. So in the
Speaker 2: title marsh One of the main reasons why a nest
Speaker 2: would be abandoned is if the eggs die, which the
Speaker 2: mother can tell if they die. So if a high
Speaker 2: tide came in and the nest was too low and
Speaker 2: they got flooded and the eggs drowned. And eggs can
Speaker 2: drown because they, you know, as are developing, they breathe
Speaker 2: through the eggshell and so they can survive for about
Speaker 2: thirty minutes underwater, but if it's longer, they'll probably drown.
Speaker 2: And so it'll take her a little bit of time,
Speaker 2: but she'll realize eventually that those eggs are not viable
Speaker 2: and she'll leave and then start a new nest. So
Speaker 2: there have been times where I found a nest that
Speaker 2: had eggs and I'm like, oh, yes, and I put
Speaker 2: a camera and just like days go by and she
Speaker 2: never shows up, and so that's kind of like your
Speaker 2: cue that those eggs probably didn't survive.
Speaker 1: So yes, even birds have rainbow babies, which is a
Speaker 1: term I just learned this week. It means a kid
Speaker 1: born after the loss of another baby from miscarriage or
Speaker 1: death in infancy. According to the bump dot Com, I
Speaker 1: have to look it up. It's so sweet and so sad.
Speaker 1: So a lot of hugs going out to all the
Speaker 1: bird and human parents out there now. From sentiment to
Speaker 1: Arson Kareine. Filline wants to know do birds really spread
Speaker 1: fires on purpose? Is that a thing?
Speaker 2: Ooh yeah, so I think this is an Australia. I
Speaker 2: believe this is an Australia where there's this. I believe
Speaker 2: it's a raptor. I don't remember what it's called. But
Speaker 2: they will take advantage of fires. So they'll grab a
Speaker 2: burning limb, you know, like a tree limb. It's like
Speaker 2: on the ground that has fire on it, like if
Speaker 2: there's a forest fire, and they will use that as
Speaker 2: a tool to flush out prey. So they'll carry a
Speaker 2: literally a flaming piece of tree drop it somewhere to
Speaker 2: flush out prey. Ali, you might you may have to
Speaker 2: double check all that think like but there.
Speaker 1: Yes, ooh, okay, I double checked and hell yes, birds
Speaker 1: light fires. Birds light fires. Birds are arsonists on purpose.
Speaker 1: Are you ready for this?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: In the twenty eighteen paper titled Intentional fire Spreading by
Speaker 1: firehawk Raptors in Northern Australia, which was published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Ethnobiology, the authors wrote that they documented indigenous
Speaker 1: ecological knowledge and non indigenous observations of intentional fire spreading
Speaker 1: by the fire foraging raptors black kite, the whistling kite,
Speaker 1: and the brown falcon in tropical Australian savannahs. And they
Speaker 1: said observers report both solo and cooperative attempts, often successful
Speaker 1: to spread wildfires intentionally via either a single occasion or
Speaker 1: repeated transport of burning sticks in talons or beaks. And
Speaker 1: the team on that paper notes that most of the
Speaker 1: data they've worked on is in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples
Speaker 1: and they have known this for probably forty thousand years.
Speaker 1: More So, the birds light fires and then a bunch
Speaker 1: of them wait for all the bush critters to run out,
Speaker 1: and then it's just a buffet. Can you imagine how
Speaker 1: amped the birds are right before this, Like, oh shit, man,
Speaker 1: tonight's the night we're gonna do somepyro shit. We're gonna
Speaker 1: eat until my feathers don't fit. It's gonna be.
Speaker 2: Lit fire fire using birds.
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's not a tool, I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. Like that's some tool use you know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 2: Right like top of the line. Yes, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: Look that up. Ash Jillhouse. As a question, what is
Speaker 1: your favorite movie and why is it fern Gully? Feel
Speaker 1: free to say, Ash disagree if you need to.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because fern Gully. I have not seen that
Speaker 2: in so long, But whenever I hear the words fern Gully,
Speaker 2: I get goosebumps on my back. And I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the I don't remember what that movie
Speaker 2: is about. I just know that as a kid, it
Speaker 2: enchanted the mess out of me. So it might be
Speaker 2: my favorite and I just don't remember. But in my
Speaker 2: conscious mind, my favorite movie is Strek Too. I know
Speaker 2: all the words and all the.
Speaker 1: Stuff, So I have never seen Ferngully, but it was
Speaker 1: about rainforest destruction. Now Karina's actual favorite movie, of course,
Speaker 1: Shrek Too. So just when you think people ain't no good,
Speaker 1: get ready for changes, because after holding out for a hero,
Speaker 1: we are accidentally in love with this wildlife ecologist. Karina,
Speaker 1: You're so true. Also, go ahead and listen to the
Speaker 1: Shrek Too soundtrack and know that those were titles for
Speaker 1: most of the songs. Sorry, are there any good wildlife
Speaker 1: ecologists in any movies? Ooh?
Speaker 2: Like real life wildlife collegists like, or just.
Speaker 1: In general, like, did any movie get it right?
Speaker 2: So there's this movie called The Big Year, and so
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily like wildlife ecologists, Like, they're not like
Speaker 2: professionally trained scientists necessarily, but they're bird enthusiasts who go
Speaker 2: out looking for as many birds as they can in
Speaker 2: a year. And when I tell you, that movie got
Speaker 2: the birding community right, like ruthless, cutthroat looking for all
Speaker 2: the bird like, yeah, Steve Moore, Jack Black, Owen Wilson.
Speaker 1: Most people wake up one day and realize they didn't
Speaker 1: do everything they.
Speaker 3: Wanted to do.
Speaker 2: The Big Year got birders right?
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, Giselle Martinez, Evan Griffin, Jenny Lowe Rhodes,
Speaker 1: and Caitlin Sfabec want to know if you have tips
Speaker 1: for beginning birders h I.
Speaker 2: Would say that you should start wherever you are. So
Speaker 2: if you have a front yard or somewhere outside around
Speaker 2: you where you have noticed that there are birds, figure
Speaker 2: out what those birds are. And there are some reapps
Speaker 2: that exist to help you identify birds by the Cornell
Speaker 2: Lab of Ornithology. So I would download this app called
Speaker 2: Merlin bird id. It's really like user friendly. It'll present
Speaker 2: you with some silhouettes like what's the shape of the bird,
Speaker 2: what's the color, where are you? And it'll give you
Speaker 2: some options with pictures.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend her favorite apps for bird songs. There's one
Speaker 1: called bird net that analyzes a bird song like Frickin'
Speaker 1: shizam and tells you what it thinks it is. But
Speaker 1: you have to stop yourself from excited, high pitched shrieking
Speaker 1: using it because it's so cool. There's also another one
Speaker 1: called Chirpomatic, which I commend for picking an app name
Speaker 1: that is just recklessly adorable. You know, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get the birds to come to you instead of
Speaker 1: you romping around to look for the birds. A lot
Speaker 1: of questions, including someone who calls themselves cheese, want to
Speaker 1: know are bird feeders bad? Jessica Kramer wants to know
Speaker 1: how you feel about I'm you're a young Kyle Harper,
Speaker 1: Sylvia t and Miranda Panda. I want to know, like,
Speaker 1: why is it okay to feed birds when it's bad
Speaker 1: to feed other wild animals? What do we do?
Speaker 2: So everyone from cheese to Amanda Panda. That's a really
Speaker 2: good question when it comes to you know, whenever you
Speaker 2: see signs like please don't feed the wildlife, that's usually
Speaker 2: because people hand feed the wildlife, right, It's like people
Speaker 2: handing a Canada goose a slice of bread, and that
Speaker 2: association of human hands me food can be very dangerous
Speaker 2: for people, ranging from geese to bears, you know, and
Speaker 2: everything in between. So, but when it comes to birds,
Speaker 2: a lot of times because birds are so mobile, like
Speaker 2: they move around so much, providing essentially a food source
Speaker 2: in your backyard isn't bad, especially because where people are
Speaker 2: living there used to probably be some sort of food
Speaker 2: source there that no longer exists because your house is there.
Speaker 2: Not to guilt you, but just to give you an idea.
Speaker 2: So feeding birds is good, I think, and it definitely
Speaker 2: helps to draw birds to your backyard if you're interested
Speaker 2: in some really easy ways to draw birds. Hummingbird feeders
Speaker 2: are like one of the cheapest and easiest ways to go.
Speaker 2: It's literally three parts water, one part white sugar. Boom,
Speaker 2: there you go your hummingbird food, and it's actually just
Speaker 2: fine for them. It's good. Yeah, So lots of ways,
Speaker 2: cheap ways to draw birds to where you are, no
Speaker 2: matter where you live. There was someone told me recently
Speaker 2: someone put a hummingbird feeder worth just like that combination on.
Speaker 2: They were like in the thirty second floor of some
Speaker 2: high rise apartment and a hummingbird found it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, worth it. Be careful hanging it, but worth it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Listen, body inside the building, keep the body inside, armcles
Speaker 1: out the body inside, please you. As we're recording this,
Speaker 1: out my window is a hummingbird nest and I'm literally
Speaker 1: looking at two tiny baby hummingbirds with their cutely freaking faces.
Speaker 1: True story. I'm gonna send you a picture after this,
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Yeah? It's the best. And I
Speaker 1: didn't realize it was there until I sat here a
Speaker 1: couple episodes ago to record anyway, but yeah, I will
Speaker 1: send you a picture. There are these holy crap, I know,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a hummingbird nest. I know, I'm just
Speaker 1: staring at them like the such a creep, Such a creep. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know what. A first time question asker Joyce Cuxy
Speaker 1: wants to know what happens to the ecosystem when they
Speaker 1: drain a marsh. It's really bad, right, they say? Is
Speaker 1: there a way to correct it later on?
Speaker 2: Mmmm, that's a really good question. So kind of deteriorating
Speaker 2: a marsh through draining or any other sort of mechanism
Speaker 2: is bad because marshes service natural barriers for us. So,
Speaker 2: for example, they prevent like really large storm surges. So
Speaker 2: if you're someone on the coast and you live, you know,
Speaker 2: close to the ocean, you want your marshes to be
Speaker 2: intact because they're serving to prevent you know, you getting
Speaker 2: flooded and for storms from being as bad as they
Speaker 2: could be. They're very important for that kind of kind
Speaker 2: of ecosystem service. Marshes can be restored when it comes
Speaker 2: to waterflow, I have to admit that I'm not entirely
Speaker 2: sure about what that process would entail restoring the flow
Speaker 2: of water into a marsh, but marsh restoration is absolutely
Speaker 2: something that happens work that gets done on coasts across
Speaker 2: the United States, even kind of doing things like putting
Speaker 2: oyster shells on the edge of the marsh to kind
Speaker 2: of shore up the siding, so to speak of it,
Speaker 2: so that it's strong and it's serving as a good
Speaker 2: barrier to the ocean that is, you know, knocking against
Speaker 2: it continually. So yeah, a lot of ways to do
Speaker 2: marsh restoration, and very thankfully that is happening in Georgia
Speaker 2: and around the country. Essentially, the ocean is creeping further
Speaker 2: and further toward the land and so there's just less marsh.
Speaker 2: But it also increase is the average heights of high tide.
Speaker 2: So when you have you know, for example, seaside spharaohs
Speaker 2: that place their nests in the marsh grass, like those
Speaker 2: high tides are getting higher and flooding becomes a bigger
Speaker 2: and bigger risk for them, and so that they're expected
Speaker 2: to continue to lose more nests to flooding when it
Speaker 2: comes to sea level rise. That's more of like a
Speaker 2: massively unified effort, right like the world getting their act together,
Speaker 2: and the United States and like other big kind of
Speaker 2: polluting groups of people, like getting their act together making
Speaker 2: large scale industrial level changes to how we treat the earth.
Speaker 2: But there are other things like we can you know,
Speaker 2: for example, sea level rise exacerbates some other threats like
Speaker 2: nest predation, which is actually why I'm studying next predation,
Speaker 2: and so we can address the kind of secondary issues
Speaker 2: that happen as a result of climate change. And that's
Speaker 2: kind of where my work comes in.
Speaker 1: Ah, and you know, other people want your job. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they like to be Karina Newsome, Crazy Wheatley. And for
Speaker 1: some question asker Andy Morrison and Katelyn Swabek big fans
Speaker 1: of your work, in Andy's words, and it's an aspiring
Speaker 1: wildlife ecologist. What's the balance between lab work and field work?
Speaker 1: And any tips for finding field jobs?
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you all for your kind words. I would
Speaker 2: say that for me, lab work is data entry. So
Speaker 2: all of my data collection and any sort of you know,
Speaker 2: actual hands on science that I'm doing is happening out
Speaker 2: in the field. But and this is advice that my advisor,
Speaker 2: doctor Elizabeth Hunter, shared with me, don't let data input
Speaker 2: pile up right. I could be out there all summer long,
Speaker 2: have months and months of data and then have to
Speaker 2: sit for days and enter this data som as you're
Speaker 2: collecting that data, put it in right away, and then
Speaker 2: you will save yourself a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: heartache and that balance will be much easier to manage.
Speaker 1: So like tidying or flossing, just do a little every
Speaker 1: day to get yourself out of a rotten, horrifying mess later. Now,
Speaker 1: how about getting into wildlife phocology? Should you work at
Speaker 1: a zoo?
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 1: How do we have Karina's life umping around marshes watching
Speaker 1: videos of minx stealing eggs in the moonlight.
Speaker 2: I would recommend taking if you can, field technician jobs.
Speaker 2: So typically when you go to grad school, you're doing
Speaker 2: field brick and grad school that advisor is going to
Speaker 2: want you to have had experience in the field. My
Speaker 2: zoo experience and my passion seem to, you know, make
Speaker 2: my advisor trust me enough to take on the marsh.
Speaker 2: But generally you want to kind of look for for
Speaker 2: maybe even seasonal jobs. And there's a job board called
Speaker 2: Texas A and M job Board where you can find
Speaker 2: a lot of the jobs that are typically kind of
Speaker 2: ecology based that pop up summer, seasonal, summer, year round, summer,
Speaker 2: part time whatever. I guess is best for you check
Speaker 2: that job board and get as much experience as you
Speaker 2: can before if you want to go to grad school.
Speaker 2: It is not required that you go to grad school
Speaker 2: to be a wildlife ecologist, right. There are many jobs
Speaker 2: at all different levels, but that is one place to
Speaker 2: look for those jobs and that experience.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's good to know. Earl of Gramble can always
Speaker 1: sense in great questions and had a few. So how
Speaker 1: do we keep researchers safe in the field, What do
Speaker 1: universities need to do to invest in that? And also
Speaker 1: what has it been like from your perspective looking at
Speaker 1: Black Birder's Week and how it's taken off and were
Speaker 1: you surprised? And have you seen the community demonstrably improve
Speaker 1: at all? Just a couple of questions, but you're right,
Speaker 1: all great questions. But yeah, you know, obviously I'm a
Speaker 1: huge fan of Blackbirder's Week. Have you seen anything change
Speaker 1: in the last year since you were part of its launch?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So the one thing that I would say, I think,
Speaker 2: by and large, the most that's happened has been a
Speaker 2: lot of conversations, and you know, I definitely recognize that
Speaker 2: conversations need to happen. But like, the only time I
Speaker 2: want to have a conversation is if you are writing
Speaker 2: what now, what I'm saying and what we're saying, and
Speaker 2: what you're hearing and planning to implement right like otherwise,
Speaker 2: please don't ask me to speak on this topic. Is
Speaker 2: kind of where I met. There have been some examples
Speaker 2: of people kind of taking it to heart right away,
Speaker 2: and to me, the best demonstration of that has been
Speaker 2: the National Wildlife Federation. Like literally, during Blackbirder Week last year,
Speaker 2: they created a pot of money to fund black Indigenous
Speaker 2: people of color who were interested in wildlife conservation to
Speaker 2: fund their internships because a lot of times, unfortunately, internships
Speaker 2: tend to be unpaid. So they put money right, which
Speaker 2: is this takes money. They also held a series of
Speaker 2: round tables with people from different parts of the country,
Speaker 2: from different areas of expertise in wildlife conservation to craft
Speaker 2: legislative recommendations for Congress that they're going to bring before
Speaker 2: Congress to help make birding recreationally and science professionally safer
Speaker 2: for black people. So they, to me, took off, They
Speaker 2: hit the ground running with that, and so I've been
Speaker 2: very grateful for their work. So that's been the best
Speaker 2: example for me. And then when it comes to how
Speaker 2: to keep people safe, Like a few minutes ago, we
Speaker 2: were talking about the fact that they have housing for researchers,
Speaker 2: coastal researchers and people doing ecology on the coast of
Speaker 2: Georgia living on a plantation that very much kind of
Speaker 2: celebrates that era as opposed to reckoning with it, right Like,
Speaker 2: if you're going to bring students here, tell the truth, right,
Speaker 2: don't like, don't don't sit here and glorify what was
Speaker 2: a horrific time in African American history, in indigenous people's history,
Speaker 2: right like. And so that that is an element of safety.
Speaker 2: And I think that universities need to invest funding into
Speaker 2: placing their students and their researchers when they have to
Speaker 2: go live somewhere else, in places that are safe, that
Speaker 2: feel safe, and that are safe. I think that being
Speaker 2: able to, you know, identify people as professionals out in
Speaker 2: the field is important. And actually I can't remember who
Speaker 2: it was on Twitter, her university she had she had
Speaker 2: asked her university, hey, can you get big magnets that
Speaker 2: say the school's name for students to put on their
Speaker 2: cars while they're out in their field site, right, because
Speaker 2: I'd be parked by the marsh that's right on the road,
Speaker 2: and it's just a red Mitsubishi, right, my little brinkydink HOOPTI.
Speaker 2: And people see this black girl out in the marsh
Speaker 2: and like, what in the world is she doing? I
Speaker 2: would have loved to have like a magnet. And it's
Speaker 2: just easy, right, Like I don't have to take the
Speaker 2: school vehicle. I'm not like freaking out like that, I'm
Speaker 2: going to scratch the vehicle the you know what I
Speaker 2: mean with my field equipment. I need to take my
Speaker 2: car and I could put the a little sticky on there.
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's genius, right, just because a lot of
Speaker 2: the danger that comes with field work is people. A
Speaker 2: lot of the fear that comes with field work has
Speaker 2: to do with the people who live in those areas,
Speaker 2: and so making sure your students feel comfortable and are
Speaker 2: actually safe and not having to fight for their credibility,
Speaker 2: right or having to explain their credibility to people who
Speaker 2: don't believe them.
Speaker 1: And one thing I about Blackbirder's week that was so
Speaker 1: great is it spawned so many other weeks too. You know,
Speaker 1: black and neuro black and under chronologies, your whole timeline
Speaker 1: can change where it's Blackbirder's Week isn't just one week.
Speaker 1: Start following people with so many different kinds of voices,
Speaker 1: from people who are neuro divergent to actually autistic hashtags
Speaker 1: and disabled in academia, and you start to really get
Speaker 1: to see thoughts all year round. And so I love
Speaker 1: that about Blackbird's Week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a better person because of the people that
Speaker 2: I have come in contact with and we have been
Speaker 2: able to learn from since then. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so excited to see everyone celebrate the second
Speaker 1: year of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I just want to say the Black Aff
Speaker 2: and Stem Collective last year, I was so honored to
Speaker 2: be a part of the organizing. This year, I've been
Speaker 2: watching and participating from the outside and they have done
Speaker 2: a phenomenal, phenomenal job. I have learned, as I said,
Speaker 2: learn so much over and over again. You can never
Speaker 2: learn enough, right, it's just absorbing so much networking with
Speaker 2: so many people.
Speaker 1: Last questions, I always ask what sucks the most from
Speaker 1: people to mud systemic racism paperwork.
Speaker 2: That's hard because systemic racism always takes the cake. You
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. But when it comes to like
Speaker 2: the physical like marsh, the thing that sucks the most
Speaker 2: would have to be the heat and humidity combination.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: I will never discourage anyone from being a marsh scientist.
Speaker 2: It'll change your life. You'll be better for it. But
Speaker 2: when I tell you that, son my melanin just walked
Speaker 2: out on me. It was like, we're good. My sunscreen
Speaker 2: would last for a total of six minutes and I'd
Speaker 2: be out there for like six hours. And then like
Speaker 2: the humidity, because you're right in the ocean, but for
Speaker 2: some reason, it just doesn't give you any breeze. Like
Speaker 2: I said that before, It's like, where's the breeze. No breeze,
Speaker 2: It's just air that's sitting still around you. It's just
Speaker 2: very interesting. But you see dolphins and sharks and manatees
Speaker 2: in the water, so you know, you can't hardly notice it.
Speaker 1: We need to get you one of those fans that
Speaker 1: clip onto a necklace, you know, like a little swamp
Speaker 1: cooler necklace. And I look that up and I think
Speaker 1: of that, I'm not going to google that. Right after this,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I googled it, and yes, you can
Speaker 1: own a personal neck fan, some with rechargeable mini USB batteries,
Speaker 1: just little robot blow on your neck. What about the
Speaker 1: best thing about field work, like the thing you love
Speaker 1: the most or.
Speaker 2: Birds listen, the thing that I love the most about
Speaker 2: I guess bird feel work is that, well, I mean
Speaker 2: feel work in general, because it's like, even though birds
Speaker 2: are my focus, like I said, I get distracted by
Speaker 2: every living thing out there. You are peeling back the
Speaker 2: cur It's like you're getting like privileged with the opportunity
Speaker 2: to see things that people don't usually get to see
Speaker 2: about the life of birds, the life of whatever wildlife
Speaker 2: you're studying. And you know, different technologies and different survival
Speaker 2: strategies right have allowed us to be able to, you know,
Speaker 2: enter these spaces like salt marshes without drowning, and you know,
Speaker 2: equipment to video monitor and see what's going on at
Speaker 2: night when we otherwise wouldn't be able to. And it's like, wow,
Speaker 2: you get to peel back the curtain to see what
Speaker 2: no one else is seeing. So maybe it's a behavior
Speaker 2: that people have seen before, right, but like you are
Speaker 2: the only human being that saw this bird incubate her
Speaker 2: eggs every single night, Like you got to see something
Speaker 2: so intimate and so miraculous, really right as the development
Speaker 2: of a clutch of eggs, and it just I every
Speaker 2: time I would look through any of the hundreds of
Speaker 2: hours of video that I was looking through or pictures
Speaker 2: or I was I had chills many times cried like
Speaker 2: at what I was given the gift to see, because
Speaker 2: I really I am from very much like the middle
Speaker 2: of the city up north, Like I never thought that
Speaker 2: I that I would get to see stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Like ever, I didn't think I was everyone to get
Speaker 2: out of Philly to be out of them, but like
Speaker 2: not that you know, you need to get out of Philly,
Speaker 2: but that for me was just like I didn't think
Speaker 2: I was going to leave my home and I get
Speaker 2: to watch seaside sprow chicks grow up next to the ocean,
Speaker 2: where there are every manner of wildlife that you can
Speaker 2: think of thriving around them, and it just I could
Speaker 2: I could wax. Oh lord, I'm watching waxing emotional again forever.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's that's my favorite thing.
Speaker 1: And the way that you bring it to people is
Speaker 1: so wonderful. I feel like I can picture you out
Speaker 1: there so much, whether it's like cover in mud or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, like, it's such a joy that you
Speaker 1: bring us along and we don't smell anything, so that's
Speaker 1: a boat a thing.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ali. It's always a joy to see people's
Speaker 2: reactions and engaging with me on the things that make
Speaker 2: me the most excited.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're a treasure. Keep doing so, ask wonderful people
Speaker 1: wonderfield questions because honestly, not to bum you out, but
Speaker 1: you will die one day, so you might as well
Speaker 1: just make the most of it. Also, they almost never
Speaker 1: laugh at you, and if they do laugh at you,
Speaker 1: their pricks. So click the links in the show notes
Speaker 1: and follow Karina Newsom hood Naturalist as soon as digitally
Speaker 1: possible again Hood Underscore Naturalists on Twitter and Instagram. Ya
Speaker 1: welks people. While you're at it. You can follow Ologies
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at Ologies. I'm on both at
Speaker 1: Ali Ward with one L. You can join the patron
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash Ologies for a dollar a month.
Speaker 1: There is an Ologies podcast subreddit.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: You can join the concert servation conversations there. Thank you
Speaker 1: also to Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 1: Thank you, no well and Shannon and Bonnie of the
Speaker 1: comedy podcast You are That for managing merch, t shirts, totes, hats,
Speaker 1: visors and more. All available at Ologiesmarch dot com. Emily
Speaker 1: White of the Wordery makes our transcripts. She's excellent. Caleb
Speaker 1: Patten bleets episodes, Noel Dilworth schedules are interviews. Susan Hale
Speaker 1: does the books and the Instagram quizz, Hunk of the
Speaker 1: Year and charted Sleeper of Mind. Gem Media edits alongside
Speaker 1: Stephen Ray Morris of the per Cast and see Jurassic
Speaker 1: Right podcasts. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and if
Speaker 1: you stick around through the credits, I confess a secret
Speaker 1: to you this week. One is that I'm not used
Speaker 1: to wearing rings with any like precious gems on them.
Speaker 1: But did you know the underside Like duh? The underside
Speaker 1: gets gunky, And if you clean it with some hot
Speaker 1: water and dish soap and a toothbrush, suddenly your gemstone
Speaker 1: ring is just as sparkly as all heck. Again, very
Speaker 1: fun thing to clean. Also, if you like to clean
Speaker 1: things that are gross, I didn't know that. Okay, Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Pacodermatology, hombiology, cryptozoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, and old metatology, nathology,
Speaker 3: zeriology
Speaker 4: Selology, older birds,