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Speaker 2: Okay. So I just wanted to say really quick cool
Speaker 2: merch announcement. If anyone needs tots and mugs and hats
Speaker 2: and all kinds of cool stuff. My friends Shannon Feltis
Speaker 2: and her sister Bonnie Dutch have been awesome at helping
Speaker 2: me set up a merch site. It's at ologiesmerch dot
Speaker 2: com and this week we just put them up limited
Speaker 2: edition enamel Ologies pins. They come in a pack of five.
Speaker 2: The first four episodes are each represented in this little
Speaker 2: cool pin, and then there's an Ologies logo pin also,
Speaker 2: so they're super awesome. They're limited editions, so if you
Speaker 2: want them, get them. Just wanted to tell you up top, Okay,
Speaker 2: onto the episode.
Speaker 4: Birds, Birds, Birds, Birds, Birds, Birds, Birds, burbs, burbs boyds,
Speaker 4: Chirpy chirps, flappy flappers. Last week I covered death and
Speaker 4: dying and it was enlightening and shockingly not a bummer.
Speaker 4: But I wanted to get into birds to just kind
Speaker 4: of shake off that October.
Speaker 2: Let's just talk about birds. So I don't know how
Speaker 2: you feel about birds. I've always had kind of a
Speaker 2: distant wonder about them. But I'm also like birds, you
Speaker 2: would never let me pet you, any of you, which
Speaker 2: is kind of a really bitchy way to evaluate an animal.
Speaker 2: It's like can I pet it?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: I don't care. That's about to change, So listeners, you
Speaker 2: send in questions before I record, and I was shocked
Speaker 2: that a lot of the questions were like why is
Speaker 2: insert species such a dick? And why do birds poop
Speaker 2: on me? And what did I ever do to birds?
Speaker 2: Was essentially the gist of a lot of the questions.
Speaker 2: So we definitely have a pr problem here, and this episode,
Speaker 2: I think is going to turn you around because birds are, Yes,
Speaker 2: they are insane. I mean they fly first off, which
Speaker 2: is something that only superheroes and people on angel dust
Speaker 2: can do, and they have weird buttholes stay tuned, and
Speaker 2: they can mock your voice, and one of them can
Speaker 2: mimic the sound of a chainsaw. Also, they're dinosaurs that
Speaker 2: are alive now and their knees are sometimes backwards. So
Speaker 2: if you were a bird publicist, you'd be like, I
Speaker 2: don't even know where to start with your personal brand?
Speaker 2: What is your deal? So let's let an ornithologist speak
Speaker 2: for them, if you will. Now, I've been aware of
Speaker 2: the more Lab of Zoology on the Occidental College campus
Speaker 2: ps Obama, went there for a few years, and I
Speaker 2: was really stoked to get a green light for a
Speaker 2: really last minute visit last week. I just recorded this
Speaker 2: a few days ago with the collections manager at the
Speaker 2: lab who oversees some really really rare specimens. They date back,
Speaker 2: some of them as far as the seventeen nineties, and
Speaker 2: it's down to earth, dryly funny. He was sporting a
Speaker 2: baseball cap and a plaid shirt and a beard. He's
Speaker 2: like a mellow guy in a beef jerkey commercial. And
Speaker 2: he's so passionate and knowledgeable about birds. I could have
Speaker 2: filled up three episodes just answering your questions. But we
Speaker 2: chatted for a bit and I asked all I could,
Speaker 2: and I feel a kinship with birds that makes me
Speaker 2: want to wink at them and say, hey, man, we're cool,
Speaker 2: so please enjoy James Maylee, I just say, like, tell
Speaker 2: me what you wait for breakfast. I'll check your levels.
Speaker 6: I had some tater tots, eggs and bacon.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a dope breakfast. And you are technically
Speaker 2: an ornithologist, correct, right?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 2: So when did James become a card carrying ornithologist versus
Speaker 2: a bird thirsty fanboy?
Speaker 6: Since I believe the summer of two thousand and one
Speaker 6: is when I started getting paid to conduct research on birds,
Speaker 6: which I technically think is when you become an ornithologist.
Speaker 2: Is when they pay you, or when you get a
Speaker 2: certain certification.
Speaker 6: When you get paid, okay, yeah, the.
Speaker 2: First dollar exchanges and then you change your business card.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Have you been a Burger for a long time? Side
Speaker 2: note I edit from transcriptsive interviews done by artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: and this transcribed to have you been a Burger for
Speaker 2: a long time?
Speaker 6: Uh? Yeah, I've been a Burger for a long time.
Speaker 6: I was super into birds when I was a little kid,
Speaker 6: and then I didn't think birds were cool enough, so
Speaker 6: I didn't pay attention to birds for a while. Then
Speaker 6: I got back into birds in high school, and then
Speaker 6: in college I went full in.
Speaker 2: You went full Burdener yep. So like there was a
Speaker 2: period in junior high where you were like spurds. No,
Speaker 2: I like Miami Vice. Yeah exactly, birds are like whatever,
Speaker 2: We'll see you in a couple years.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 2: Why did you start liking birds when you were a kid?
Speaker 6: Uh? My parents had feeders in the backyard and I
Speaker 6: would just spend hours staring out the window at the birds.
Speaker 6: And I was like two, so I was just really
Speaker 6: really into them. I love seeing the colors and just
Speaker 6: what they were doing and I actually memorized all the
Speaker 6: birds that came into the feeder, and I tricked my
Speaker 6: parents into thinking I knew how to read, because they
Speaker 6: would point to a bird in the field gud and
Speaker 6: I would say what it was, but I couldn't read yet.
Speaker 6: How old were you, I don't know, like two something.
Speaker 2: So you were like mini bird genius. Yeah, James's uncle
Speaker 2: is a big birder and his dad is into birds too.
Speaker 6: I think they just thought it was natural to be
Speaker 6: into birds.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's in your jeens?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I think so what does it mean to.
Speaker 2: Be a birder? Because I'm not hip with like bird culture,
Speaker 2: but I understand it is like the cult of ornith
Speaker 2: like birders. They're out there with the binoculars, they count
Speaker 2: how many species they see per year, Like what is that?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: How do you get jumped into that gang?
Speaker 6: So there's a whole range of birders. There's casual birders
Speaker 6: who just like birds and they'll have feeders up in
Speaker 6: their yard or not and just look at birds and
Speaker 6: appreciate them and not even really care that much about
Speaker 6: what they're seeing and how many they're seeing. And then
Speaker 6: there's the other extreme, which are listers.
Speaker 2: Okay, so listers love numbers. They really focus on seeing
Speaker 2: as many species as they can in a given place
Speaker 2: at a given time. And for some reason during this part,
Speaker 2: I couldn't stop gasping because this whole subculture just totally
Speaker 2: delights and baffles me. Like I used to be a
Speaker 2: goth in college, and every once in a while we'd
Speaker 2: take someone who is not goth to a club and
Speaker 2: they would be like, what is happening. We're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that guy smoking a cigarette out of a cigarette holder
Speaker 2: he fashioned from computer parts. Oh, he's just a cybergoth. Like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's a Victorian goth over there. So my introduction to
Speaker 2: this bird world is like if you took a jock
Speaker 2: and ducked him into a basement and a gothic industrial dungeon,
Speaker 2: and we're just like, oh, yeah, there's a lot to learn.
Speaker 6: And so anytime a rare bird shows up, they'll chase it.
Speaker 6: So they'd get in their car or get in a
Speaker 6: plane and fly there and try to see it. And
Speaker 6: there's people that have done that for the world. A
Speaker 6: big year for the world, I think the record was
Speaker 6: just broken. It was like six thousand something species. It
Speaker 6: was just insane.
Speaker 2: So they'll hear like a duck build spoon bill that
Speaker 2: is probably not a real bird, is like was seen
Speaker 2: in Monterey, and then they'll go try to see if
Speaker 2: they can catch that one before it flyes somewhere else. Yep,
Speaker 2: that's like the Dave Matthews band. People are like fish people,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? pH fish people? I mean right,
Speaker 2: No one follows. So have you been have you ever
Speaker 2: been kind of like embedded with a group of a
Speaker 2: really zealous birders or what do you say? Your work
Speaker 2: is kind of like being a professional lister.
Speaker 6: I am not. I don't keep a list, Okay. I
Speaker 6: keep track of the birds that I see generally, and
Speaker 6: I know the ones that I've seen and haven't seen.
Speaker 6: I really enjoy birds, and I just like watching them
Speaker 6: all the time, but I generally don't chase.
Speaker 2: Okay, So who has seen the most birds is? Right now?
Speaker 2: The record seems to be one John Hornbuckle, who himself
Speaker 2: sounds like a type of bird like a hornbuckle john
Speaker 2: boy anyway. Of the approximately ten thousand known species of birds,
Speaker 2: John Hornbuckle has seen ninety six hundred, according to a
Speaker 2: master list at surfbirds dot com. I also find it
Speaker 2: really curious in looking at this list that he's like
Speaker 2: the top birder in the world. But he's very blase,
Speaker 2: and his name is an all lowercase. Everyone else's name
Speaker 2: upper and lowercase, umlat's hyphens. He's just got one lowercase,
Speaker 2: like he entered it while he was on his phone,
Speaker 2: like in line of the post office, so casual. He
Speaker 2: describes himself as a victim of an obsession for birding.
Speaker 2: Like most addictions, it has its dangers, some of which
Speaker 2: I have fallen foul love, but it has given me
Speaker 2: much pleasure and purpose to life. I imagine John Hornbuckle
Speaker 2: standing at a window cupping a mug of hot herbal
Speaker 2: tea with these words running in a voiceover like a
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical ad. Now, as I started getting deeper into the
Speaker 2: cult of birding research, one story donkey kicked me right
Speaker 2: in the heart. The record for one lister lifelong top
Speaker 2: birder belonged to a middle aged woman named Phoebe Snetsinger
Speaker 2: who was diagnosed with a fatal cancer, and so she
Speaker 2: turned her attention toward birding to lift her spirits. Get this,
Speaker 2: Her cancer went into remission, but she had developed a
Speaker 2: birding addiction that compelled her to travel around the world,
Speaker 2: at times in severe peril. She was attacked by five
Speaker 2: men with machetes and survived. I won't even go into
Speaker 2: the details. And she continued her tracks. She kept going.
Speaker 2: She missed her mother's funeral, she missed her daughter's wedding
Speaker 2: in a quest to see more birds, and cancer never
Speaker 2: took her life. Rather, Phoebe was killed in a car
Speaker 2: crash in Madagascar. Well birding, Oh man, who oh, what's
Speaker 2: my point?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 2: People love birds? People love birds, which leads me to
Speaker 2: realize birds are very lovable. This is such a silly question.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you get asked this a million times all
Speaker 2: the time. Do you have a favor?
Speaker 6: No, Okay, I don't. I have some birds that I'm
Speaker 6: particularly like fond of, and mostly it's the birds that
Speaker 6: I've studied that I've gotten to know really, really well.
Speaker 6: So there's these birds in California called Ridgeways Rail. They're
Speaker 6: only found in salt marshes in San Francisco, LA and
Speaker 6: San Diego and a few places in between, so obviously
Speaker 6: they're not doing great. They're endangered.
Speaker 2: James studied the Ridgeway Rail for his dissertation, and ball
Speaker 2: Or alert and actually.
Speaker 6: I named them that you did. Yeah, that was pretty
Speaker 6: cool me and my advisor did.
Speaker 2: Okay, what was the what was the whiteboard like when
Speaker 2: you were coming up with brainstorming names to get to
Speaker 2: name a bird.
Speaker 6: Well, so the scientific name was already decided because that
Speaker 6: takes priority. But if there's no standardized common name, you
Speaker 6: can come up with whatever standard English name you want to.
Speaker 6: The scientific name is Raylis obsoletist.
Speaker 2: WHOA.
Speaker 6: So I didn't want to go with obsolete rail because
Speaker 6: that's a little too dark, it's.
Speaker 2: A little insulting. Yeah, I'm right here, I know.
Speaker 6: But they're almost gone, so maybe, and I went with
Speaker 6: Ridgeways rail, which is a mouthful. People complain about it
Speaker 6: because it's hard to say that. A lot of burd
Speaker 6: names are hard to say. So yeah, it's just because
Speaker 6: they're not used to it.
Speaker 2: Right now, Ridgeway's rail is. By the way, I've said
Speaker 2: Ridgeways Rail, Ridgway rails, Ridgeway rails wrong several times. Ridgeways
Speaker 2: rail is. It's cute as hell. It's like this chicken
Speaker 2: sized bird. It looks kind of like a cross between
Speaker 2: a duck and a pigeon, and it's the color of
Speaker 2: like if you were holding a yam and dropped it
Speaker 2: in potting soil. It's cute. And Robert Ridgeway was this
Speaker 2: really influential and amazing ornithologist. He was responsible for understanding
Speaker 2: a lot of avian diversity. He was the dude, and.
Speaker 6: He has no bird in the US named after him.
Speaker 6: So I wanted to pay homage to him. And he
Speaker 6: described the first rails out here.
Speaker 2: Did you hear from his family at all?
Speaker 6: I haven't.
Speaker 2: Did they know?
Speaker 6: Maybe I don't know? Shoot him a tweet, Yeah, I
Speaker 6: should try.
Speaker 2: I really really wanted the Ridgeway family to know about
Speaker 2: this bird. So I took a research tangent and I
Speaker 2: found out Robert Ridgeway had one child named Audubon, and yes,
Speaker 2: he named his child after a bird painter, and Audobon
Speaker 2: himself an ornithologist, sadly died young in his twenties, no kids,
Speaker 2: so he had no grandkids. So then I dove deeper
Speaker 2: and I found out that Robert Ridgeway's brother was also
Speaker 2: a bird painter who worked at the La County Natural
Speaker 2: History Museum. John Ridgway lived in Glendale. So at nine
Speaker 2: pm on a Friday night, I started to gently stalk
Speaker 2: anyone with the last named Ridgeway from Glendale, California, and
Speaker 2: I sent a few Facebook messages and friend requests saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you related to these ornithologists, but
Speaker 2: I have some information about a bird that was named
Speaker 2: after them. I even sent one message via LinkedIn. None
Speaker 2: of my messages were returned, but I tried. I was
Speaker 2: starting to watch the people related to the birdwatcher that
Speaker 2: a birdwatcher I know. Anyway, would you say that he's
Speaker 2: kind of your ornithological hero a little bit?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I mean he was doing ornithology at a time
Speaker 6: that was really really different, but he has eye for
Speaker 6: subtle differences and different populations and understanding how birds live
Speaker 6: in this world. It was just amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think about studying birds and what you do, and
Speaker 2: I just can't imagine how big of a challenge it
Speaker 2: is when you see something and it'll just alight on
Speaker 2: a branch and then be gone. Is that like a
Speaker 2: fun game to you or do you ever get frustrated
Speaker 2: by that?
Speaker 6: I definitely get frustrated sometimes. But when you bird as
Speaker 6: much as I do, there's not you don't encounter that
Speaker 6: many birds that you can't identify pretty quickly from sight
Speaker 6: and or sound. And so even if a bird lights
Speaker 6: on a branch for a second, if I get a
Speaker 6: good look at it, there's a pretty good chance I'll
Speaker 6: know what it is.
Speaker 2: You know what's up?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Have you been through so many different pairs of binoculars
Speaker 2: to find the best kind?
Speaker 6: I actually don't own a pair of binoculars at the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 6: how is that possible? You're I know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Okay, listen, not this is crazy.
Speaker 6: So my first pair of binoculars, I really love those.
Speaker 6: They they lasted for ten years. And I was robbed
Speaker 6: at gunpoint in Honduras and they stole it, stole my pair.
Speaker 6: So I lost my original pair, Oh my god. And
Speaker 6: then I was given a pair by somebody else and
Speaker 6: I left those on a table at the San Diego Zoo.
Speaker 6: Not as dramatic as story. But then we have binoculars
Speaker 6: here at the Moral Lab that I'd use. That I
Speaker 6: just use.
Speaker 2: What about the what was so in Honduras that was
Speaker 2: doing field work?
Speaker 6: It was? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is that probably that? I'm sure that's the most dramatic
Speaker 2: thing that's happened, right or I mean, the field work
Speaker 2: must take you all over the all over the globe, right.
Speaker 6: It does. Yeah. I've spent quite a bit of time
Speaker 6: in Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Mexico and those
Speaker 6: are the main places have been, and a lot of
Speaker 6: time in Alaska all over the state.
Speaker 2: When you're doing field work. What's a typical day like
Speaker 2: for you when you're not getting robbed at gunpoint, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, I'm so sorry that happened. That's horrifying.
Speaker 6: It was a while ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, field work for ornithologists can involve danger, clearly, and
Speaker 2: it sounds otherwise kind of like camping, but also carrying
Speaker 2: so much equipment and while taking notes on everything and
Speaker 2: data and observations, and you don't get much sleep. So
Speaker 2: on a recent expedition in Mexico.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we were usually just exhausted and would just build
Speaker 6: a campfire and you know, grab some tequila and just
Speaker 6: chill out for an hour or two. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So what is it about ornithology? Why do people go
Speaker 2: so crazy for birds? Well, some social psychology studies point
Speaker 2: to perhaps like a holdover instinct in humans just to
Speaker 2: hunt stuff. I get it, I get it. I've spent
Speaker 2: long hours, late nights on Amazon just looking up shit.
Speaker 2: People go on eBay to buy old VHS tapes, other
Speaker 2: people twitch for birds. Makes sense. Do you, as an
Speaker 2: ornithologist have a favorite movie about birds or least favorite
Speaker 2: movie about birds?
Speaker 6: I honestly generally don't watch movies about birds because it's
Speaker 6: usually so wrong. Like I've never seen the movie The
Speaker 6: Big Year, which is all about birds.
Speaker 2: Oh is it? I don't know that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's with Jack Black and Steve Martin and Owen Wilson,
Speaker 6: and it's all about these three birders who are trying
Speaker 6: to break the record for most species scene in the
Speaker 6: US and one year her an Aba area and one year.
Speaker 2: And you're just like, no, we got so much wrong.
Speaker 6: I don't know. I just don't want and you know,
Speaker 6: it's like I don't even want to look because I'm
Speaker 6: like one of those I'm one of those people who
Speaker 6: when I'm watching a movie and the wrong bird calls
Speaker 6: in the background, I get super annoyed. So a lot
Speaker 6: of movies for me, I have to like just pretend
Speaker 6: that they're getting it right.
Speaker 2: Like the bald Eagle, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 6: A classic one. These are red tailed hawks screech, yeah,
Speaker 6: instead of well, bald eagles sound pretty stupid.
Speaker 2: So what do they sound like?
Speaker 6: Uh, they kind of sound they're like high pitched and squealing.
Speaker 2: Do you feel about the bald eagle being our national
Speaker 2: bird rather than the turkey? Was it Ben Franklin that
Speaker 2: said let's make the turkey or national bird.
Speaker 6: That's my understanding, although I don't really know if that's true,
Speaker 6: but that's what I've always understood, is that he wanted
Speaker 6: the wild turkey to be the national bird. I would
Speaker 6: actually rather be the wild turkey, honestly, because turkeys are
Speaker 6: super smart. They might not seem it, but they are.
Speaker 6: They're very good at like outwitting us, and you know,
Speaker 6: people go to great lengths to shoot them because they're
Speaker 6: so smart and they have super good vision. I've lived
Speaker 6: in Alaska for long enough to see kind of what
Speaker 6: bald eagles really are.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, which if you ever go to Homer, Alaska, I've been,
Speaker 6: They've been there. Yes, did you look at the dumpster
Speaker 6: behind the McDonald's because it was probably full of eagles?
Speaker 2: No, but no, I have to go back.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're really scavengers. They oh my god, they're there
Speaker 6: are some birds that only steal from other birds and
Speaker 6: other things. They're called klepto parasites. But ball eagles are
Speaker 6: not klepto parasites, so they can catch their own food.
Speaker 6: But more often than not, I've seen them steal food.
Speaker 6: And like I saw one steal a flounder from a
Speaker 6: river otter. It's like, come on, the river otter's just
Speaker 6: finally caught his dinner and you steal it. It's just rude.
Speaker 2: That is a pretty American tradition. Yeah, in terms of
Speaker 2: that Ben Franklin story, Okay, so we were both a
Speaker 2: little bit wrong about this. He didn't push for the
Speaker 2: turkey to be the national bird. He just said later
Speaker 2: he threw a bunch of shade at it. In a
Speaker 2: private letter to his daughter, he said, for my own part,
Speaker 2: I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as
Speaker 2: representative of our country. He said, he's a bird of
Speaker 2: bad moral character, and he does not get his living, honestly.
Speaker 2: Ben Franklin also said that, you know, the church is
Speaker 2: a much more respectable bird. It's a little vain and silly,
Speaker 2: but it's a bird of courage. So then I typed
Speaker 2: bald eagle plus dumpster into Google, and sure enough I
Speaker 2: found this. Look at these all these eagles.
Speaker 5: So I don't know what's going on in this dumpster today.
Speaker 2: Something struck me as kind of eerily familiar about the voice,
Speaker 2: and then I realized it was just the honey tones
Speaker 2: of an Alaskan who goes by Pam as a US
Speaker 2: and she had a video that went viral a few
Speaker 2: years ago of a bald eagle and a fox chilling
Speaker 2: on her porch. I highly recommend just brewing yourself some
Speaker 2: decaf cozying up to her channel because it is like
Speaker 2: weird bald eagle diaries. It feels like you accidentally fell
Speaker 2: into someone else's dream. Are there any myths or misconceptions
Speaker 2: about birds that you're like, I gotta go straight in
Speaker 2: there and bust that that.
Speaker 6: One bird brands is really aggravating, because birds are incredibly smart.
Speaker 6: I mean, they're that smart on a level that we
Speaker 6: don't really appreciate. I feel like, so magpies can recognize
Speaker 6: themselves in a mirror.
Speaker 2: For more on this mirror self recognition test and its
Speaker 2: history and which animals look in it and aren't like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm looking good, listen to the episode on primates.
Speaker 6: There's not very many organisms that can do that, right,
Speaker 6: I mean cats dogs we think of them as kind
Speaker 6: of smart, right, but they can't figure that out. But
Speaker 6: birds can. They're tool users. I mean, parrots are just
Speaker 6: unbelievably smart. The most famous one is a parrot that
Speaker 6: was studied by Irene Pepperberg who studied this really beautiful
Speaker 6: African gray parrot and just incredible research done with that bird.
Speaker 2: Look this up and whoa oh shit, y'all. Okay, the
Speaker 2: Wikipedia for this bird just as Alex in parentheses parrot.
Speaker 2: He just has there's one name he's known like he's
Speaker 2: Adele or Madonna. So Alex was an African gray parrot,
Speaker 2: and researchers said his name stood for Avian learning Experiment.
Speaker 2: So also, when an acronym is made to spell a
Speaker 2: word by the way, that's called a backronym, which delights
Speaker 2: me because I always wonder when you see an acronym
Speaker 2: that's like kind of like ugh, okay, I guess that
Speaker 2: works that there's actually a word for that. Backronyms are
Speaker 2: sometimes created to name laws, and the official title of
Speaker 2: the USA Patriot Act from two thousand and one is
Speaker 2: Uniting and Strengthening America by providing appropriate tools required to
Speaker 2: intercept and obstruct terrorism. It spells USA Patriot. Okay, that's
Speaker 2: a stretch. So Alex was said to have a one
Speaker 2: hundred word vocabulary this parrot, and the intelligence of a
Speaker 2: five year old human. So what they say was really
Speaker 2: exceptional is that he appeared to understand what he said,
Speaker 2: so he could describe a key as a key, no
Speaker 2: matter what color or size it was. He's like, I
Speaker 2: know it's a key. Guys, you put a key in
Speaker 2: front of me, I'm able to say that's key. I
Speaker 2: also find this adorable. Alex called an apple a banari,
Speaker 2: which one linguist thinks is a combination of banana and cherry,
Speaker 2: which are two fruits. He was down with. So he
Speaker 2: was in that lab making up portmanteaus, and I think,
Speaker 2: frankly that makes him a poet. He was also a
Speaker 2: bitch when he needed to be. If he said, wan
Speaker 2: a banana and someone's like, okay, here's a nut, he
Speaker 2: quote stared in silence, asked for the banana again, or
Speaker 2: took the nut and threw it at the researcher, or
Speaker 2: otherwise displayed annoyance before requesting the item again. He's salty
Speaker 2: with those nuts, man. Now. Alex died really young for
Speaker 2: a parrot. He was only thirty one years old and
Speaker 2: he died suddenly. Heart trouble, they think. And a lot
Speaker 2: of well cared for African grays live like into their sixties.
Speaker 2: If you get an African gray parrot, you're gonna die
Speaker 2: with that parrot. They live kind of forever. So this
Speaker 2: is so precious. Just grab onto your hearts, you guys.
Speaker 2: Alex's last words were you'd be good, see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I love you, And they were the same words he
Speaker 2: would say every night when Irene Pepperberg left the lab.
Speaker 2: Feelings Speaking of birds speaking, are there any birds that
Speaker 2: in the wild have the most beautiful call to you?
Speaker 6: I would say the one that I'm most commonly heard
Speaker 6: as sand hill cranes. If you've ever been where there's
Speaker 6: big flocks of sand hill cranes, they have this incredible
Speaker 6: trumpeting sound that they do in the air, and they'll
Speaker 6: form these huge flocks in the winter. They would come
Speaker 6: through fairbanks in the fall and their calls just, I
Speaker 6: don't know, it's haunting, it's really beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how about when and I'm forgetting the name? Is
Speaker 2: it a murmur of birds?
Speaker 6: Murmuration?
Speaker 2: Murmuration? Can you explain at all how a murmuration works.
Speaker 2: A murmuration is a flock of birds like starlinks in
Speaker 2: these liquid looking formations. They're just they're bogglingly gorgeous to watch.
Speaker 2: It's so weird.
Speaker 6: Look it up.
Speaker 2: It's like a living lava lamp in fast motion. It's
Speaker 2: like a screensaver someone would stare at in college while
Speaker 2: being on drugs in the dorms or something, but like birds.
Speaker 2: Because I look at it and I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: that's like witchcraft, Like that's so beautiful and crazy? Is
Speaker 2: it fluid dynamics? Is it? Is it like crowd thing?
Speaker 2: How do they do that?
Speaker 6: I have no idea. Okay, I could make something up.
Speaker 2: But a little info on that. So murmurations tend to
Speaker 2: happen when there's a predator around and the birds are
Speaker 2: evading it. And this is really cool. It doesn't matter
Speaker 2: the size of the flock. Each bird is reacting not
Speaker 2: to the size of a huge flock, but just to
Speaker 2: the seven birds around it. They calculated this. They used physics,
Speaker 2: I don't know, some Italian researchers came up with it.
Speaker 2: So it's like you're super in tune with your little
Speaker 2: posse and then a bunch of little posse's make up
Speaker 2: this one big, swirling, diving, massive monster posse.
Speaker 6: I mean it's incredible. I know, I love watching it.
Speaker 6: It's amazing. I've seen it so many times and I've
Speaker 6: never seen them like crash.
Speaker 2: Did you care about dinosaurs when you were a kid,
Speaker 2: or do you care about the link that birds are dinosaurs?
Speaker 2: Or do you are you like dinosaurs can take a hike?
Speaker 2: Take a hike.
Speaker 6: Okay, I love dinosaurs. When I was a little kid.
Speaker 6: Oh really, I was super into dinosaurs and I didn't
Speaker 6: make the connection between birds and dinosaurs, and I don't
Speaker 6: think scientists had solidified that until I had gotten super
Speaker 6: into birds.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 6: I like to remind myself every now and again that
Speaker 6: I'm going dinosaur watching.
Speaker 2: You're going dinosaur yeah, correct me if I'm wrong. I
Speaker 2: feel like if Steve Jobs had to design an orifice,
Speaker 2: it would be a kloeca. So simple, it's one thing,
Speaker 2: So a kloeca is his like the home button on
Speaker 2: an iPhone. It's really all you need. It's a one
Speaker 2: stop shop for liquid waste, solid waste, and then as bonus,
Speaker 2: it's also a sex portal, so birds get it on
Speaker 2: via what is called no joke a chloacal kiss. They
Speaker 2: just smooch butts, sometimes only for a few seconds. Now,
Speaker 2: if you've heard gossip about like duck mating, well a
Speaker 2: lot of it might be true waterfowl gonads. Google it
Speaker 2: or you can go straight to an article on that
Speaker 2: geo called duck penises grow Bigger among rivals, which was
Speaker 2: written by a friend of mine, Jason Goldman, who's a
Speaker 2: wildlife journalist, great icebreaker topics. He covers some good ones.
Speaker 2: Now back to klocas, why is it? Reptiles and birds
Speaker 2: are just like I got a single port here, don't
Speaker 2: worry about it.
Speaker 6: They have a whole different physiological mechanism for waste excretion
Speaker 6: than we do and reproduction. So yeah, they all have
Speaker 6: internal gonads too, which it would be weird if they didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But they have a really different sort of kidney
Speaker 6: system than we do, and so they are able to
Speaker 6: produce their waste sort of as one product and shoot
Speaker 6: it out. It's much more efficient. They're not as good
Speaker 6: at excreting salt from their blood with their kidneys as
Speaker 6: much as we are, but a lot of birds have
Speaker 6: a salt gland in their head. Well, they have two
Speaker 6: salt glands in their head, so it isn't all out
Speaker 6: of one.
Speaker 2: Excreete salt from a gland in their head they do.
Speaker 2: It's nothing crazy and weird about that or anything.
Speaker 6: Nope. Yeah, there are these like little mini kidneys that
Speaker 6: rest on the top of their skull and they filter
Speaker 6: salt out of the blood. It's super high efficiency so
Speaker 6: that they can drink sea water, so like seabirds can
Speaker 6: drink the ocean water and it's no problem. But if
Speaker 6: you're ever on the beach and you see a gull
Speaker 6: with a with a droplet dripping off the tip of
Speaker 6: its bill, that's salt water that's excreted from their salt glands.
Speaker 6: So it comes out the nostrils and drips down the
Speaker 6: off the hook of the bill, So.
Speaker 2: They have a nasshole, I guess. Yeah, so they're peeing
Speaker 2: out of their face.
Speaker 6: Pretty much, no big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if they'll ever study that that method
Speaker 2: of excretion in terms of like a desalination, you know,
Speaker 2: like will they ever look at that, like a maybe
Speaker 2: we can attach that as a backpack so seafarers can
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm applying for a patent. Moving on,
Speaker 2: I have a question about male and female birds. Okay,
Speaker 2: why is it that, at least in the human species,
Speaker 2: ladies were painting our faces, we're dressing up, men are
Speaker 2: like whatever, I'm wearing beige? Again, Why is it in
Speaker 2: birds the men are very decked out and fancy and
Speaker 2: the ladies are like, I'm a little bit bigger and
Speaker 2: I'm beige.
Speaker 6: So that's not always the case in birds. There are
Speaker 6: some species in which the females are much brighter than
Speaker 6: the males. Yeah, and they have a different mating system.
Speaker 6: So in the vast majority of birds, about ninety percent
Speaker 6: of species, they're monogamous, and in a lot of those
Speaker 6: you can't tell males and females apart at all. Oh,
Speaker 6: but in situations where there's really strong sexual selection on
Speaker 6: males that's put on them by females, and in a
Speaker 6: lot of those situations it's a there's a like a
Speaker 6: resource involved, so there's like resource defense. Polygyny is one
Speaker 6: system where a male with a like really bright ornament,
Speaker 6: who's like the strongest male defends a resource and all
Speaker 6: the females that come in can like mate with him.
Speaker 2: Is that that's polygyny. That's the opposite of monogamy.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Plogyeny is one male multiple females, got it. Polyandry
Speaker 6: is one female multiple males. Oh and in those birds,
Speaker 6: the females are brighter than the males.
Speaker 2: Really yep, So whoever is kind of attracting the most
Speaker 2: mates is going to be as decked out.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And the birds that have probably the craziest like
Speaker 6: difference between males and females are these birds that do
Speaker 6: a thing called lecking. If you don't know what lecking is,
Speaker 6: it's pretty fantastic. So what happens is these males they
Speaker 6: all gather together and display. They not displaying to each other,
Speaker 6: they're displaying to any female that will come in.
Speaker 2: What you know, how, sometimes it's secretly awesome to have
Speaker 2: a cold because you're in quarantine. You're not allowed to
Speaker 2: breathe on anyone, so you can just sit alone and
Speaker 2: watch weird videos for like a week. So I just
Speaker 2: sampled a few minutes of lecking videos. It's l e
Speaker 2: kki n G and I want to go lick some doorknobs.
Speaker 2: I just want to get up in some Nike will
Speaker 2: and some of these videos, Oh, they're so good.
Speaker 6: And so they just do all these crazy elaborate displays,
Speaker 6: and the one who's looking the best and is displaying
Speaker 6: the best gets the females.
Speaker 2: It's a Miss Universe pageant, but with male birds pretty much.
Speaker 6: Yep, it's really incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite documentary about birds?
Speaker 6: Life of Birds?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, the whole thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is it a series?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a six part series by BBC narrated by
Speaker 6: it Attinburgh. Of course.
Speaker 2: I watched Planet Ear at the Albatross portion where he
Speaker 2: was waiting for his mate to come back. I was like,
Speaker 2: should I be crying right now? Because I am?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you should be okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: How did you feel about Portlandia's sketch about put a
Speaker 2: bird on it?
Speaker 6: I loved it. I agree if you put a bird
Speaker 6: on it, people will buy it. I'm the same way.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter, like if I see a product with
Speaker 6: a bird on it, that will buy it.
Speaker 2: Do people give you a lot of birdie gifts?
Speaker 6: Yes? All birds? Yeah, yeah, books, everything.
Speaker 2: Do you ever get sick of it or you like,
Speaker 2: bring it on?
Speaker 6: I'm fine with it. Yeah, it makes it easier. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And everybody who would get me anything knows that just
Speaker 6: get them something with a bird. He'll be thrilled.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have some questions from listeners. Are you ready?
Speaker 6: Ye?
Speaker 2: Warning, some of these might be very stupid. Okay, those
Speaker 2: are the best kind.
Speaker 6: All right.
Speaker 2: We're going to start with petrion listeners. They get first crack.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 2: But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners,
Speaker 2: we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of
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Speaker 2: Okay your questions. John Worcester wants to know how fast
Speaker 2: do hummingbirds beat their wings and how many calories of
Speaker 2: day do they need?
Speaker 6: I don't know the question the answer to either of
Speaker 6: those questions.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'll lock it up there. I could google it
Speaker 2: all right, John, I looked it up here's the deal.
Speaker 2: The fastest recorded rate is about eighty beats per second,
Speaker 2: but the average is around fifty three beats per second.
Speaker 2: And these tiny birds consume between three point one for
Speaker 2: and seven point six calories a day, which totally non
Speaker 2: scientific estimate. I think that's like a sip of soda.
Speaker 6: But I know that. So hummingbird's the smallest hummingbird on Earth.
Speaker 6: The b hummingbird in Cuba has a heart rate of
Speaker 6: twelve hundred beats per minute, so super high metabolism. And
Speaker 6: they have to drink some nectar like pretty much as
Speaker 6: soon as they wake up. So I have hummingbird feeders
Speaker 6: at my house and they're out there well before dawn,
Speaker 6: the feeders covered. If they don't get some sugar water
Speaker 6: after a long night, they're they're dead.
Speaker 2: They're chasing that dragon, but they're.
Speaker 6: Also on a constant sugar high.
Speaker 2: No wonder why they're heart right, So I yep. At
Speaker 2: least it's not caffeinated. At least it's not like a
Speaker 2: monster energy drink and your bird feeder. That would be insane.
Speaker 2: Jordanes wants to know why do Australian magpies attack people
Speaker 2: during swooping season.
Speaker 6: So I'm not familiar with australiallion magpies, but I'm guessing
Speaker 6: that that's when they're nesting and they want you to
Speaker 6: get away from their nest or they're young. I mean,
Speaker 6: that's usually the answer to why a bird is swooping
Speaker 6: at you.
Speaker 2: That means get away from my babies. Yep, okay, so
Speaker 2: get away from their babies. Yeah, that's how you stop
Speaker 2: that exactly. Paul Hanley wants to know what's the deal
Speaker 2: with vox swifts and chimneys. Swifts and chimneys. Do you
Speaker 2: know anything about this?
Speaker 6: I do well. First of all, it's Fox's.
Speaker 2: Swift, thank you. It was Vaux and I went for
Speaker 2: the fancy pronunciation everybody does.
Speaker 6: Sorry, but the guy's last name was Vox. Who it's
Speaker 6: named after.
Speaker 2: Gosh, I tried. I overshot that one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, it's okay. It's common, very very common. They're
Speaker 6: super similar, but they're basically just Eastern and Western replacements
Speaker 6: for one another. So Voxes are only in the West
Speaker 6: and chimneys are only in the East. You can tell
Speaker 6: them apart, but you almost never find them together, so
Speaker 6: you can pretty much know which one you're looking at
Speaker 6: depending on where you are.
Speaker 2: Zoe wants to know. Is bird watching a gateway drug
Speaker 2: to ornithology?
Speaker 6: It can be.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so watch yourself unless you want to become
Speaker 2: an ornithologist and start getting paid for it. Don't get
Speaker 2: into birding.
Speaker 6: It's not a bad gig.
Speaker 2: Michael Sandembaga said, how smart are crows because they definitely
Speaker 2: seem like they're watching me plotting something.
Speaker 6: Crows are incredibly smart, and they are watching and plotting something,
Speaker 6: so they can recognize faces of people.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 6: They all also have their own dialect, so they have
Speaker 6: their own voices and they can recognize each other by voice.
Speaker 6: They all sound the same to us, but they're not.
Speaker 6: There's some really really cool studies that people have done,
Speaker 6: especially in Seattle, like using masks to see if crows
Speaker 6: really can recognize individual faces. And they can.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. So they might be like, oh, I
Speaker 2: know that guy. He comes out with with some leftover
Speaker 2: FreeDOS after lunch, and m'd be like, I hate that guy.
Speaker 2: He's always by my nest.
Speaker 6: Yep, totally, So don't fuck with a crow.
Speaker 2: No, no, don't do it. They know you, ye like
Speaker 2: that guy. Blay Hawkins wants to know is there any
Speaker 2: hierarchy of intelligence of birds. Is there one species that
Speaker 2: extremely intelligent and others that are.
Speaker 5: Maybe not so much.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's definitely true. So the corvids, which are the
Speaker 6: crow's ravens and jays, magpies, those are among the smartest.
Speaker 6: They're probably the smartest songbirds, passerings, and then parrots are
Speaker 6: incredibly smart. Birds like American coots.
Speaker 2: Just the fact that it's called an American coot.
Speaker 6: It's a coot, I know. So if you ever look
Speaker 6: at a coot, and they're very common and most people
Speaker 6: just don't pay any attention to them. They have a
Speaker 6: huge body and a tiny hull. They're just they're cute,
Speaker 6: but they're really stupid.
Speaker 2: They sound like your drunk uncle at the holidays who
Speaker 2: make sexist remarks that everyone ignores American coot pretty much. Okay,
Speaker 2: This next question is from the Facebook group. Owls really
Speaker 2: turn their heads one hundred and eighty degrees.
Speaker 6: Yes, why, they have really flexible necks. Okay, yeah, but
Speaker 6: they're also really adapted at So owls have ears at
Speaker 6: different heights on their head.
Speaker 2: Oh so one's over here, one's over there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so one's higher than the other, and that way
Speaker 6: they can like more. They can better get sound. They
Speaker 6: can like triangulate sound so that if they hear like
Speaker 6: a little mouse that's running behind them, they turn their
Speaker 6: head all the way around. Then they can hear exactly
Speaker 6: where the mouse is and go get it. They don't
Speaker 6: look wonky, No, they don't.
Speaker 2: You know, they don't look like like sloth from Goonies
Speaker 2: or anything.
Speaker 6: Right, if you open but if you have a dead one.
Speaker 6: We had one that just got hit by a car
Speaker 6: not too long ago, well a couple of years ago.
Speaker 6: But and if you open it up, yeah, you could
Speaker 6: see the flaps on either side are completely different heights. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's neat.
Speaker 2: Oh, I had no idea. What's the most absurd bird ever?
Speaker 6: I think the most absurd bird and also a little
Speaker 6: bit scary is called a horned screamer. It's a great
Speaker 6: name and I would I would recommend everybody to look
Speaker 6: it up. There's some great YouTube videos of horn screamers screaming.
Speaker 2: A horn screamer sounds like the worst guy to frat party.
Speaker 6: Yeah, seriously, you would not want to go dressed up
Speaker 6: as a horn screamer to a Halloween party. But they
Speaker 6: have a giant bony feather coming out of their head.
Speaker 6: So they're sort of like a unicorn in that respect,
Speaker 6: but they're related to geese sort of. But they have
Speaker 6: a bill like a vulture, and their feet aren't webbed.
Speaker 5: Oh no.
Speaker 6: And they scream you can hear them for over a mile.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 6: And they're super territorial, so they have the huge wingspurs
Speaker 6: on their wings that they like try to kill each
Speaker 6: other with.
Speaker 2: Okay, hell, yes, I look this up. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: So the visual of this is like two angry, uh
Speaker 2: hairy toddlers screaming at each other, honking like pingpong back
Speaker 2: and forth, but each with a single bouncing like a
Speaker 2: needle like spike emerging from the top of their heads.
Speaker 2: So whatever you're picturing in your mind, trust me, the
Speaker 2: reality is weirder. You must get up in this. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get a big horned screamer tattoo right across my
Speaker 2: back and shoulders. Lily Masa wants to know why do
Speaker 2: we call people chickens when chickens are actually mean and
Speaker 2: cocky as fuck.
Speaker 6: That's a good question. I don't know. Chickens are kind
Speaker 6: of scared generally, I mean, they're a little flighty, maybe.
Speaker 2: That's why they're so mean, is because they're scared.
Speaker 6: Well, I would say roost, yeah, hens not so much.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I'll look into that, all right. I looked
Speaker 2: into chicken etymology and I didn't come up with much,
Speaker 2: but I did find so many entries on English as
Speaker 2: a second language forums asking if I mid quote one directly,
Speaker 2: I would like to know that what is meaning don't
Speaker 2: be chicken, and how can use it? It's a good question. Now,
Speaker 2: to be fair, I'm not a French as a first
Speaker 2: language speaker, and I have always wondered why if someone
Speaker 2: is mad at you in France they call you a
Speaker 2: duck because canard in French is duck. And my mom
Speaker 2: always told me if someone calls you a duck in French,
Speaker 2: you're really you're in some hot water. Now. I just
Speaker 2: found out looking at this that non French speakers often
Speaker 2: mishear that in what they're really being called is a conard,
Speaker 2: which in English does not mean duck. It is more
Speaker 2: it's more into a kloka, is what that means. I
Speaker 2: think we should start calling people kloe because oh, this
Speaker 2: is so sad. Still, Ryan wants to know there are
Speaker 2: some birds the partner for life. Say one of them dies,
Speaker 2: does a surviving bird repartner, and is there like a
Speaker 2: tinder for birds.
Speaker 6: The surviving partner does re finds a new mate. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 6: so they're you know, it's all driven by the desire
Speaker 6: to reproduce, and so you're not gonna have a bird
Speaker 6: that suddenly turns that off even though it's mate died.
Speaker 6: And a lot of birds seem like they mate for life,
Speaker 6: but they don't. They actually really switch partners every year. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so we've.
Speaker 2: Been led wrong. Like I've heard that penguins are maybe
Speaker 2: not as monogamous.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so most monogamous birds are not fully monogamous. They're
Speaker 6: most most of them are promiscuous, so they're socially monogamous,
Speaker 6: but they're promiscuous. There's some birds that do this to
Speaker 6: the incredible, to an absolute extreme. There's some fairy wrens
Speaker 6: in Australia.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 6: I think they're called superb fairy wrens.
Speaker 2: Side note, the bird names are killing me.
Speaker 6: It's so out of control that sometimes not a single
Speaker 6: egg and a female's nest was laid by her or
Speaker 6: was sired by her partner, so that every single egg
Speaker 6: that's in her nest, she copulated with another male.
Speaker 2: Get a girl, and but it looks as though she
Speaker 2: is partnering with and rearing them with one male.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Does the male know about this?
Speaker 6: I mean he must because he's he's doing it too. Yeah,
Speaker 6: he's doing it too with every other female in the area.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like a like a new age.
Speaker 2: We're together, but we're not shackled to one another. M hm.
Speaker 2: Exactly do you think that people use birds and their
Speaker 2: monogamy or lack of monogamy to justify their own behaviors? Definitely, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Heather Ennis wants to know why do I always see
Speaker 2: pigeons with one clubbed, stumpy foot. I think maybe that
Speaker 2: that isn't an accurate sample population.
Speaker 6: Uh, it's for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: I'd love that he has an answer for this.
Speaker 6: So often they'll get something stuck on their foot.
Speaker 2: Like spoiler alert, it was a tangly hairball, So.
Speaker 6: We caught it and pulled the hair ball off it.
Speaker 6: But I think that's it. Their feet, They're all they're
Speaker 6: always walking around on the ground, Yeah, getting into things,
Speaker 6: and so I think, yeah, they just get into something
Speaker 6: that tangles on their foot and then they lose it.
Speaker 2: Street birds. Man, Samara wants to know our bird cage
Speaker 2: is cruel and should we give them big averies or
Speaker 2: just not have them as pets.
Speaker 6: I think we should just not have them as pets. Yeah,
Speaker 6: bird cages are are cruel. Birds meant to live and
Speaker 6: fly around the world. It's like we saw something that
Speaker 6: has evolved to flow and decided they shouldn't anymore keep
Speaker 6: them in her house. It's just kind of rude.
Speaker 2: I used to go on this walk, beautiful house, beautiful neighborhood,
Speaker 2: and it had this one circular window up on the
Speaker 2: top floor and there was a bird cage next to it,
Speaker 2: and I for like a year or two I walked
Speaker 2: past and I was always like, man, what's that bird?
Speaker 2: Thinking that bird's like, come on man, like in a mansion, granted,
Speaker 2: but in a cage behind the circular like porthole window.
Speaker 2: And I was like, man. Then one day I walked
Speaker 2: by and there was a the window was open and
Speaker 2: there was a note taped to the gate that said
Speaker 2: lost bird. Like the bird made it finally like hell, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: that bird was like waiting for these wings to grow back.
Speaker 2: I'm out of here. And I got like kind of happy,
Speaker 2: and then I was like, dude, you're never getting your
Speaker 2: bird back. Ginger Larsen wants to know what can we
Speaker 2: learn from birds.
Speaker 6: So much? I mean there's so many they can do,
Speaker 6: so many incredible things that we're not even close to
Speaker 6: being able to.
Speaker 2: Do, Like fly, for example, with their arms.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like fly, and they can migrate these incredible distances.
Speaker 6: They can navigate using the stars. I mean, there's so
Speaker 6: many things that they have learned how to do and
Speaker 6: a vault to be able to do that we can't.
Speaker 6: And you know, we rely on these various systems to
Speaker 6: be able to do what we can.
Speaker 2: Right cough the internet and cell phones cough.
Speaker 6: But they can fly away better than we can.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so you can learn. We've already learned so
Speaker 2: much about aviation from birds. I mean, hello, every time
Speaker 2: you get an airplane, you're like, hi, it's a big
Speaker 2: metal bird. Everything from the two wheels at the bottom
Speaker 2: to like the wings. We've just made a big bird.
Speaker 2: Alison Throckmorton wants to know does rice make some bird's
Speaker 2: stomachs explode?
Speaker 6: No? Oh, okay, that is a myth. Oh it is
Speaker 6: a lot of birds eat rice.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you're having a wedding, you can still
Speaker 2: get pelted with rice? Yes, Oh who started that?
Speaker 6: I don't know. I mean we can eat dried rice
Speaker 6: and it doesn't make our stomach explode.
Speaker 2: They don't have like a crop or something where it expands.
Speaker 6: Or I mean they birds can eat like bones, so
Speaker 6: they can handle some rice.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's good to know. This question was asked by
Speaker 2: Darren Ficciarellirell Darren Ficarelli. Sorry, sorry, What is the worst bird?
Speaker 2: And why is it? A Canada goose? I feel like
Speaker 2: they came into this with an agenda.
Speaker 6: They really did, And I completely understand. Canada geese are
Speaker 6: just so mean. They're really really.
Speaker 2: Mean, but Canadians are so nice.
Speaker 6: Canadians are nice. It's not their fault that the geese
Speaker 6: are so mean. The geese they're just really productive and
Speaker 6: they have adapted to us by nesting in all these parks.
Speaker 2: And are they just entitled?
Speaker 6: Yeah, they have their park to themselves and they don't
Speaker 6: want you messing with it, and they're they're gonna bite
Speaker 6: you and hissit you and chase you.
Speaker 2: Two last questions, what is one thing about your job
Speaker 2: that you don't like the worst part of your job,
Speaker 2: and then we'll ask with your favorite part more than
Speaker 2: your favorite moment on your job has been. What's the
Speaker 2: shittiest thing about being an ornthologist? Is it getting pooped on?
Speaker 6: No? Okay, I don't mind that at all. Okay, I
Speaker 6: would say the worst part is when I find and
Speaker 6: a beatle infestation in the collection. Oh, there's nothing that
Speaker 6: makes me feel worse than that. It is like when
Speaker 6: I go out in the collection and I find damage
Speaker 6: specimens kind of regardless of how they're damaged, it just
Speaker 6: makes me so mad and it just ruins like my week.
Speaker 6: I get so angry. I like tell John, and.
Speaker 2: John is another ornithologist and an evolutionary biologist that you
Speaker 2: will meet in a few episodes. Very cool dude, and then.
Speaker 6: He gets angry and yeah, So it's that that is
Speaker 6: by far the worst. And that's sort of like a
Speaker 6: minor thing. It doesn't happen a lot, but it really is.
Speaker 6: Like my job as a collections manager is to like
Speaker 6: maintain the integrity of this collection and like that's the job. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and when I find that that's not taking place, it
Speaker 6: just makes me so angry. Then I dump a bunch
Speaker 6: of mothballs in there and freeze all the birds so
Speaker 6: they kill everything.
Speaker 2: But you're just like, it's like Hulk turning into hole.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I basically should just leave because I'm
Speaker 6: just going to be such a grouch for the rest
Speaker 6: of the day.
Speaker 2: And then what about your favorite thing about what you do?
Speaker 6: I think the favorite My favorite thing about what I
Speaker 6: do is I get paid to study birds. I mean,
Speaker 6: just to be able to do that and like get
Speaker 6: paid to do it.
Speaker 2: It's incredible, especially since some people are spending literally their
Speaker 2: retirement chasing birds around the globe and you're like, negative,
Speaker 2: I'm getting the money.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's like I would do this. I do this
Speaker 6: in my free time. I can't actually get to get
Speaker 6: paid for it. It's great.
Speaker 2: Don't tell your bosses that.
Speaker 6: Well, they do it too, so it's okay.
Speaker 2: So if you're like listening to this at the bus
Speaker 2: stop and you see a bird, just say to it, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I know more about your butt and your brain than
Speaker 2: I ever thought I would, and birds pretty cool little muffins.
Speaker 2: So to watch any of the links that I mentioned,
Speaker 2: you can go to aliward dot com slash ologies, where
Speaker 2: I kind of like flacidly post a blog, a lot
Speaker 2: of links up there. Hopefully it'll be up by the
Speaker 2: time you're listening to this. I don't know, guys, it's
Speaker 2: my birthday and I'm I'm recording this outhro in my
Speaker 2: closet because the sound is good here. I just I
Speaker 2: want to get this episode up. So that sounds so pathetic,
Speaker 2: but I'm having a pretty good time. What I was
Speaker 2: gonna say. Oh yeah. Also, you can see inside the
Speaker 2: More Lab of Zoology on Instagram. Their account is MLZ
Speaker 2: birds and they sometimes give tours of a lab. They're
Speaker 2: doing one through Atlas Obscura November eleventh here in La.
Speaker 2: If there are still tickets left, get on it. If
Speaker 2: you ever want to submit questions for upcoming Ologists patrons
Speaker 2: on Patreon get first Crack so you can support there.
Speaker 2: You can also join the Ologies podcast group on Facebook.
Speaker 2: It's a good group of people, so if you're a dick,
Speaker 2: don't don't join, but if you're But if you're not,
Speaker 2: then hop into it because it's a party. I'm Ali
Speaker 2: Ward or ologies pod on Twitter. Uh. I'm also on
Speaker 2: Instagram and Ologies and Ali Ward, So stay tuned for
Speaker 2: next week. I'm not quite sure what episode it's going
Speaker 2: to be yet. I'll figure that out later, but it'll
Speaker 2: probably be full of stupid questions for smart people, because honestly,
Speaker 2: I kind of think that they secretly like it, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to know if that's not true. To
Speaker 2: be honest, all right, ologyites.
Speaker 5: Bye, pacodermatology, hobology, crypto zoology, lithology and technology, meteorology, pology, anthology, seriology, elinology.
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