Bird Podcast with Shoba Narayan (Shoba Narayan)

Delhi and its neighbourhoods, with its variety of habitats and landscapes, is remarkable for the wealth and diversity of its avifauna. It is a true haven for bird lovers, home to an astonishing array of over 470 captivating bird species. Get ready for an enchanting adventure with Sudhir Vyas's delightful book, "The Birds of the Delhi Area," which is the ultimate guide to unlocking the secrets of these feathered wonders! This book has been edited by Anita Mani under Indian Pitta- India's first imprint dedicated to birds.

With over 50 years of bird watching experience, Sudhir Vyas, a former career diplomat, possesses an intimate understanding of Delhi's avian inhabitants. His expertise shines through numerous articles and studies on ornithology in the Delhi area.  An invaluable resource for the rapidly growing community of bird watchers in Delhi and beyond, it explores the diverse avifauna of the region.  Accompanying Vyas's words are the breathtaking photographs of by a number of bird photographers, including by Amit Sharma, a passionate wildlife and bird photographer, whose images comprise the bulk of the pictures that illustrate the book and bring the birds and their varied habitats to life.

With us today is Dr. Samira Agnihotri, who has studied bird song, racket-tailed drongos and ethno-ornithology.   Dr. Agnihotri has worked in the Biligiri Rangana Betta or BR Hills from 2005 when she began to study birdsong while pursuing a Master’s degree in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from the National Centre for Biological Sciences. She then studied racket-tailed drongos, walking through the forests with a mike and recorder, and obtained her Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science. She followed up her research on drongos as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Advanced Studies. She is keenly interested in the traditional ecological knowledge of the Solega people and has dabbled in ethno-ornithologies, collaborating with linguist Dr. Aung Si, and is intent on documenting Solega knowledge and oral histories. Samira is also interested in nature education, and in exploring different ways to popularise the ecological sciences as well as encourage and aid the preservation of traditional knowledge systems. Samira is a member of Punarchith, a collective that works with farmers and rural youth in Chamarajanagar District. Currently, she works at the Office of Communications at IISc.

Dr. Heinrich is a professor emeritus in the biology department at the University of Vermont and is the author of a number of books about nature writing and biology. Dr. Heinrich has made major contributions to the study of insect physiology and behavior, as well as bird behavior.  

Here are some of the books mentioned in this episode.

One Man’s Owl

Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death 

A Naturalist at Large: The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich

The Homing Instinct: Meaning & Mystery in Animal Migration

White Feathers: The Nesting Lives of Tree Swallows

Ravens in Winter

Racing the Clock: Running Across a Lifetime

Questions:

1. Can ravens think, and how could you know?
2. Ravens share food. Are they  altruistic?
3. Why did you study tree swallows and what did you find out?
4. Experiences with crows. 
5. Do ravens have culture? (basically why live with humans or as in New England are hyper-shy)
6. You studied woodpeckers, too. (It was flickers and sapsuckers- not top-notch science but fun!)
7. Your father is famous for his birds and his wasps, too- tell us about that ! (His book. on the Snoring Bird and yours)
8. Owl. You have had quite an experience with a Great horned owl.
9. Your favorite bird aesthetically— woodcock display -turned on since a lid on the farm
10. Golden-crowned kinglets? Fun discoveries/observations.  
11. Anything else? Winter mixed-species flocks?

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Shashank Dalvi's Big Year of Birding all over India.

Dr. Aparajita Datta leads The Nature Conservation Foundation’s Eastern Himalaya programme, under which research and community-based conservation with hornbills as a flagship have been carried out for over two decades. She completed her PhD on hornbill biology and their role in seed dispersal in 2000. Since then, she along with her team have worked all over the North East on a variety of hornbill-related projects. She has received several awards including the National Geographic Emerging Explorer award (2010) and the Whitley Fund for Nature award (2013), and the Women in Discovery award. Her interests include plant–animal interactions in rainforests, understanding human impacts on wildlife, and engaging with tribal communities for conservation. She is also currently the Co-Chair (Asia) for the IUCN SSC Hornbill Specialist Group. In this episode, Aparajita talks about hornbills and their ecosystem. She writes and speaks regularly about conservation and her take on nature.

Dr. Datta's work has encompassed long-term research on hornbill biology in north-east India (breeding biology, roosting, diet), hornbill movement and seed dispersal using telemetry, long-term monitoring of tree phenology, hunting & logging impacts, biological exploration in Arunachal Pradesh & new mammal species discoveries, seed dispersal & seed predation; established community-based conservation interventions with tribal communities (health, education, rural energy), conservation education, a citizen science initiative for hornbills. 

A Hornbill Nest Adoption Program set up in 2011 protects hornbill nests in forests outside a Protected Area, while providing income to people. We have contributed to this programme.  You can too by donating here.

Questions and Timeline

1:30 She lays out the contours of your work with hornbills.  Nesting biology of hornbills.  Their breeding is very unique. They are secondary cavity nesters.  Females imprison themselves inside the cavity for up to 4 months.  They seal the nest with their own droppings. The male is the sole provider.

6:30 Varities of hornbills.  She talks about the majesty of hornbills. 62 species in the world.  Africa- 30, Asia- 32, India-9.  The casque atop their bills. Rhinoceros hornbills. Casque is hollow.  Fused neck vertebrae. Epitome of monogamous birds.

10:30 The connection between plants and animals explained through hornbills. The specialist seed dispersals of hornbills. Terrestrial forest rodents.  Scatter disperser.  Generalist plants and trees and specialized seed dispersal by frugivores.  Complex connections between species in a tropical forest.  Talks about the laurel trees, Phoebe cooperiana-- called Sanchar in Nyishi.  They love the fruits.

14:00 Have you seen all the nine hornbill species found in India? Can you talk about them for those who are not as lucky as you? How are they similar and how are they different?

Larger tend to be frugivorous in their diet. Smaller ones eat animal matter.

1. Great hornbill: Northeast India.  Disjunct population-- in Uttarakhand, UP.  Also 
2. Wreathed hornbill: Northeast India
3. Rufuous necked hornbill-- Northeast, higher elevation,  
4. Brown hornbill-- Northeast, cooperative breeding system.  In the others, you have the male feeding the female inside the cave.  In Brown hornbill, the adult male is helped by juvenile males from the previous years in both nest feeding and defense.
5. Oriental pied hornbill-- wider distribution, Northern, Eastern and Central India
6. Malabar pied hornbill-- western ghats, central India, 
7. Malabar gray hornbill-- endemic, Western ghats, smallest of all hornbills, in the Malabar area,  
8. Narcondam hornbill-- restricted to a six square kilometre Narcondam island in the Andaman-Nicobar islands.
9. Gray hornbill.

21:00 Talks about her research on the functional role that forest hornbills play as seed dispersers. How hornbills are great seed dispersers.  All seeds except the ficus (which are defecated) are regurgitated.  How to measure the quality of seed dispersal.

27:00 What is recruitment? Rohit Naniwadekar’s work in Namdapha.  Scatter dispersing seeds.

30: 00 You have worked with the local Nishi tribes in the area of hornbill conservation. Tell us about the complexity of this. What is roost monitoring and how do you do it?

She talks about partnerships that they have crea

38:00 Talks about nesting trees.  Tetramelis nudiflora.  Altingia 

42:00 What are your favourite species of birds?

Indian pitta, Blythe’s reed warbler, Paradis flycatcher, yellow-wattled lapwing.  Talks about her neighbourhood birds.

44:00 Her favourite is the rufous necked hornbill.  Final thoughts?

This episode features Josep Del Hoyo, one of the founders as well as the director of Lynx Edicions and an expert videographer of birds.  This episode is a wide-ranging conversation about birds in different parts of the world.

Josep is an Editor of the 17-volume Handbook of the Birds of the World series (1992–2013) and an Author of the HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World in two volumes (2014–2016). He has most recently authored the book All the Birds of the World (2020), which presents every bird species in a single, fully illustrated volume. Josep has been the driving force behind these and many other projects at Lynx, always motivated by his passion for nature, books and conservation.

In this episode, we are talking about how we know what we know about bird migration.  Our guest, Rebecca Heisman describes herself on her website, as a “bird writer for hire.” Her first book, flight path has the following subtitle: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration. This episode is as much about people as it is about birds.  

When a pigeon comes into the house. This is a controversial episode.  In fact, I am pretty sure nobody in the nature groups that I am part of will approve of this.  In fact, they may even condemn this episode.  Because you see, it is about pigeons, which birders call flying pests. But here’s what happened and so, if you listen or watch this episode, advance apologies. 

About six months ago, a rock pigeon made a nest in my mother-in-law's balcony. This episode is about the ripple effects after that.

One day, I returned after a long trip and visited my mother-in-law who lives in a separate apartment in my building to discover that a pigeon had laid two eggs on a chair that she uses to sit on in her balcony.  My mother in law was quite delighted with this development.  She lives alone and having a living creature inhabit her home gave her a lot of pleasure.  The problem is that these feral pigeons– rock doves– are carriers of disease.

Bird Podcast is one of the Top 20 science podcasts in India per Feedspot.

Here is a special episode about how different Bangalore birding experts got into birding.

This episode is about Bhutan: carbon-negative, Buddhist and a pioneer in sustainable tourism. This tiny country, about the size of Switzerland contains 774 species.  In comparison, neighbouring India— nearly ten times the size— has just 1200 species. Here we talk to Namgay Tshering a freelance birding guide about the birds of Bhutan.  Specifically he mentions the Beautiful Nuthatch, the Blyth’s tragopan, the Himalayan Monal and others.  He talks about how Eastern and Southern Bhutan are a haven for birdwatchers, perhaps because the main cities of Paro, Thimphu and Punakha are far from these locales.  Watch this episode on Youtube for visuals of Bhutan. 

JN Prasad has been a keen naturalist and birdwatcher for the last 4 decades. Associated closely with the WWF-India Nature Clubs of India movement since its inception, he went on to co-found Merlin Nature Club, which became the cradle of learning for many of Bangalore’s most enthusiastic naturalists.

A post-graduate in International Marketing and also in Ecology and Environment, he has over 50 papers and notes to his credits in leading national & international publications.

More recently, continuing the passion Dr. George had for nest boxes, especially for cavity nesters like Magpie-Robins, that are facing a huge challenge to find space to breed, he has started the Gubbi Goodu network of volunteers who build nest boxes for sparrows and other birds.

For all this and more, he has been recognized and awarded by the Rotary Club for Outstanding Service and contribution to the community.

Jonathan Franzen is arguably America’s greatest living fiction writer. He has won numerous accolades and awards.  His latest book, Crossroads, is just out. Like many of his novels, it has little to do with his other passion. As Jonathan says in this interview, he doesn’t bird very much when he is working.

Now to birding.  In his New Yorker essay, “My Bird Problem,” Franzen says that he began birding in 1999 at the age of 40. Since then, he has written a number of lyrical essays about birds, conservation and his birding adventures from Africa to Antarctica. My second favourite is this one in the New Yorker which talks about him going to search for Masafuera rayadito in faraway Chile. My absolute favourite is this one in the National Geographic which talks about the sheer joy of birding and the number of species he has seen. It is both a ringing, yet seemingly self-evident, endorsement for birds and a fine argument for conservation. A more incisive and heartbreaking essay is this one in the National Geographic on seabirds. He also speaks about how he fell in love with birds and protecting them in this Youtube video. Franzen also lends his name and voice to conservation efforts that matter to him such as this interesting one about the Chatham albatross.  Watch it.

This New York Times piece, which put him on its 2018 “The Greats” cover, gives an idea of where he is at currently. For more details, visit his website: https://jonathanfranzen.com

Franzen has also written controversial pieces about climate change that have evoked responses from Audubon. 

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A few years ago, I cold-emailed Jairam Ramesh, then minister of rural development, with one question: how could urban individuals contribute to rural India? He called me from Gumla, Jharkand. “Do you know where Gumla is?” he asked. Sheepishly, I said No. After some small talk—his mother lives in Bangalore— I asked how the average urban citizen could help rural India, should they desire to. What were his top five priorities?

Ramesh laughed and said that his top priorities such as land reform, rural infrastructure and employment were not things the average citizen could contribute to. “Those initiatives are for well meaning bankrupt governments, not for well meaning rich individuals like (your readers),” he said. “The bulk of investments in rural areas will have to come from government. To expect the private sector to make these huge investments is unrealistic.”

Since then, Ramesh moved on to become a charismatic Minister of Environment and Forests.

Born in Chikkamagalur, Jairam Ramesh is both a man of the forest and a man of the world. As a politician, minister, administrator and author, he has written and spoken about many topics. His most recent book, Indira Gandhi: a life in nature, is a portrait of a prime minister who happened to have a deep love of and empathy for the wild.

In this freewheeling talk, Jairam Ramesh discusses his term as Minister and talks about this land, our land--that is home to the elephant, the great indian bustard and the tiger.

The sex of a bird – whether it is male or female – is one of the most critical aspects of its biology. Males and females often behave differently, especially during the breeding season, and in many species, they have strikingly different plumages.

This episode features Dr. Hamish Spencer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Otago in southern New Zealand. Hamish was recently in Colombia, where he was shown a bird that violated these rules.

Colombian ornithologist John Murillo had discovered a very unusual Green Honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza) on his farm near Manizales in Colombia and pointed it out to Hamish when he visited early in 2023. The bird exhibited aqua-blue male plumage on its right and grass-green female plumage on its left. The bird’s head showed the black hood of a typical male on the right, but the left side was mostly green.

This episode discusses this bizarre phenomenon, known as bilateral gynandromorphy. How did it affect this particular bird? How does it arise? How common is it? Which species has it been observed in?

The article reporting this find has colour photos taken by John Murillo and is available at https://journal.afonet.org/vol94/iss4/art12/

John Murillo’s video can be seen at https://figshare.com/articles/media/DSCN2268_MOV/23739894

Birds are the stuff of myth and legend in every culture. Some of the most beautiful poetic images come from birds. My father, an English professor, loved the Romantic poets: Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth, who lived in the Yorkshire moors in close proximity to nature and wrote lyrical poems about what they saw. John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," is one of his favorites. I have read the poem, but I don't really understand it. What speaks to me is Maya Angelou's "I know why the caged bird sings."

The eagle is a singular image in Allama Iqbal’s poetry. Iqbal reveres the eagle because it proudly disdains eating dead prey or anything other than what it has caught. As Mustansir Mir says in the website, allamaiqbal.com, this description might apply to a hawk rather than an eagle. Iqbal gets a number of bird facts wrong, but as this website points out, the eagle, for him, is a poetic construct.

My favorite Urdu poem is a children's song sung by Nuzhat Abbas: “Bulbul ka bacchha. Khatha tha khichdi.” I used to listen to this ad nauseam years ago, and was delighted to discover it on YouTube recently.

Sanskrit literature's most resonant bird image has to do with the Hamsa, which can separate milk and water that are mixed together in a bowl. The Hamsa is used as a reference in poetry for anyone that has the discrimination (or judgement) to simply suck up the milk and leave out the water. Then there was the practice of divination based on the movement of birds that was common to most primitive cultures. When the crows caw, my grandmother used to say, you will have unexpected guests: divining arrivals from the sound of a crow’s caw.

As K.N.Dave’s magisterial (and sadly, posthumously published) book, "Birds in Sanskrit Literature," says, superstition surrounds the magpie, not only in India, but also in Europe and England. My tangential interest with respect to bird-watching has been to delve into poetry, but it could be something else for another birdwatcher.

This ripple effect is a perk that comes from any deep dive into a hobby or passion; and clearly, I am pushing bird watching as an option.

Everyone says that bird-watching requires patience. I don’t think so. I think that the pleasure of bird watching comes from the questions you ask. You can watch a crow and try to figure out why it is cawing at that moment. You can listen to the variety of calls that a common mynah makes and try to see if there is a pattern. I watch the birds come and go in the trees in front of my home and see if there is a reason or pattern that they follow when they sit down and take off. I watch the way the parakeets spread their tail feathers just before landing and see the different shades of green. Most interesting of all are the birds that are sitting still. What are they doing? What are they thinking? Does their call predict something? Is the wind changing? Does that define when they take off and land? Bird watching for me is an engrossing and pleasurable hobby. It gives me great aesthetic joy to watch these most beautiful of God’s creations. Then again, I see a butterfly and think it beautiful too. Oh, but there is the dragonfly with its transparent wings; and the honeybee that gives up its life for its colony. All waiting to connect with us.

This episode is about striated caracaras, or rather, one man's obsession with them.  The man in question is Jonathan Meiburg who is a musician, author and bird lover.  In 1833, a young Charles Darwin was astonished by a strange animal he met in the Falkland Islands: a handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcon that was “tame and inquisitive,” “quarrelsome and passionate,” and so insatiably curious that it stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle.

Darwin met many unusual creatures in his five-year voyage, but no others showed an interest in studying him—and he wondered why these birds were confined to islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story. But he set this mystery aside, and never returned to it.

Almost two hundred years later, Meiburg picks up where Darwin left off. These rare and unusual birds—now called striated caracaras—still exist, and A Most Remarkable Creature reveals the wild and fascinating story of their history, origins, and possible futures in a series of travels throughout South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana. Along the way, Meiburg draws us into the life and work of W.H. Hudson, a Victorian writer and naturalist who championed caracaras as unsung wonders of the natural world, and takes us to falconry parks in England, where captive caracaras perform incredible feats of memory, problem-solving, and friendship.

A Most Remarkable Creature is much more than a book about birds: it’s a quest for moments of first contact between humans and animals, science and religion, and the mismatched continents Europeans mistakenly called the New World. 

In 1997, Jonathan Meiburg received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel to remote communities around the world, a year-long journey that sparked his enduring fascination with islands, birds, and the deep history of the living world. Since then, he’s written reviews, features, and interviews for print and online publications including The Believer, Talkhouse, and The Appendix on subjects ranging from a hidden exhibit hall at the American Museum of Natural History to the last long-form interview with author Peter Matthiessen.

But he’s best known as the leader of the band Shearwater and as a member of Sub Pop recording artists Loma, whose albums and performances have often been praised by NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Pitchfork. His unique career between the sciences and the arts makes him an ideal guide for a journey that takes in the deep history and landscapes of an entire continent, from the lush forests of Guyana to the windswept Falkland Islands. He lives in central Texas.

“Caracaras are not like other birds, or even other birds of prey. Curious, wide-ranging, gregarious, and intelligent, the ten species of caracara are a scientific puzzle that has intrigued biologists since the days of Darwin. And this book — as curious, wide-ranging, gregarious, and intelligent as its subject — is not like any other book that I have encountered.” Charles C. Mann, author of 1491. 

Image credit: Bryan C. Parker

Summary of the episode

1:00 What are Caracaras?

3:00 Falklands from Tierra del Fuego.

5:25: Bird life in the Falklands per Darwin. Striated caracaras.

8:30 Black-browed albatrosses.  140,000 birds sitting on their nests in the summertime.  Royal and Wandering albatrosses.

10:00 Jonathan imitates bird sounds.

12:00 Antarctica used to be warm before the Cretaceous extinction. The ancestors of falcons lived there and came to North America later on.  Greatest diversity of the various falcon species are in North America.

13:00 True falcons-- what are they?

14:00 Specialist versus generalist approach to life.

15:00 Are Caracaras intelligent? Ten species of Caracaras.  Only one is endangered: Striated Caracaras.  Why are they only in the Falklands? This is what Darwin asked. Jonathan has a theory about why Striated Caracaras are stuck in the Falkland Islands.

20:00 Who was William Henry Hudson? The book has both these characters? What did Darwin think about the function of music?

24:00 Guyana trip to look for tropical caracaras.  About the red-throated caracaras.  They nest in bromeliads, sometimes 200 feet off the forest floors.  Feed on wasp combs, litter their nest with millipedes (pest control?)

27:00 Genetically, falcons are closest to parrots.  Not hawks and eagles.

28:00 The Guadalupe caracara. 

30:00 Flamingoes on Andes Mountains

33:00 The future of striated caracaras.  

There is this bird that my mother watches.  When it comes down, she says Garuda, garuda.  And does a namaste. This bird is called the Brahminy kite. Haliastur indus.  But is this bird really the Garuda that Hindus worship? That is the bird of Indonesia– after which its airline, Garuda Indonesia is named? We find out in this short episode.

Brahminy Kite.  Haliastur indus.  Latin names are precise.  But they also give the history.  Of why a bird is called what it is.  Take Haliastur indus.  It sounds like a Iranian deep dish pizza.  But Halia means sea.  Astur means hawk.  So the origins of the name meant that this bird was considered a sea hawk.  From India.  Hence the name indus.

Now the question is– is this bird really garuda– the bird that was the Vishnu Vahana in Hindu mythology.  Vahana means conveyance in Sanskrit.  One of the nice things about Hinduism and many other ancient religions is that they incorporated the natural world into their beliefs.  So a peacock becomes the vahana or vehicle of the warrior Lord Muruga and Garuda is the vahana or vehicle of Vishnu.

When you talk about birds in ancient India, most ornithologists refer to a book by KN Dave called Birds in Sanskrit Literature.  According to this book, Garuda was a primeval bird that was the progenitor or parent of all the birds of prey that were mentioned in the Vedas.  The most probable Garuda was also called Nagashi or snake eater.  According to Dave, this was probably the majestic sea eagle.  Later it became the Imperial Eagle or the Himalayan Golden Eagle.  The word Naga means snake and elephant in Sanskrit, hence the image of Garuda carrying an elephant.  Although this particular legend could be attributed to the Persian bird, the legendary Roc or Rukh of immense size.  That could carry off a baby elephant to feed its young. Or maybe it was a lammergier that could carry a turtle– again there are images of Garuda carrying a turtle.

But that doesn’t mean that the Brahminy kite isn’t sacred.  In fact, its presence was considered auspicious.  Mussalman’s called it Rumubarik.  In Sanskrit it was called Ranalankarana.  Kshemankari.  The story goes that Shiva was enjoying the company of beauties– other than his wife– when Parvati took the form of a Brahminy kite and shooed them away.

Here are the links referred to in the episode:

About the Brahminy kite in Sanskrit literature

600 Brahminy kites near Salem in 1905

Using the Irrawady dolphin to herd fish

Kleptoparasitism

Our thanks to MB Prashanth and MB Krishna for inputs to this episode.  Cover Image from Sreenivas via Unsplash

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Photographing birds across continents. In this episode, we interview His Excellency Jacques Pitteloud who happens to be the Swiss Ambassador to the United States.  Based in Washington, Ambassador Pitteloud is also a birdwatcher and bird photographer.  In 2021, Ambassador Pitteloud’s photograph of a rare painted bunting that appeared in Maryland landed in the Washington Post prompting lots of excitement in the birding world. Later, the Washingtonian ran an article about him, titled, “The Guy Who Got That Photo of a Rare Painted Bunting? He’s the Swiss Ambassador!” He posts his birding photos on his Facebook page. On that page, he posts nothing personal or political. Here he talks about how he developed this passion for birds and some of his favourite regions and birds.

Episode highlights

12:45: his views on the “big year of birding.”

13:45: his view on the different species of bird watchers.

15:00: he talks about two anecdotes in Africa– Kenya.  About finding the blue-headed beeeater and the Mackinder’s Eagle Owl.

18:00 mountain passes where you can see raptor migrations. He talks about Chicago’s Magic Hedge in the middle of the city where migratory birds especially warblers (thousands of them) congregate in early May before crossing the Great Lakes.  

19:30 about the Connecticut warbler and warbler identification.

21:15 the apps that he uses to identify birds.

22:00 Is there a link between birding and diplomacy? “Birding is the new golfing.”

24:15: what photographic equipment does he use.  He uses Canon. 600mm F4 lens.  Camera is D90.  With 500mm lenses he shoots handheld. With the 600mm he uses a tripod.

26:00 his favourite birds.  Raptors.  How they move differently.  

27:15 about his Indian Facebook friends.  

In this episode, we have Professor Yossi Leshem from Israel joining us to discuss several things: tracking migratory storks with GPS, working with barn owls as pest control agents, regional cooperation, reducing aircraft collisions, and working with defense forces.  Dr. Leshem has won countless awards and is Professor Emeritus at the School of Zoology at Tel Aviv University and is the founder of the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration. 

Our guest today is Dr. James Christopher Haney, a conservation biologist, wildlife researcher, and author of more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles, technical reports, and science summaries. His career trajectory spans the arc of conservation and extinction and we are going to talk about both these topics today.  Dr. Haney’s latest book, “Woody's Last Laugh: Ivory-billed Woodpecker as Trickster,” features how that bird came to fool our heads for so long, leading us into various mental mistakes due to the high uncertainty over the bird's ultimate fate. In this episode, we discuss this and other ideas, including the "Romeo error," a condition in which we get bird extinctions wrong (thinking that species are dead when they aren't). We discuss the ivory-bill, but also other examples of bird species from around the world (including one or two from India) that went missing for a very long time, but then were re-found.

Dr. Haney has delivered 150 research and public speaking engagements to national and international audiences. Haney was a coauthor of the "Top 40 Priorities for Science to Inform U.S. Conservation and Management Policy." For expertise in advising the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, a cross-governmental coalition charged with restoring marine environments of south-central Alaska, he received an Outstanding Contributions as a Peer Reviewer Award in 2000, and an Outstanding Service Award in 2002. In 2010, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service invited him to lead what was at the time the largest-ever vessel survey of marine birds in the Gulf of Mexico in order to help document injuries to wildlife that were caused by the Deepwater Horizon blow-out and oil spill. Following 15 years of interdisciplinary research, Dr. Haney discovered how and why conservation makes faulty decisions in his new book: "Woody's Last Laugh - How the 'Extinct' Ivory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us into Making 53 Thinking Errors"

Dr. Seshadri KS grew up in Bangalore and started to watch birds at a young age. An avid naturalist with interests across many taxa, he has chosen to study natural history, ecology and conservation biology as a career. He was part of the team that described three new species of frogs from India and described a new behavior in frogs. Dr. Seshadri is currently a DST-INSPIRE Faculty Fellow at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc Bangalore. In this episode, we talk about wetland and grassland ecology, and bird photography.

Full Bio

Over the last decade, Seshadri’s research has taken him to remote and often inhospitable environments where he has spent extensive periods of time. His research spans a swath of biology ranging from orchids in the tall forests of the Western Ghats to discovering new species and new behavior among Amphibians. He led a team to study amphibians in the forest canopy, for which he was honored with the “Future Conservationist” award by the Conservation Leadership Program in 2010. He has a doctoral degree from the National University of Singapore which bestowed him the prestigious (late) Prof. Navjot S. Sodhi Conservation Biology Scholarship in 2013. He has travelled extensively to some of the last remaining strongholds of biodiversity in the rapidly vanishing forests of Southeast Asia to find solutions to effectively conserve nature. He enjoys photographing natural landscapes and biodiversity and often teaches ecology, evolutionary biology and research methods to students and nature enthusiasts.

Episode Timeline

1:00 What does a terrestrial ecologist mean? 

2:30 You are unusual in our guests in that your wingspan is wide and encompasses amphibians, snakes, mongooses, trees and many others. Place birds in the ecology that you operate in. Seshadri talks about Poornachandra Tejaswi

4:00 Seshadri’s paper parenting in frogs and the link to birds. Sexual dichromatism and cryptic colouration.

6:00 Caregiving and predation risk, particularly in frogs and birds.

7:30 Tell us about mistaking a frog for a bird. How did that happen? About C.R. Naik and mistaking a frog for a white-throated kingfisher.  

11:00 Discovery of a new species of frog.

13:30: Birders use binoculars and walk a lot. Do frog people crouch in the jungle? Do they work at night? Seshadri talks about the differences in posture, practice, equipment between observing birds and frogs. Dangers like walking into elephants. Being near leopards.

18:00 Seshadri tells us about his work with wetland birds. At the Kalakkad Mundanthurai tiger reserve. Tamaraparani river.

25:00 Favourite birds and why? Tailorbird or Ashy wren-babbler. Whooshing sounds as the Great pied hornbill flies by.

27:00 Common birds in Bangalore. Darters, dabchicks, pygmy cotton teals.  

30:00 What are some things about grassland birds that beginning birders may not know. Seeing the Lesser Florican in Bidar. Listen to our Great Indian Bustard episode here.

31:46 About kavals or regional grasslands. The concept of ecological succession.

34:30: The impact of photography on birds. Tips for photographers. Hesarghatta grasslands— spotting a European Roller. Chasing birds on cars. The MB Krishna episode is here. The Sy Montgomery episode is here.

40:00 Last words and advice.

44:00 Seshadri speaks in Kannada about his birding experiences.

This episode gives a glimpse into the birds of Australia, told through the eyes of Franck Masna, an aboriginal elder who tells us the story of how birds got their colours and also through the eyes of Michael Simmons who runs Tweed Escapes to show tourists the sights and sounds of the Tweed River in Australia. This video is about the Tweed Valley, New South Wales, about an hour by flight from Sydney.  

When people think of Australian birds, they commonly think of emus, parrots and maybe the Southern Cassowary.  But the country-continent 850 species of birds, 45% of them not found anywhere else.  Some spectacular species include the giant Southern Cassowary where fathers incubate the eggs, the tawny frogmouth- a master of disguise, the barking owl, the rainbow lorikeet, the superb and the splendid fairy-wren, which are beautiful blue birds, the laughing kookaburra which is the basis of a song that we learned as children even here in India, and a whole variety of parrots.  In fact, early Dutch explorers called this land Terra Psitticora or Land  of the parrots.  

Did you know that pretty much all songbirds and 60% of all bird species originated in Australia.  In fact, Australian scientists often talk about how much of a "Northern Hemisphere" bias ornithology has.  In future episodes, we hope to interview experts from Australia but for now, here is a teaser episode in which I interview two folks from the Tweed River.

Today’s guest, Anusha Shankar studies hummingbirds as a Rose Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She has lived and worked on four continents and loves being an Indian woman in science. She is fascinated by hummingbirds’ ability to use a hibernation-like state called torpor to save energy at night. She is investigating how they can get cold (10°C / 50°F) and rewarm safely every night, without damaging organs like their hearts and brains. During her PhD, Anusha captured hummingbird nightlife with infrared video, and before that tracked king cobras and studied giant birds—hornbills—in India. Anusha is also a National Geographic Explorer and Young Leader and loves mentoring students, dancing salsa, bachata, and swing, and reading fiction.

Today, he suggested that we talk about avians to the rescue.  We are the Bird Podcast after all.

Links:

Wonderful article about Salim Ali written by Bittu Sahgal here.

Wikipedia on Bittu Sahgal

Some thought-provoking images from the Sanctuary Wildlife Photography awards

Sanctuary Nature Foundation

Santuary Asia magazine

Questions:  

3:00 How does protecting birds and their habitats help us deal with what you call an existential crisis?  He talks about climate change and small interventions.  He compares tigers with avians in terms of conservation.  “You save the forest. You save the species.”  Talks about nematodes in the soil, tics on the backs of the tigers, the whole ecosystem.

7:00 It is time that the tigers came down from the pedestal and birds need to go higher on the pedestal.

8:00 Birders as climate warriors.  Birds disperse seeds, maintain habitats.

9:30 Economists are realizing that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the biosphere.

10:20: There is an urgency to his mission.  Thanks to climate change, the economy is teetering on the brink of collapse.  Technology alone cannot help.  My loyalty is to the biosphere.  It is necessary for us now to go down to the minutiae.

11:40 He talks about Dr. Salim Ali

12:00 Talks about how birds are protectors of the infrastructure.

14:00 What is a magic wand that he would wave to influence.  He says that he would try to influence the brain between the two ears of human beings.  Nature is a simple economic principle.  If you undervalue an asset, you will lose it.  The time for fighting is over.  Self interest in protecting habitat comes from making sure that we use local communities to protect areas.

16:00 Can you walk us through how things have changed since you began Sanctuary Asia?  How things have go sharply downfill.  Forests dismembered.  Our power as environmental protectors has come down.  Biodiversity that you protect gives a chance for the local communities to benefit from tourism.

18:30 How tigers numbers going up is a facade.

18:55 There is no doubt that the biosphere will win this battle.  There is no doubt that we will make life difficult for ourselves.  The circle of life.  Logic is the same as the tiger.  Birds occupy vital habitats.

21:00 Last year, you delivered a keynote titled “To protect nature, start at home.” Can you elaborate on that for our viewers and listeners? In your instagram posts, you talk about preserving little areas of wilderness within the city.  What do you mean? Not golf courses, football fields.  If we want the city to be future ready, use one-third of what you have for real wilderness.

22:00 About the common Pipistrelle bat.  

23:00 Humayun Abdul Ali.  When Indira Gandhi wanted to sent frog’s legs to France, Mr. Ali’s reply. Send frogs leg but ask them to give us medicines for malaria.  Humayun Ali got people to change using logic. Birds are protecting water.  Wetlands.

24:15 Favourite spot? He talks about Ranthambore being “home.”

25:00 How he loves Dachigam and the Dagwan river.  About the peace that comes.

26:00 I don’t know whether to celebrate what exists or mourn what is going.  Talks about Kaziranga.

27:30  Protecting nature.  Start at home.  Gandhi quote.  The person who does nothing because he cannot do everything is the worst of the lot.

29:00 About his conversation with the Dalai Lama.  About monks carrying tiger bones inside their robes.  Belinda Wright.  Debbie Banks.  Exposed this.  

32:00 What is the pleasure of birding for you? Human beings are soiling their own homes.  The need of the hour is to share your love of nature.  Join the BNHS.  Birders are going to be the saviors of this subcontinent.  

34:00 Are you optimistic about the future? We think we are more clever than we really are.  We haven’t learned to use our brains.  Like a baby elephant.  Darwin said, it is the most adaptable that will survive.  We haven’t learned to adapt.  We want the environment to adapt to us.

37:37 He loves spiders.  Loves sparrows.  He talks about children being his main constituents.  Kids for Tigers.  The tiger is a metaphor for all of nature.  Protect trees, protect all that live in trees.  How to protect the powerful from consuming everything that there is in the buffet.

40:30  Haven’t been to Ladakh.  Talks about his wish to go to Ladakh.

41:25: Message to birders

Formal Bio below:

Bittu Sahgal is an environmental activist, writer and the founder of Sanctuary Nature Foundation, an Indian nonprofit conservation organization that works on environmental policy, advocacy, science, on-ground support and habitat management. He is also the founding editor of Sanctuary Asia, a wildlife and ecology magazine. 

Besides the Sanctuary Asia and Cub magazines, Sahgal has published numerous works in both English and regional languages. He has authored coffee table books on wildlife, including a series on some of India's national parks and sanctuaries: The Bandhavgarh Inheritance, The Sundarbans Inheritance, The Bharatpur Inheritance, The Kaziranga Inheritance, The Corbett Inheritance and The Periyar Inheritance and a stand-alone, India Naturally. He also produced 30 wildlife documentaries.

This episode is set in Hadinaru Kere, a lake outside Mysore in India.  In the winter, the lake attracts a number of migratory birds.  Some 85 species have been recorded in March 2023.  This episode talks about the black-tailed godwit.

This episode features two senior conservation specialists from Audubon: Aurelio Ramos and Gloria Lentijo. They talk about Audubon's new strategies in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada. This hemispheric approach stems from the recognition that the majority of vulnerable bird species found in the U.S. spend most of their lives in Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean, which have some of the world's most biodiverse landscapes and seascapes. The Neotropical Realm alone has 41% of all bird species on Earth, and Canada is North America's bird nursery.

In this episode, Aurelio and Gloria talk about Audubon Americas and their ambitious plan to address conservation shortfalls in Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the next five years, Audubon is targeting 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of prime ecosystems that are important for priority birds and wildlife, and human well-being. Along the way, they talk about their favourite birds and landscapes.

Below is the video recording of the episode.

Based in Washington DC, Aurelio Ramos is senior vice president for Audubon Americas. In that role he oversees the program, its international partnerships, and conservation teams working throughout Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. 

Gloria Lentijo is the working lands strategy manager for Audubon Americas. A native of Colombia, Gloria has more than 18 years of experience integrating community participation in conservation through the implementation of bird-friendly practices in agricultural landscapes.

Questions

1. Aurelio, first of all, basic question.  Why are the Americas important for birding and birds?

2. Gloria, you are an expert in connecting community, agriculture and bird-friendly practices. Now, this varies from culture to culture.  Can you tell us how you do this in Latin America.

3. Gloria: follow up question. You are an expert in cattle ranching and nature based solutions.  How does this influence the conservation of birds.

4. Aurelio, follow up question: can you outline the four strategies that Audubon has decided to follow in the Americas.

5. Aurelio, Audubon’s website says that your “new strategies are designed to deliver conservation results at an unprecedented scale and pace.” Both those words are important.  Please talk about scale, and talk about pace. Why is this speed necessary?

6. Gloria: talk about the challenges that you faced? And what are some of the learnings that other countries like India can use?

7. Aurelio: According to your AIAP Executive summary, Audubon aims to conserve 10 million hectares of important bird habitat in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2026, and 40 million hectares by 2030. That is very ambitious.  But first, how did you come up with this number-- your ‘north star’ as the report called it.  Aurelio, how did you come up with this number? Is it important?

8. Aurelio: follow up.  Your report says, “We will concentrate on habitats of highest value to migratory birds and threatened and endemic resident birds, factoring in future climate strongholds. We will test and scale pilots and demonstration projects across priority habitats in four core countries.”  Please help me understand what “highest value” habitats means.  Also, what are some of the pilots you are thinking about or working with.

9. Gloria, Columbian coffee is almost as well known as Columbia as a birding destination.  Talk to us about why these two are interconnected and how to solve the coffee business so it is favourable for birds.

10. Some lighter questions.  Aurelio: please tell us for people who have never visited South America about what we can expect to see there.  What are some of your favourite birds? And some great birding experiences?

11. Same question for Gloria-- favourite birds and experiences.

Post Episode Trailers are short episodes in which I highlight an earlier episode that is worth watching.

This episode is about Episode 12 of The Bird Podcast in which author and migration expert, Scott Weidensaul talks about the amazing feats that birds do in order to migrate.

This episode is about hornbills in Valparai.  About human wildlife conflict and other things.  But mostly about hornbills. Valparai in the South Indian state of Tamilnadu is verdant and beautiful.  Entire slopes of these gently undulating mountains are covered with tea.  It is in this landscape that the great Indian hornbill likes to play.

To research books, films and articles, Sy Montgomery has been chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica, worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana. She has been deftly undressed by an orangutan in Borneo, hunted by a tiger in India, and swum with piranhas, electric eels and dolphins in the Amazon. She has searched the Altai Mountains of Mongolia’s Gobi for snow leopards, hiked into the trackless cloud forest of Papua New Guinea to radiocollar tree kangaroos, and learned to SCUBA dive in order to commune with octopuses. In this episode, she talks about a variety of birds including California Condors, Hummingbirds, Hawks, Cockatoos and many others.

Sy’s 28 books for both adults and children have garnered many honors. The Soul of an Octopus was a 2015 Finalist for the National Book Awards. The Good Good Pig, her memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller. She is the winner of the 2009 New England Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Award, the 2010 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award, the Henry Bergh Award for Nonfiction (given by the ASPCA for Humane Education) and dozens of other honors. Her work with the man-eating tigers, the subject of her book Spell Of The Tiger, was made into in a National Geographic television documentary she scripted and narrated. Also for National Geographic TV she developed and scripted Mother Bear Man, about her friend, Ben Kilham, who raises and releases orphaned bear cubs, which won a Chris award.

Episode Notes

1:00 About hummingbirds.  The tiny Bee hummingbird.  The fastest bird, the male Allen’s Hummingbird’s is faster than the space shuttle, she says.

3:50 How to care for an orphaned hummingbird.

5:00 Why should you save a bird? Sy talks about why she saved orphaned hummingbirds.

7:00 The variety of hummingbirds.

7:45 Ruby throated hummingbirds.  

9:00 Sy talks about condors and vultures.  10 feet across wingspan.  Native Americans revere the condor wherever it was found.  All vultures take death and make it into life, she says. 

15:00 What is it like to hold a condor? Sy was part of the California Condor Recovery project.

18:50 How do you hold a condor? Do you pull the neck to you or away? What does the breath of a condor smell like?

20:00 How to conserve condors while working with hunters? Using copper versus lead bullets.

24:00 Emus of Australia.  Sy says that they showed her “my destiny.”

28:00 The personality of an emu.  They are curious and have a sense of humour, says Sy.  

30:00 Sy talks about the books she loves.  Dian Fossey’s Gorillas in the Mist.  Jane Goodhall’s The Chimpanzees of Gombe.  Howard Ensign Evans book on insects.  

34:00 Sy talks about her favourite birds.  The woodpecker.  The Cassowary.  Papua New Guinea and Queensland, Australia where she saw a cassowary. Casque, red wattles, the curiosity of a cassowary.

38:00 Hawks and learning falconry.  Nancy Cowan, master falconer. Harris’ hawks. Yarak

41:00 About crows roosting in Auburn, New York

44:00 About parrots.  Dancing with a cockatoo. Snowball the cockatoo

48:00 Birds and the wildness.

Questions asked:

1. The first of your books that I read was about the California Condor.  For listeners here in India, could you please tell us about the condor-- details will help as we don’t have Condors here.  I for instance, didn’t realize they were vultures.
2. Please tell us about the conservation efforts for the condors.  For instance, you say that the efforts to return them to the wild is “creative, controversial”.  Please tell us details for those who may not have read that book.
3. Where are condors most plentifully found?
4. Ask Sy about lead versus copper bullets.
5. Tell us about the emus you met in Australia. (how to be a good creature)
6. The books that inspired you that you list. (how to be a good creature)
7. Tell us about the woodpecker’s song. (the wild outside your window)
8. Migrating songbirds
9. Tell us about the birds in your book, Birdology.  What was the theme of the book, Birdology
10. --hawks (illustrating that birds are fierce--as I learn through falconry)
11. --crows (showing how birds are everywhere--following the controversy generated by a very large roost of crows)
12. --parrots (showing that birds are smart--we meet Snowball the Dancing cockatoo and the Alex studies, of the talking African grey parrot
13. --cassowaries (showing that birds are dinosaurs--I go to find one in Australia)

In episode 28, we spoke to Dr. Samira Agnihotri about bird song and how the Solega tribals interacted so closely with the forest around them. This episode is about a recent visit to the BR Hills.  It talks about how humans and wildlife can live together in the forest.  Listen andWatch how the Solega tribals live and worship a Magnolia champaka tree or a Sampige tree as part of their culture.

In Episode 35, Dr. Gopi Sundar paints a hopeful picture of cranes and waterbirds coexisting with humans. In this episode we delve into these amazing bird species. Both storks and cranes are wading birds.  They dwell in similar habitats and look similar.  They have long legs and a long, curving neck. However, these birds belong to separate orders and families and aren’t closely related to each other at all. In this episode we look at cranes and storks.

Featured Image: Syed Ahmad from Unsplash.

In which we go behind the scenes to see the fascinating aspects of the bird specimen collection of one of America’s most well-respected museums.

You really should watch this episode on our Youtube page (Bird Podcast) or our Instagram feed (bird_podcast), but in case you cannot, included here is also the audio only version.  

In this episode, Dr. Shultz shows us house finches, parrots, frigatebirds, penguins, condors, munias, whydahs and the many marvelous specimens in the Natural History Museum’s collection.

Allison Shultz is the assistant curator of ornithology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. In this fascinating episode, she takes us behind the scenes to show us the vast and varied collection of bird specimens at the museum. 

Dr. Shultz , as you see in her website, has loved animals her whole life, and fell in love with birds during her undergraduate at UC Berkeley. She is a native Southern Californian, and loves the diversity of habitats (and birds!) available in a very small geographic area! She credits her artistic eye for first drawing her to studying bird coloration, but now that is one of her main fascinations.

This episode is about the magnificent migration of the Amur Falcons, the largest raptor migration in the world.

It is 4:30 AM on a cold day in November.  A group of us from Bangalore are driving from Dimapur to Hakhezhe, Nagaland to observe a spectacle like nothing we’ve seen before: the greatest raptor migration on earth.  

The Amur falcon or Falco amurensis breeds between Northern China and Southeastern Siberia.  Amurland.  Where the Amur river-- the tenth longest in the world flows. Unusually for this year, these falcons have come near Dimapur.  They are roosting overnight on the sal and teak trees.  Come dawn and they will fly, looking for the large amount of insects-- termites, dragonflies, bees and others-- that they will catch on the wing. 

They are headed for Eastern and Southern Africa where they will winter in warm climes, eating locusts and termites in the fertile red earth of Africa.  To get there, they undertake one of the most arduous migrations in the world.  First they fly from Siberia to Northeast India.  They stockpile food and fat and then fly in one stretch over peninsular India and then over the Indian ocean, covering anywhere from 22,000 kilometres to 30,000 kilometres, over five long days and nights. 

Listen to this podcast but also go to the episode page for more links about the successful conservation story behind Amur falcons. 

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"To be able to conserve and protect, you have to observe and love," says philanthropist Rohini Nilekani. "Being in nature, you get this sense of continuing renewing wonder," she says. In this episode, Rohini talks about her favourite birds and why conserving nature is an "enlightened self-interest" for humanity as a whole.

Rohini Nilekani is a thoughtful and intuitive philanthropist, author, journalist, columnist, television anchor, punster, funster and a champion of wildlife. She combines a deep empathy for wildlife with a sharp, quick, and curious mind. She loves nature and the outdoors and is most comfortable in her beloved forests and mountains wearing her trademark cap and carrying her binoculars. Her enthusiasm for the world of wildlife is infectious. Her involvement with wildlife includes the following. She is a board member of ATREE, the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, a board member of Science Gallery Bengaluru, on the Artificial Recharge of Ground Water Advisory Council of the Union Ministry of Water Resources, an elected Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

Rohini has done a television documentary about her encounters with a black panther. You can watch Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Rohini Nilekani is the Founder-Chairperson of Arghyam, a foundation she set up for sustainable water and sanitation, which funds initiatives all across India. From 2004 to 2014, she was Founder-Chairperson and chief funder of Pratham Books, a non-profit children’s publisher that reached millions of children during her tenure. She is the Co-founder and Director of EkStep, a non-profit education platform. She sits on the Board of Trustees of ATREE, an environmental think tank, and serves on the Eminent Persons Advisory Group of the Competition Commission of India.

A former journalist, she has written for many leading publications such as Times of India, India Today, Mint, etc. Penguin Books India published her first book, a medical thriller called Stillborn, and her second non-fiction book, ‘Uncommon Ground’, based on her eponymous TV show. She has written several books for young children, published by Pratham Books, including the popular "Annual Haircut Day”. In 2017, she was inducted as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Well Being Project from 2019.

Rohini Nilekani is a committed philanthropist and in 2017, she, together with her husband Nandan Nilekani, signed the Giving Pledge, which commits half their wealth to philanthropic causes.

Rohini's photograph by Sandesh Kadur

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In December 2019, Dr. Dominique Homberger visited Bangalore after a gap of ten years.  She gave a talk at NCBS (National Centre for Biological Sciences). When we reached out to her, she immediately agreed to speak to us. 

Are you interested in how parrot species and their beaks evolved? How do parrots eat? What is the link between the length of parrot beaks and what they eat-- fruits versus nuts? Have feathers evolved to insulate the birds? Why do feathers fluff up? Why is the body of the bird spindle-shaped? How do vultures soar? Parrots and the connection to Gondwanaland. Why is it bad when parrots in a cage start to speak? Contact calls among flocks of birds, how birds land on trees, are some of the other things she talks about.

Dr. Homberger is one of the world's foremost authorities on the order Psittaciformes (i.e., parrots and cockatoos) and their feeding behavior and ecology, which she has studied in her lab as well in their natural environment in Australia, India, and Southern Patagonia.

An alumni professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, USA, and the 2018–22 President of the International Ornithologists’ Union (IOU), Dr. Homberger's research has centred on comparative anatomy as a means to answer functional and evolutionary questions. She studies a variety of species from lampreys to sharks and salamanders, and from alligators, birds, and mammals to human beings.

She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Ornithological Society (AOS), and the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), and is an Honorary Member of The Linnaean Society of New York.

If you have ever been curious about parrots, parakeets and other members of the order Psittaciformes, this is the episode for you.

Dr. Homberger talks about how to study them, what makes them special, and what are the threats to their existence. She also has offered to help Indian scientists research parrots and parakeets.

This episode was produced by Ulhas Anand, edited by Tamanna Atreya and anchored by Shoba Narayan.

In this episode, we talk to a resident naturalist about the motmots, hummingbirds and toucanets that you can see in Costa Rica.

Ayurveda divides us into three phenotypes: vata, pitta and kapha. Vatas have acute hearing and enjoy the sense of touch— if my memory serves right. Pittas have acute vision and enjoy the sense of smell. Kaphas have acute taste and enjoy the sense of touch. As a classic vata, I have acute hearing, as a result of which I'm very sensitive to the sound of birds. As I write this, I hear three birds: a wagtail, a bulbul, and a parakeet. This can become a curse when I hear the sound of a bird that I cannot identify. I obsess about it and go to an app called "Bird Calls," that is loaded on my phone to try to figure it out.

It has to do with a way of seeing that is cultivable but not necessarily common. If you have it; that’s a gift. Some people can see owls just by walking past. The trick to quick identification is observing size and shape, colour patterns, behavior and habitat according to this website. I have still not cultivated this way of seeing yet. Mostly I stare at a tree where the bird-calls emanate from and wait for movement. I cannot drive by birds on telephone poles and quickly identify them. Where I score is with the sound. Once I hear and identify a bird by it call, I never forget it. Even now, I can wake up and listen to the trill of a Kingfisher calling at a distance and know that it is in my neighborhood. I know the rosy starlings who have migrated from Tajikistan by their excited cheep-cheeps; the bulbul, by its sweet piercing whistle that echoes around my building; and the wagtail by its loud call, unusual for a bird so small.

My bird watching happens through the day. Usually, when I'm bored or have nothing to do, I pick up my binoculars and look out. Usually I see something. There was the time when it was raining. I trained my binoculars on a Ficus tree, and found a golden oriole perched on the top. It did the most amazing thing. It circled and went upside down on the branch, almost as if it wanted the rain to wet its underside. It had been a terribly hot day. As I stood in doors and watched the oriole enjoy the water drops, I felt like doing the same. In another branch, a black drongo (Dicurus macrocercus) sat perfectly sit, enduring the rain that was pouring on its black head.

In the beginning, with blind ambition, I decided that I would memorize the Latin names for all the bird species that I saw. I have given up that endeavor now. It is complicated enough to keep track of the markings and learn the common names. This then is the other learning that will occur: spotting minor differences between birds that belong to the same species: white cheeked barbet, gray-headed barbet, coppersmith barbet, blue-throated barbet, you get the picture. They all belong to the Megalaima species.

It doesn't come easy but I struggle at it anyways. Slowly and surely, like a tortoise, I'm climbing up the hill of taxonomy and nature watching.

This episode is about wetlands.  This is a post-episode trailer of Episode 5 where I interviewed Dr. Jerry Jackson.

Even though the audio isn’t perfect, Episode 5 is worth listening to because he covers so much ground. Ecology, wood storks, wetlands, anhingas, and much more.

Here I focus on one aspect of that episode: wetlands

What is the feeling that you get when I say these words? Swamps, marshes, bogs, mangroves, flood plains.  If you didn’t wince, good for you.  Humans seem fundamentally averse to wetland because we think of them as a breeding ground for insects– which they are.  But they are also the most diverse ecosystem there is. And for this reason, they are supremely important.

There are three things every wetland needs: hydric soil, which is the scientific term for soil that is submerged in water for long periods of time.  Which results in oxygen-less soil in the upper part, which in turn causes a particular type of plant species called hydrophytes to grow.  These aquatic plants like water lilies and sedges create their own unique ecosystem– called wetlands.

In Episode 5, Dr. Jerry Jackson has a simple term for wetlands.  Wetlands are wet land.  They are not ponds, or lakes.  They are lands that get submerged in water.  Wetlands are huge in ecology.  In fact, we have a particular organization called Ramsar that focuses on important wetlands all over the world.  

Wetlands occur everywhere except in one continent.  Guess which one? I’ll give you a hint.  Which is the continent where nothing can stay wet? 

Where is the biggest wetland? All this and more in this episode.

Dr. Krishna MB is an ecologist and ornithologist from Bangalore who has been interested in bird and habitat conservation and improvement. A legend in the Bangalore birding community, he has studied zoology and pursued his research on bird ecology.

Krishna is a regular fixture at birding walks at the Lalbagh Botanical Garden and is a wealth of knowledge on ecology and bird identification. He has advised many corporate and individuals on modifying landscape garden plans to make them more urban-wildlife friendly. It is in this capacity that he has advised SAP Labs and Robert Bosch on making their campus gardens more functional. He has also advised other corporates like the Taj West End, Trans Indus, Fanuc India, Benson Company, TVS Motors and others, and the Karnataka State Forest Department on issues related to birds, bird habits and landscaping.

He has helped a lot of students to get into ecology as a profession and amateur birders to get started with their interest in birds. He also is the founder of BngBirds, one of the oldest online discussion forums about wildlife and ecology in India.

This episode was produced by Ulhas Anand, edited by Tamanna Atreya and anchored by Shoba Narayan.

The Keoladeo Ghana National Park is arguably India's most famous national park for birds.  This episode offers you a bird's eye view of the park.

Every good city needs a generous birding guide, one who is empathetic and loves to explore nature around her. If this intrepid explorer is empathetic, generous and inclusive, that’s even better. Deepa Mohan is one such wildlife enthusiast and explorer in Bangalore, India. In this podcast, we discuss the many aspects of Deepa’s birding all over India, about how to count birds, about going to the same location many times and some of her favourite birding areas in India. Some of the locations Deepa mentioned in an around Bangalore: Hoskote Lake, Begur Lake, Bannerghatta National Park, Bannerghatta biosphere, Ankasamudra, Eagle Nest, Talle Valley, Arunachal Pradesh, Jaipurdoddi, Manipal, Western Ghats. Unusual species include over-wintering birds, vagrant species such as black-capped kingfisher, a blue throat wintering in Anekal Lake, a Demoiselle Crane, a dark sided flycatcher in Nandi Hills. The location that Deepa mentions early in the podcast– the one she took me to in the morning, is Muninagara Kere. Her ebird checklist from that outing is here.

When we asked Bangalore-based, experienced birder, Deepa Mohan to provide a bio, this is what she sent. It is typical of her understated humour. “Deepa Mohan, age 66, Carnatic  musician, theatre reviewer and quiz buff, turned into an avid amateur naturalist and bird watcher.  Loves writing about the outings and her experiences.”

Our first episode was about the Great Indian Bustard. The logo of the Bird Podcast is the Great Indian Bustard or GIB as it is called.  Salim Ali wanted this bird to be India’s national bird for three reasons: it is indigenous to India, it is a large and charismatic bird, and it deserves protection because its numbers were dwindling, even in the 1950s when Ali made his plea. Instead the peacock won out.  Then, as now, the fate of the bustard hangs in balance.  Will we save the bustard? 

The biggest problem for bustards: the powerlines that criss-cross the desert landscape.  Locals hate them because they are ugly.  Bustards cannot see them because their frontal vision is poor.  In October 2022, yet another bustard was killed because it flew into a power transmission line, prompting wildlife organizations such as the Bombay Natural History Society or BNHS to once again petition the government to lay these lines underground.  

In 2017, when we interviewed forest officials in Desert National Park, there were 150 birds.  Today too, there are 150 birds.  So while the numbers haven’t risen, they haven’t dropped either. There are 128 in Rajasthan’s desert regions, less than 10 in Gujarat and Maharashtra, and 16 chicks being raised in Sudashri incubation centre in Rajasthan.

The Rajasthan government has launched a project to save the bustard. Bird Podcast sincerely hopes that this will be successful.

In this episode, we highlight conservation experiments that are interesting and have worked. We have chosen three experiments from previous episodes. Our hope is that you will go back and listen or watch sections of these episodes because they are worth your time.

The first conservation plan that worked comes from Episode 50 where we interviewed Professor Yossi Leshem of Israel. He is a bird migration specialist and worked with the Israeli armed forces to help prevent bird and aircraft collisions. The way he did this was by mapping the migration routes of large birds, such as pelicans, storks, and raptors. The fact is that 1 billion birds migrate through Israel each year.  Go to 1:30 to listen to about ten minutes of this fascinating episode to see how the Israeli defense forces prevents bird and aircraft collisions.

The second episode that we highlight is Episode 14 where we interviewed Chris Wood, who is in charge of the ebird program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Chris talks about how the Nature Conservancy (an NGO) adopted an ingenious programme in which the rented the rice fields from the farmers who populate the Central Valley of California in order to make their fields available for migrating birds. Go to 42:42 to listen to about ten minutes of this fascinating episode.

The third episode that we highlight is Episode 13 where we interviewed Sy Montgomery about how California condors were saved from extinction. This was done through a political action plan where the use of lead bullets was banned and copper bullets were used in their place. Go to 9:00 to listen to about ten minutes of this fascinating episode.

And lastly, we asked you to go back to watch Episode 29 where millions of migrating Amur falcons are saved through a magnificent community conservation effort

Featured Image: Julia Craice/Unsplash

About Aasheesh Pittie’s book of essays, The Living Air. If you’re looking for new ways to engage with birds and birdwatching, Aasheesh Pittie’s book of essays, The Living Air is a great place to start. This book will not only make you want to get out and observe your city and surroundings in a whole new light, but it will also offer a fresh perspective into what birdwatching is and the many ways you can benefit from it. Informative yet a joy to read, The Living Air is an excellent introduction to the transformative pleasures of birdwatching. The Indian Pitta Books is India’s first dedicated book imprint for bird lovers, conservationists and policy makers.  

Bio

Aasheesh Pittie is the editor of the ornithological journal Indian BIRDS. He has been the engine behind books such as Birds in Books: Three Hundred Years of South Asian Ornithology (2010), and The Written Bird: Birds in Books 2 (2022). Aasheesh has also compiled a searchable bibliographic database of over 35,000 works on South Asian ornithology (southasiaornith.in). 

Questions:

1. For those who haven’t read it, what are the themes in your book

2. Your book begins with the Jerdon’s Courser and the Great Indian Bustard.  You are lucky to have seen them.  Can you describe this? 

3. Your book encourages absorption in bird watching.  Were you always this way? What was your evolution as a bird watcher?

4. I loved your chapter, “My kind of birding.”  That paragraph about the art of becoming invisible….”  Please describe your kind of birding, your thoughts on cultivation of patience and its rewards. What are the rewards? And how can you cultivate this mindset.

5.   Dabchicks. How can they absorb you for hours? How can you teach this.  ‘Disappearing Dabchicks’. It describes his visit to a local pond, where Aasheesh became entranced by these gloriously ball-like waterbirds and before he knew it, the ‘sun was balanced on the horizon … the disporting Dabchicks had engrossed me for three hours’.

6. In your chapter on the bouquet of Benishaan, you write that “the character of a place, its ambience, takes on the sheen of the temporal moods and perceptions of the observer.” Please elaborate.  The context is that many of the places you describe are in South India, but since our audience is global, wanted some takeaways for them as well.  So if you live in a particular place, be in Northern Europe or South America, how can you approach birding in the Aasheesh Pittie way.

7. Tell us about your methodical and elaborate list process- now available on ebird.  But please describe how you kept notes and the value of those notes?

8. What was your writing process for this book? And how do you know so many specific but unusual words? “but remaining with it through the quiddity of its habitat…”

9. What is your birding routine?

10. What issues absorb you these days?

11. What are your favourite species of birds?

Our guest today is Dr. Gopi Sundar, who heads the international ecological journal, Waterbirds.  He is also a scientist in the cranes and wetlands program at the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) based in Udaipur.  Gopi has worked on waterbirds for over three decades, particularly on the Sarus Cranes of Uttar Pradesh.  In this episode, he talks about waterbirds and how they coexist with humans.  

The best thing that is happened to me as a result of this year-long journey is the cliché: I feel connected with the universe. Let me be clear. I don't think you wake up one morning and suddenly feel at one with the cosmos. It is a gradual process of shedding layers of armor that you have built around yourself.

As I stand in the balcony every morning, gazing through my binoculars, feeling the warmth of the sun on my back and the wind on my skin, watching the dance of birds and the wave of leaves, I sniff the air and smile.  This precious, fragile planet that we are privileged to occupy has wondrous beings that are right in front for eyes if only we care to look.

Is there a link between birds and 007? 

Well, author and American birder, Jim Wright says there is.  The title of his latest book says it all.   “The Real James Bond: A True Story of Identity Theft, Avian Intrigue and Ian Fleming.”

The book says, “Long before Ian Lancaster Fleming became a bestselling author, a single-minded Philadelphia ornithologist named James Bond wrote Birds of the West Indies, based on repeated expeditions to the Bahamas and the Caribbean from 1927 to 1935.” Let’s find out more about the real James Bond.

From this episode, we have started recording audio and video. Here is our Youtube video link of this episode.

Bio

Jim Wright is the author of The Real James Bond, a biography of the author and birdman who fell prey to the world’s most famous case of identity theft. The Wall Street Journal called it “siim and elegant” -- like Bond himself. It is available as a hard-cover, ebook and audiobook.

A long-time prize-winning journalist, Wright has written lavishly illustrated nature books about Central America’s largest rainforest, Pennsylvania’s legendary Hawk Mountain, and the New Jersey Meadowlands. He has also written an interactive ebook about Bald Eagles. 

Wright is a nature photographer and blogger. He writes “The Bird Watcher” column for USA Today newspapers in New Jersey. He lives with his wife Patty in Allendale, NJ, where he is a deputy marsh warden.

Questions and Episode Timeline

1. So who was the real James Bond? (Cuba’s bee hummingbird, red-billed streamertail, ivory-billed woodpecker).
2. Tell us about James Bond meeting Ian Fleming and the cave swallows episode?
3. You have written about America’s most iconic bird: the bald eagle.  Tell us about these spectacular raptors.
4. In your blog, Celery Farm and Beyond, you describe the raptor counts that you’ve done at Hawk Mountain.  For those of us who have never been to Hawk Mountain, tell us why it is special and the raptors that you can see there?
5. What attracts you to raptors? Which ones are especially interesting and why?
6. Back to Bond…. In 1936, Bond wrote Birds of the West Indies.  Tell us about these birds that he discovered-- like the Zapata rail, wren and sparrow.  Also the Bahama nuthatch.
7. Why do ornithologists make good spies? “Birdwatcher is old intelligence slang for spy. . . .
8. Who are some ornithologists who make good spies?
9. Talk about James Bond’s legacy.
10. Have you been to the West Indies? Which are some interesting birding locations you've visited and would recommend.
11. What are some of your favorite bird species-- you’ve written about sparrows, pileated woodpeckers, juncos and such.

This episode is about the wonder of feathers.  Salim Ali said that birds were “feathered bipeds.” This episode explores how feathers are marvellously adaptive to suit birds and species.  Our guest is Esha Munshi who co-founded the Feather Library, a digital project documenting feathers.

Esha read a quote from this book on feathers.

Episode artwork: David Clode/Unsplash

From the Feather Library website

A feather lying on the ground could have belonged to any number of species of birds. The type of feather, the colour, the pattern, the markings all tell a story on how to try and identify the owner. Our founding member (Esha Munshi) came up with an idea that if we could compare the feather to an existing database it would help narrow down the options and even help pinpoint the species of the bird. But no such database is in existence for Indian bird species.

In Gujarat alone we have more than 500 bird species. Trying to identify a bird based on just the feather seemed like a daunting task. So it was decided that we would try to record and document as many species as we can. It started with collecting feather samples from Road kills and photographing the feathers. All feathers were counted, measured and photographed. Species details were noted down along with the location.

Our co-founding member (Sherwin Everett) works at an avian hospital in Ahmedabad. The hospital receives around 1500-2000 birds per month, mostly being pigeons, kites and crows along with a fewer other common and some rare species. A number of the birds succumb to their injuries and stress, after which their bodies are discarded to the local corporation for disposal. This was a colossal pool of data just going to waste, literally.

This is the first website for documenting, identification and study of Indian Birds’ flight feathers in India and one of its kind in the World.

A website by the name of www.featherlibrary.com has been setup as the database for the documented feathers. It is open for all and with easy access to feather plates, data regarding the species, wingspan, number of feathers, various other measurements and location of the bird. This will be useful for ornithologists, Forest department staff,  researchers, seasoned bird watchers and even creating an interest in budding birders. The main aim is to have all of this data under one roof. Our long term goal is to expand and gradually cover all of India. 

A conversation with the author of “Where Song Began.”

In this episode, we talk to author Tim Low, whose book, “Where Song Began” has been credited with turning the map upside down in terms of ornithology’s Northern hemisphere bias.  Tim proves that the world’s cleverest birds originated in Australia.  Tim Low is an award winning author, biologist, consultant and speaker.  You can read more about him at his website, Timlow.com

In this episode, Tim Low discusses Australian birds and what makes them unique. 

Maitreya Sukumar, 18, who has been birding since he was 4, has seen 850 + bird species in the Indian subcontinent and around 2500 species overall . He was named Sanctuary Asia’s Young Naturalist of the year in 2018. Apart from birds, he is interested in frogs, conservation and evolutionary biology. Here is a video of Maitreya winning the Sanctuary Young Naturalist Award 2018.

Here are some books he has co-authored, and birding clubs he co-founded.

He writes regularly for Saevus magazine.

In this conversation, we explore Maitreya's journey in birding all over the world. You can see the birds that Maitreya talks about in the below links.

Wilson's bird of paradise, Lemon rumped warbler, Rufous mot mot, Five coloured barbet, Sapayoa, Apolinar's wren, Green-bearded helmet crest, Resplendent quetzal, Bowerbird, Black sicklebill, Sultan tit, Ward's trogon, Satyr's tragopan, Yellow-rumped honeyguide, Sikkim wedge-billed babbler, Beautiful nuthatch, White gorgeted flycatcher,

Bird is Owls of the Eastern Ice

Where she talks about how multiple nations and habitats need to cooperate to help these champion migrants.

In this episode, Dr. Yaara Aharon-Rotman speaks about long distance migration, mainly among shorebirds but also passerines.  We have explored migratory shorebirds before in Episode 43.  Here, Dr. Rotman talks about how national borders don’t apply to migrating birds and how we all need to cooperate to help them along. 

Originally from Israel, Yaara has completed her PhD in Deakin University, Australia where she studied long distance migratory shorebirds. Inspired by the long migration of her studied species, she than joined research labs in Israel (to work on migratory passerines), China (where she worked on a vulnerable Asian habitat for migratory geese) and Australia, her current home where she study torpor in local and migratory species as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New England. Her main interest focuses on how animals, mainly migratory species, respond to challenges, and specifically, their physiological adaptation to global changes. If she is not looking for birds in the field or analysing data in her office, you can find her in one of the National Parks around Armidale with her family, or at the boxing ring!

Life on Earth is undergoing its sixth ever mass extinction, one that is entirely driven by humans. Amongst the multitude of “global change” factors causing species’ extinctions, climate change and the loss and degradation of natural habitats are major causes. This is especially the case for species in tropical mountain ranges, where most of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity is concentrated, and where species tend to be thermally sensitive.

Umesh Srinivasan and his team study how forest degradation combines with climate change to impact Himalayan biodiversity at multiple levels, from geographic range shifts to behaviour and demography. Their main ongoing work is in the eastern Himalayas of Arunachal Pradesh, where they have been monitoring bird populations in primary and logged forests for a decade using mist netting and bird ringing. They combine this with behavioural observations to understand how climate change and forest loss are altering the composition of mixed-species bird flocks across the elevational gradient. In addition to the Arunachal long-term project, they work with various institutions to study the impacts of global change drivers on Himalayan birds in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim. Almost all their work happens in the field.

Apart from the research that they do, Dr. Srinivasan also works with the Bugun community of Singchung village in Arunachal Pradesh and the Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department on a range of conservation issues. These initiatives include wildlife and nature education for schoolchildren from Arunachali tribal communities and the management of the Singchung Bugun Village Community Reserve, established to protect the critically endangered Bugun Liocichla.

Before joining IISc, Dr. Srinivasan was a postdoctoral fellow with David Wilcove at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He did his PhD on the demographic impacts of selective logging on birds in Arunachal Pradesh with Suhel Quader at the National Centre for Biological Sciences. His MSc was in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from the Wildlife Conservation Society-National Centre for Biological Sciences. His undergraduate studies were in medicine at Government Medical College, Mysore.

Summary of the podcast

The Eastern Himalayas are one of the most species rich regions in the world.  Dr. Umesh Srinivasan studies the effects of selective logging on birds. Are there parts of the Himalayas where birds are more temperature sensitive than others?

2:00 What is selective logging and how does it affect primary forests?

3:15 The sixth extinction.  What are the drivers of the sixth extinction?

5:00 What are the survival rates for birds in primary versus logged forests.

7:00 How do bird species respond to selective logging? What are the changes that you see in birds in logged forests? Hint: it has to do with something that humans always want for their bodies.

11:42 What are some of the fascinating birds in Eastern Himalayas?

13:00 Differences in bird species between Eastern and Western Himalayas.

16:00 Western Himalayas are more temperate than Eastern Himalayas which is more tropical.  This affects the species that colonize these regions.

18:00 Which is better?  Birds that are thermal generalists verus thermal specialists? The answer is not straightforward

21:00 What is biotic homogenization? And how does this affect Western Himalayan birds versus Eastern Himalayan birds? How do birds adapt when you convert forests into agricultural land? Again thermal generalists versus specialists.

25:00 Fascinating nuance amongst the Great Barbet.

27:00 The contours of forest degradation in the Himalayas.  

28:30 “Himalayas are not like a cone.”  The band of land between 1800 to 2500 metres.

30:00 Tell us a good story and a bad story.

32:00 About the endangered Bugun Liochicla with a global population of 20 individual birds.  In Singchung village.  Tale of how to work with a community.

35:00 An appeal to preserve the 4% of land that is protected in India.

Beverly and Anders Gyllenhaal are veteran journalists and birdwatchers. They ran newsrooms, assigned features and wrote books.  They publish a website called FlyingLessons.US: What We’re Learning from the Birds,’’ and are here with us to speak about their new book, “A Wing and a Prayer: the race to save our vanishing birds.

Questions:

1. What is the thesis of your book

2. Your book begins with a sparrow and a woodpecker.  Tell us about that.

3. One third of the birds have disappeared from North America. Shocking statistics.  Discussion

4. The bald eagles resurgence in North America.  Do you think this has to do with size and resonance as the nation’s symbol?

5. Scrub jays symbolise the balance between human development and endemic birds.  How does this play out?

6. Using sound to protect a storied species: california spotted owl.

7. Cerulean warblers in Ecuador. Talk about the Choco Corridor and multiple countries that need to work together

8. Hawaii is the extinction capital of the world.  Why? And How can this change?

9. The red cockaded woodpecker and the US military. Coexisting with birds

10. Outline some case studies of getting this done.

11. Making a case for birds.  

This episode is about the peacock, not because it is the national bird of India, which it is. But because it gave rise to the second most important work in evolutionary biology. I speak of course of Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Darwin has referred to the Peacock just three times in his magnum opus, the origin of species. But the bird gave him so much grief. In 1860, a year after he published the origin of species, Darwin wrote to his friend, the botanist, Asa Gray, and said that “the sight of the feather in a peacocks tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick.” It took him 11 years to come up, with the ‘theory of sexual selection’ to explain the beauty of a peacock’s tail, and other ‘seemingly useless’ male ornaments.  Darwin’s theory was that the male peacock’s spectacular feathers and fan-like tail evolved to attract peahens. Suitable mates. The more attractive the peacock is, the more its chances of mating and therefore passing on the genes to the next generation. There are all kinds of studies in response to this theory. Japanese researchers for example, have shown that the peahens didn’t care about the beauty of a peacock’s tail. Which sorta makes sense, because all peacocks look broadly the same. These japanese researchers observed 268 matings in a feral population of Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus), over 7 years. They could not link the elaborateness of a peacock’s tail with his mating success. The point is that the peacocks need to do and often do more than just spread their tails to win a mate. A lek is like a swayamwara. Male gather in a group, strut and preen, and compete with each other for a woman. Like other lekking animals—including the sage grouse, the hummingbird, and the Mediterranean fruit fly—they had evolved to display before the females of their species in a group of other males. And boy, could peahens be choosy: In the average peacock lek, around 5 percent of the males get the majority of the mates, while nearly all the rest get zero. Perhaps more than any other bird, the peacock is the stuff of story, legend, and mythology. When you admire Indian silk saris, particularly from Kanchipuram, you will notice a woven motif that comes again and again. The local word for it is called Annapakshi. It is woven in the borders of silk saris. For a long time, I thought that this referred to a peacock. In fact, it's history goes back to the arrival of the Aryans or Indo Iranians, who came to India from Persia. In Persian mythology, there is a bird called Simurgh. The simurgh has the same etymological cognate, it is derived from the same root as as the Sanskrit word syena which refers to a raptor, Eagle, or bird of prey. Here's the neat thing. If you look at the simurgh in tapestries, paintings or brass reliefs that come from Iran, the design looks remarkably similar to the Annapakshi and Kanchipuram silk saris.It has the head of a dog or Dragon and the tale of a peacock. Imagine that. This mythical beast that traveled from Iran all the way through the Hindu Kush mountains into North India and onwards down to Tamil Nadu where the Weavers of Kanchipuram incorporate it into the motifs that adorned the borders of the silk saris that they weave.

Do you want to become a reviewer for ebird? Which bird is the logo of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology? Do you think sparrow populations are declining? What abour vireos? Can you “rent” land from farmers to help shorebirds?  In this fascinating episode, we talk to Christopher Wood, who heads ebird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Ashwin Viswanathan who is part of Bird Count India and NCF. Over one billion birders use ebird.  How did it become this global behemoth? Hint, it wasn’t driven by America.  How does ebird track and help avian populations, migration and mapping birds. How do different countries use it, and is India really the “global custodian” of so many species including the Common Rosefinch, Bar-headed Geese, or Blythe’s Reed Warbler?

Christopher Wood is the Managing Director, Center for Avian Population Studies and Director, eBird.

Full bio here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 

Chris was fascinated by dinosaurs as a child. Now, he says, he has moved to their closest living relatives.

Ashwin Vishwanathan is a Research Associate, Education and Public Engagement at the Nature Conservation Foundation or NCF.  He is a part of Bird Count India which encourage bird watching using ebird as a tool.

Episode Timeline

10:32: Listen for a fascinating explanation of the challenges that ebird faces, especially if the goal is to develop maps for where birds are every single week of the year.  How can the methods of analysis of ebird’s data correlate with other data such as the breeding birds survey.  The bias between how birdwatchers are bird-watching and what they are seeing.

13:00 Patterns of bird movement and population linked to habitat and climate change.  Chris talks about the interplay between forests and farms, and why the vireo population is going up.  Ashwin talks about how certain species has expanded all over India.  Hint: it is India’s national bird.  In that sense ebird is a great “hypothesis generator” as Chris says.

18:00 different in the migration and arrival dates of the Eastern Phoebe and Orchard Oriole.  Ashwin talks about the black-capped kingfisher and how the data helped them realize that it was “entirely a winter migrant.”  

23:00: Which are the top countries that supply data to ebird?

25:00 the link between identification and probability.  Why are some birders able to glance at a flying bird and immediately identify it? It has to do with filtering data rather than paging through a field guide.

29:00 how a remote community in Mexico called Mayan Jays used ebird to attract nature tourists to their area.  The same with Honduras, Guatamala, Columbia.  

34:00 how to get indigenous tribal communities to share their knowledge of nature?

37:00 How do you marry specificity and local context with access and global knowledge. Ashwin talks about vernacular languages for bird names.  Ebird has 42 different languages that it supports and 68 choices.  How to preserve local knowledge and culture?

42:00 Diverse systems are inherently more stable.  How does ebird help conservation.  Listen for a fascinating new idea adopted by the Nature Conservancy, which typically buys land for conservation.  They worked with the farmers of the Central Valley of California where a lot of shorebirds and ducks migrate through.  For example, can rice fields and the flooding that farmers do be adjusted to benefit both farmers and their food production and the shorebird habitat.  Point Blue used ebird data to “rent” land from rice farmers to keep the water in the rice fields.

47:00 how village panchayats are using ebird data for local policy decisions.  How a road in Kerala is named after the orange breasted green pigeon

50:00 Do you want to become a reviewer for ebird? Here’s how.  

55:00 Are Eastern Yellow Wagtails present in India? How do ebird reviewers preserve the integrity of the data?

56:00 how does ebird figure out if you are a good birder or not? How does ebird model data based on bird calls? 

58:00 Do you want to know why your checklists were accepted or rejected? List length is a way to predict how likely it is for a species to be reported. And about the Kerala Bird Atlas.

Listen to this fascinating episode

Links:

ebird, Bird Count India

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"By the time a bar-tailed godwits dies, it would have flown to the moon and most of the way back," says ornithologist and author Scott Weidensaul.  A bar-tailed godwit flies 18,000 miles a year. By the time it dies, it will have flown closer to 500,000 miles. In this episode, Scott talks about the magnificent migrations of birds-- the songs they sing while in flight and how they undergo binge-eating before they take off on their epic journeys. Comparing a migratory bird to an elite athlete insults the bird, he says. Arctic terns, for instance, sometimes travels a staggering 57,000 miles a year, he says. Scott celebrates the natural world—particularly birds and bird migration—in his research, his writing and his public speaking. Weidensaul spearheads a number of major research projects focusing on bird migration. His latest book is “The World on the Wing: the global Odyssey of migratory birds.”

He has written more than 30 books on natural history, including Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ghost with Trembling Wings, about the search for species that may or may not be extinct; Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians; Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding; The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery and Endurance in Early America; andthe Peterson Reference Guide to Owls.

Listen to Weidensaul's latest interview on NPR's "Fresh Air." (And here is a previous "Fresh Air" appearance with Terry Gross.) Weidensaul lectures widely on wildlife and environmental topics, and is an active field researcher, specializing in the study of migration in owls, hummingbirds and passerines.  A native of the Appalachians of eastern Pennsylvania, he now lives in New Hampshire. Scott Weidensaul leads tours to such exotic destinations as Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, Alaska, the Amazon and other exciting locales - check out the details here.

Summary of the episode

3:00 Migrating after dark.  Look up at the night sky for “literally billions of birds aloft in the night sky.”

8:00 Yellow Sea’s mudflats.  In China.  How central it is in migration.

13:00 How shorebirds make epic migrations.  About the bar-tailed godwit that spends 11 days in continuous powered flight, crossing the widest part of the Pacific Ocean-- 11,000 kilometres in one great leap.

14:00 Hyperphagia.  Binge feeding.  What these birds do before migration? They fly to the moon and back.  

16:00 How migration and breeding change the body organs of the birds.  

17:00 Scott imitates the song of the arctic song of the redknot.

19:00 About arctic terns, about the size of a dove flies 47,000 miles a year.  Oh wait, it is 57,000 miles a year.  

22:00 Scott reads a section from his book.

26:00 The specific things birds change about themselves.  They change speed, endurance, memory, blood chemistry, metabolism, and much more.

“Comparing a bird to a human athelete insults the bird.”

27:30 A little semipalmated sandpiper, weighing 50 gms.  Take off from the Northeastern coast of North America and fly to the Northeastern coast of South America with no food, water or rest.  That’s like running 126 marathons continuously.

30:00 European swifts and how they sleep.  Uni-hemisphere sleeping.  They sleep with one part of their brain for a few seconds a day.  About owls.

32:00 Bar-headed geese and their one long nonstop flight.  Climbing from 3200-feet an hour to 7200-feet an hour.  

38:00 Conservation efforts to help bird migration.

42:00 About Amur Falcons in Nagaland

44:00 About Snowy owls and owls in general.  Nest boxes in Israel.

50:00 Regional wintering areas. The connections between forests and the Swainson’s Thrush.  

52:00 Migratory connectivity.

54:00 Final words.  Birds fan out from Alaska to cover three-quarters of the earth’s surface.

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Visit the home of Shubha Bhat and you will find many birds enjoying birdbaths in her garden and its surroundings. An avid birder, Shubha has spoken about backyard birding in many forums including the Bangalore Bird Day, Manipal Bird Day and others. Her work has been videotaped and photographed in many publications, including Bird Count India. Today we talk about how to make your gardens and balconies a haven for birds.

Episode Timeline

1:00 Basic steps of how to attract birds.  

3:00 Use of big pots and coconut shells to create an ecosystem.  

5:00 Shubha lists her resident birds.

6:00 Kashmir Flycatcher sighting.

8:00 Poetic description of birds enjoying her garden. Do listen to this part.

9:00 Bird behavior. How do they bathe and drink water? Shubha gives beautiful descriptions.

11:00 Why did the kingfishers stop coming?

11:30 About warblers.  How do they bathe?

12:00 Persuading others to keep bird baths.

14:00 Migratory birds and birds breeding in her garden.

15:00 The pleasure of backyard birds and birding.

15:50 Shubha Bhat speaks about backyard birding in her native Kannada. It is a beautiful section.  How poetically she speaks.  Listen if you know Kannada.

Birds quoted in this episode: Oriental magpie robin, Indian white-eye, mynas, coucals, black kite, flycatchers, warblers, thrushes, Indian blue robin, Indian pitta, Kashmir flycatcher, Tickell’s thrush, large-billed leaf warbler, ultramarine flycatcher, blue-throated flycatcher, yellow-browed warbler, Tytler’s leaf warbler, rusty-tailed flycatcher, paradise flycatcher, monarch flycatcher, drongos, orioles, ashy wood swallows, cineroeus tits

Links

Manipal Bird Day, Shubha's talk for Bangalore Bird Day, Photos of Shubha's garden here

Interview with a filmmaker who won the L’oiel d’or or Golden Eye in Cannes for best documentary film in 2022.

We have a different sort of guest for this episode: a filmmaker.  Shaunak Sen’s film “All That Breathes” premiered at Sundance Festival, where it won the Grand Jury award and then won the L’Oeil d’Or (Golden Eye) for the best documentary at the 75th Cannes Film Festival.  You should really watch this episode in our Youtube Channel, Bird Podacast or our Instagram channel bird_podcast because we are playing clips from the film.  In this episode, director Shaunak Sen talks about human-animal relationships, and how the brothers are philosophers who wear their insights lightly.

Questions:

1. Tell us about the film?
2. What made you decide to do this film?
3. Are you a bird lover? 
4. Speciestic difference is like jail.  What a line.  Do you believe that?
5. How did you capture the birds close up? The kites, vultures, etc.
6. The blackwinged stilt on the soapy river.  How did you get that?
7. How did it feel to be near the injured kites?
8. In interviews, you have talked about how these brothers have a ‘front row’ seat of the apocalypse.  
9. Why do the brothers do what they do? 

About the film

"The documentary talks about two brothers in a lower middle-class Delhi locality, who have made it their life's mission to save kites. These birds, which have been victims of the capital's debilitating air pollution, are rescued by the brothers, Mohammed Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, treated and set free once they are ready to fly again. These two are helped by an employee, Salik Rehman, and all of them have dedicated their lives to this enormously difficult rehabilitation venture.

The work is a quiet effort to document in detail the brothers' patience and sacrifice. Carrying on in the face of punishing impediments, including lack of funds, Saud and Shehzad live in hope with a never-say-die attitude. There is an extremely touching scene when one of them goes to a meat shop and asks for a concession in price. It is not easy feeding kites, which are birds of prey.

It may sound unbelievable but the brothers have been at it for two decades, struggling to get funds at home and from abroad. We learn as we watch the documentary that they feel taking care of kites and helping them to fly again by themselves are rewards. They love feeding the winged creatures, and the way they caress them establishing an undying bond is marvellously narrated by Sen.

He also lets us into some tender moments as when one of the brothers in an autorickshaw takes out a baby squirrel from his shirt pocket, lovingly strokes it and puts it back. Such moments of compassion make the movie a great watch.

The cost of this love is unimaginable; although Shehzad and Saud earn a living by manufacturing liquid-soap dispensers, they are much more interested in tending to kites, some 12 hours in a day, and these come at the cost of neglecting their families. In a telling scene, Shehzad and his wife are ruminating over Delhi's worsening air pollution. While she is thinking about their child, he is fixated on kites!"

Our guest in this episode is Dr. Emily Duval whose Duval lab at Florida State University studies behavioral ecology, population genetics, and in the role of sexual selection in speciation.

In this episode, we talk to this much feted, and much-cited professor about topics that would be a divorce lawyer’s nightmare: multiple paternity, non-optimal choice of mate, alpha and beta males, and the adaptive basis of female mate choice. More specifically, we are going to talk about the manakin of Panama, the lance-tailed manakin in particular, whose spectacular breeding dance makes time fly.

In this episode, we talk to Noah Strycker. Noah is the Associate Editor for Birding Magazine and author of several popular books about birds. He set a world record in 2015 by finding more than 6,000 species of birds in one calendar year. 6,042 species to be precise. Noah has made more than 70 expeditions to Antarctica and the high Arctic, literally spreading the joy of birds from pole to pole. In this episode, we talk about the countries he has visited, the species that he has seen, what he learned from his big year of birding, the equipment he carries and how to replicate this exercise should you want to. You can connect with Noah via his website: https://noahstrycker.com/

This is a story about a wood stork called Flinthead.  He lived with his partner in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Florida.  The wood stork couple depended on the wetlands in Florida for not just their survival but also to bring up their babies. 

This is a post-episode trailer of Episode 5 where I interviewed Dr. Jerry Jackson.

Even though the audio isn’t perfect, Episode 5 is worth listening to because he covers so much ground. Ecology, wood storks, wetlands, anhingas, and much more.

Here I focus on one aspect of that episode: wood storks

Our guest today is Dr. Nancy Jacobs, a professor of history at Brown University.  The topic of our discussion is based on her third book, a really wonderful read.  It is called Birders of Africa: history of a network.  He current work is on the “Global Grey Parrot.”

Nancy Jacobs is Professor of History at Brown University. She specializes in South Africa, colonial Africa, the environment, knowledge, and biography. Her recent work links her to birds.

Her third book, Birders of Africa: History of a Network (Yale University, 2016;

University of Cape Town, 2018) was an examination of the politics of knowing birds in colonial Africa.

In this short 3-minute episode, we are talking about the amazing birds of Nagaland with Angulie Meyase, a birding guide based in Khonoma, one of the most picturesque towns of Nagaland. He describes many of the birds you can see in Nagaland including the gray sibia, great barbet, assam laughing thrush, crested finchbill, green cochoa, purple cochoa, some eagles, rusty capped fulvetta, mountain bamboo partridge, blyth’s trogopan, spot breasted laughing thrush, yellow rumped honeyguide and many others.

We are so sorry but we messed up.  The previous episode that was published was an interview with Judith Mirembe.  For some reason, the full conversation did not go out.  Here is the full-length interview.  Those who listened to part of it before, please fast forward to 22:00 minutes.  

Our guest today is Judith Mirembe who is currently based in Uganda.  Judith is a bird guide and researcher with a passion for birds, keen on their conservation as well as protection of their habitats. This passion stems back from when she was a kid where she learnt birds in her local language and appreciated the cultural stories attached to them.

She is the Chairperson of the Uganda Women Birders’ Club, that started in 2013 as an initiative to introduce women to birdwatching, a profession that is dominated by men in Africa. This passion led her into starting a non-profit organization, Shoebill-Watch Uganda whose major aim is to protect the Shoebill and other bird species in Uganda. She holds a Masters Degree in Environment and Natural Resources and has done a number of courses by the Tropical Biology Association (TBA) on application of Citizen Science in research and conservation of species. She has in the past (2016-2019) worked with Nature Uganda, a Birdlife International Partner in Uganda as the research and monitoring coordinator where her major role was to coordinate bird population monitoring in Uganda. Judith is a Zoological Society of London (ZSL) EDGE (Evolutionally Distinct and Globally Endangered ) of Existence Fellowship Alumni (2017-2019) where she together with the local communities on the shores of Lake Victoria carried out research on the Shoebill, a globally threatened bird species. She has continued this amazing and ground breaking working with the local communities at Mabamba wetland where she has trained the local guides to use a mobile phone tool to monitor the Shoebill and the threats it is faced with as they go about their routine of guiding tourists. She is the editor for the Birdwatch, a newsletter talking about Uganda’s birdwatching sector

Here are some questions that Judith answered in the interview.

1. For people who have not visited Uganda, can you tell us some of the species of birds that we can see there?
2. What are some of your favorite species and why?
3. Please talk about the different habitats that are found in Uganda. 
4. Please tell us what is special about the shoebill and why you started the conservation program for this bird?
5. Tell us some of the cultural symbolism associated with birds? For example, do people believe that certain birds bring them good luck or bad luck?
6. What are some of the spectacular raptors that you see in Uganda? What about ground dwelling birds such as ostriches which we don’t see in India. 
7. The national bird of Uganda is the gray crowned crane. Is there any folk belief or any stories associated with this bird? Why did Uganda choose this as the national bird?
8. You have some incredibly beautiful birds in Uganda. Can you describe a few of your favorites. Maybe the turaco? 
9. India’s national bird is a great Indian bustard. You also have bustards in Uganda. Can you talk about that?
10. You also have hornbills-- some pretty impressive ones.  
11. What made you start Uganda Women Birders?
12. Lastly, please tell us about conservation efforts that are happening in Africa and specifically in Uganda. 

This episode is about demoiselle cranes congregating in a village in India.

Last month, on a trip to Rajasthan, I visited the village of Kheechan.  To get here, you have to fly to Jodhpur and drive two hours North.  The thing about this place is that every winter, some 20,000 Demoiselle cranes congregate here because they are fed morning and night with grains or jowar.  In this episode we explore the Demoiselle cranes that migrate to a Jain village in Western Rajasthan.  These are the smallest cranes among the 15 species of cranes in the world.  What’s interesting is the attachment that they have with the villagers of Kheechan.  Here, they have a daily routine. 

Read about how a community feeds the cranes here.  And read about sacred spaces called orans here.

From here: “Demoiselle cranes have to take one of the toughest migrations in the world. In late August through September, they gather in flocks of up to 400 individuals and prepare for their flight to their winter range. During their migratory flight south, demoiselles fly like all cranes, with their head and neck straight forward and their feet and legs straight behind, reaching altitudes of 16, 000 – 26, 000 m. Along their arduous journey they have to cross the Himalayan mountains to get to their over-wintering grounds in India. Many die from fatigue, hunger and predation from golden eagles. Simpler, lower routes are possible, such as crossing the range via the Khyber Pass. However, their presently preferred route has been hard-wired by countless cycles of migration. At their wintering grounds, demoiselles have been observed flocking with common cranes, their combined totals reaching up to 20, 000 individuals. Demoiselles maintain separate social groups within the larger flock. In March and April, they begin their long spring journey back to their northern nesting grounds.

They are part of Indian lore and legend.  The crane formation was part of the Mahabharata.  Valmiki composed the Ramayana when he saw a hunter kill cranes that were occupied in a mating dance.

Part 1 of 4. This episode addresses a question that every bird watcher hears at some point or other.  People who watch us stand still at balconies gazing skywards or at trees, peering through binoculars at walks, or getting excited by some random tiny green bird.  Some of us get this question from puzzled spouses or confused friends and the question in: What are you guys doing?

Our guest today is Judith Mirembe who is currently based in Uganda.  Judith is a bird guide and researcher with a passion for birds, keen on their conservation as well as protection of their habitats. This passion stems back from when she was a kid where she learnt birds in her local language and appreciated the cultural stories attached to them.

She is the Chairperson of the Uganda Women Birders’ Club, that started in 2013 as an initiative to introduce women to birdwatching, a profession that is dominated by men in Africa. This passion led her into starting a non-profit organization, Shoebill-Watch Uganda whose major aim is to protect the Shoebill and other bird species in Uganda. She holds a Masters Degree in Environment and Natural Resources and has done a number of courses by the Tropical Biology Association (TBA) on application of Citizen Science in research and conservation of species. She has in the past (2016-2019) worked with Nature Uganda, a Birdlife International Partner in Uganda as the research and monitoring coordinator where her major role was to coordinate bird population monitoring in Uganda. Judith is a Zoological Society of London (ZSL) EDGE (Evolutionally Distinct and Globally Endangered ) of Existence Fellowship Alumni (2017-2019) where she together with the local communities on the shores of Lake Victoria carried out research on the Shoebill, a globally threatened bird species. She has continued this amazing and ground breaking working with the local communities at Mabamba wetland where she has trained the local guides to use a mobile phone tool to monitor the Shoebill and the threats it is faced with as they go about their routine of guiding tourists. She is the editor for the Birdwatch, a newsletter talking about Uganda’s birdwatching sector.

This is the first of three episodes about the bird life in Costa Rica.

This one focuses on the three-wattled bell-bird and the episode is set in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.

Listen to the bellbird on Youtube here.

Meet One Of The Loudest Birds In The World (Three-wattled Bellbird)

Thanks to these photographers for their images

https://unsplash.com/@zmachacek

https://unsplash.com/@feiffert

Thanks to Michael Brooks for this video of the bird calling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js9rqJZ_a-8&list=PPSV

Featured image from Wikimedia Commons

• Procnias_tricarunculata_-Costa_Rica_-male-8.jpg: Ryan Kozie