Okay, But... Birds

E38. You have pulled one out of a jacket sleeve at a bad angle, picked one up on a walk, and you are almost certainly within arm's reach of a few thousand of them right now. Dr. Cody Limber, who recently finished his PhD at Yale, spent it taking growing feathers apart one cell at a time to find out what they are actually made of. A feather is not a fancy scale, it does not grow the way you would guess, and after all this time nobody can say what the first ones were for.
In this episode, you'll hear about:
The strangest things growing out of birds, and which of them actually count as feathers
What a feather is actually made of, once you smash one into individual cells and read what every cell was doing
What a feather actually is, whether it is alive or dead, how it is put together, and the coordination that color and pattern demand

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Eastern Whip-poor-will audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML195774
Red-bellied Woodpecker audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML306064
Indian Peafowl audio contributed by Rounak choudhary, ML621021542
Common Raven audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML132161
Mallard audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML136504
Double-crested Cormorant audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML233274
Zebra Finch (Australian) audio contributed by Vicki Powys, ML226233
American Herring Gull video contributed by Steve Kelling, ML540908261
Golden-winged Warbler video contributed by Benjamin Clock, ML476422
Great Argus audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML71122
Horned Screamer audio contributed by Paul A. Schwartz, ML58925
Wild Turkey audio contributed by James (Jim) Holmes, ML73964601

E37. A bird called Wisdom was banded on Midway Atoll in 1956 and is still laying eggs today, which makes her at least 75 and the oldest known wild bird on the planet. She has also outlived the man who banded her, and most of the scientists who tracked her since. Dr. Etienne Rouby studies long-lived seabirds at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at CU Boulder, working with data from the French sub-Antarctic islands where wandering albatross have been followed for more than half a century. Scott asks him what you can learn from a bird that will outlast your career, your funding, and possibly your field station.
In this episode you'll hear about:
What a fledgling albatross does for the first five years of its life, and why nobody really knows
The fishing gear change that pulled a colony back from the brink, and how long it took to see it working
Why a very good year for female albatross is a very bad year for the males

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Snowy Albatross audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML42306
Black-browed Albatross audio contributed by Jan Hansen, ML650026815

E36. Hummingbirds run one of the fastest metabolisms of any animal with a backbone, which is why we picture them as permanently buzzing. Scott sits down with Dr. Anusha Shankar, assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, who studies how hummingbirds budget energy in a world that keeps moving the goalposts. It turns out the blur at your feeder is the exception, not the rule.
In this episode you'll hear about:
Why the same bird might spend three hours a day flying, or thirteen, depending entirely on what the flowers are doing
What happens overnight when a hummingbird lets itself go cold, and how long it takes to come back
Seven months in the Ecuadorian cloud forest, and the hummingbirds that sat on the nets and waited

Plus: the doubly labeled water method, a sugar concentration threshold you can taste-test at your own feeder at your own risk, and the reason Anusha gets called the hummingbird pee person.
The "snoring" hummingbird video Scott and Anusha discuss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uEfmQt34Nc
All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Ruby-throated Hummingbird audio contributed by Trenton Voytko, ML604314061
Black Metaltail audio contributed by Pedro Allasi Condo, ML663268821
Violet-tailed Sylph audio contributed by Paul Coopmans, ML58045
White-booted Racket-tail audio contributed by Daniel Cadena, ML256331
Bee Hummingbird video contributed by Timothy Barksdale, ML440270

Black Metaltail photograph by Thibaud Aronson, via iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

E35. Eighteen species of small brown bird on a pile of volcanic rock have taught us more about how evolution actually works than almost anything else on Earth. Not because Darwin figured them out. He didn't. Because a handful of scientists went back, banded every bird on one island, and watched it happen in real time. Scott heads to the Galapagos with Dr. Erik Enbody, Assistant Professor of Computational Biology at Cornell University, to find out how one ancestor became eighteen, why the beak is the only thing worth looking at, and what happens when species that aren't supposed to interbreed start swapping genes anyway.
In this episode you'll hear about:
The island so small you can band every bird on it, and the drought that killed almost all of them
One gene that explains 40% of beak size, when nothing in human height explains even 1%
The finch that does something mind-blowingly villainous and what it says about how far evolution will go

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Large Ground-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85965
Common Cactus-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML86715
Small Tree-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85464
Vegetarian Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML82506
Galapagos Mockingbird audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML45963
Española Mockingbird audio contributed by Herb Elliott, ML638777433
Floreana Mockingbird audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85455
San Cristobal Mockingbird audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML28656
Palm Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML88937
Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
Vampire Ground-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML86756
Woodpecker Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML82522
Paradise Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML127399
Galápagos Sea Lion audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML125020

E34. Not all birds build one, but for the ones that do, a nest has a single job and a shockingly wide range of ways to get it done. Dr. Vanya Rohwer, Curator of Birds and Mammals at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates, joins Scott to walk the far end of that spectrum, from nests made entirely of spit to a colony structure heavy enough to snap the tree it sits in.
In this episode you'll hear about:
The complete and comical inventory of one hamerkop nest, read aloud, contents included
What a bird does when you hand it a nest somebody else already built
Why a shed snakeskin in a tree cavity is a calculated decoration

New episodes every Thursday. If the show is doing it for you, leave a rating or hit follow.
All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But… Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
American Robin audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML206448
Baltimore Oriole audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML219606
Black-legged Kittiwake audio contributed by Roger Charters, ML202491
White-nest Swiftlet audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML36421
Cliff Swallow audio contributed by James (Jim) Holmes, ML92053871
Chimney Swift audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML107413
Hamerkop audio contributed by Anonymous, ML97562
Eastern Whip-poor-will audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML195774
Montezuma Oropendola audio contributed by David L. Ross Jr., ML215446
Western Grebe audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML195029
Rufous Hornero audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML132447
Northern Yellow Warbler audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML516692
Sociable Weaver audio contributed by Jacob Henry, ML637193738
Great Crested Flycatcher audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94314
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML534430
White-breasted Nuthatch audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML306062