Ologies with Alie Ward - Field Trip: Birds of Prey and Raptor Facts

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Grab your stuff and hop in our van full of weirdos to check out Boise Idaho’s finest attraction: a 580 acre preserve of land that is absolutely flush with raptors who could eat your eyeballs. We’re back with another field trip episode, this time visiting The Peregrine Fund’s World Center For Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho. We got a tour from Vice President of the Peregrine Fund Dr. Chris McClure to meet so many birds including California Condors, Harpy Eagles, American Kestrels, Barred Owls, Bald Eagles, and of course the Peregrine Falcon. Also: industrial sized easter eggs, puppet parents, commuting with flesh eating dinosaurs, and the sexiest hat you’ve ever seen.The World Center For Birds of Prey in Boise, IdahoFollow the center on Instagram and Twitter, Chris McLure’s TwitterA donation went to The Peregrine FundMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: P-22: The Life & Death of an L.A. Cougar, Oology (EGGS), Chickenology (HENS & ROOSTERS), Wildlife Ecology (FIELDWORK), Condorology (CONDORS & VULTURES), Pelicanology (PELICANS), Plumology (FEATHERS), Ornithology (BIRDS), FIELD TRIP: How to Change Your Life via the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, FIELD TRIP: An Airport Full of Neuroscientists, FIELD TRIP: My Butt, a Colonoscopy Ride Along & How-To, FIELD TRIP: A Hollywood Visit to the Writers Guild Strike Line, Carnivore Ecology (LIONS, TIGERS & BEARS), Cervidology (DEER), Urban Rodentology (SEWER RATS)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

This is an interesting weird episode, so we're just kind of like, just rolling, just wing it. We're winging it. Yep, it's a fun, weird, hybrid episode we made you. For fun, it's a field trip. Oh, hey, it's your friends who rented a house for your wedding weekend. Who want you to have a Val Renewal party annually? Alleyward.

So my friend Miles, you met him. Miles Thompson, he's a chef from the pectin and all-in-gri episode about scallops. He married his very cool bride, Aubrey, a few months back in Boise, Idaho. And since every single person I met told me that I had to go to something called the World Center for Birds of Prey,

I said, hell yes. And I sent a few desperate emails. And then I grabbed my old purse full of microphones. And I arrived with a van full of friends to learn all about owls and eagles and cultures and condors and peregrines and castles and more. So here's how this episode is going to work. You ready?

We're going to do a tour. We're going to goch it's some birds. We're going to see a bunch of California condors up close and personal. We're going to hear the stories of the birds in their sanctuary and then we're going to peel off and duck into a library for a traditional allergies episode in the last half. And I will freak out many times during this episode because of cool birds and you will love it.

But first, then give the folks at patreon.com slash allergies, who submitted questions for this episode and support for a dollar or more a month. Thank you to folks who rate and subscribe and just make my day with sweet reviews. Like, here's a fresh one from Patrick, who this week wrote, hey, it's the relationship you rekindled and says, that all in Gs, are you ready for this?

Resparked the embers of their relationship with our partner, which is so lovely to hear. I hope this podcast gets you and everyone, naked in the best ways. Also, Katie with a slugs, good luck with those slimmers licking on your shower curtain, gross, I loved it. You can find other oligites in the wild with merch from oligiesmursho.com.

We sell beanies and bathing suits, no matter what hemisphere you can't lose. Okay, let's get into this episode. You ready? Audio in the first half, it's on site. It's immersive, like you're right there with us before we settle in for the chat in the library. So get in, you hot losers.

We're going field tripping to learn about raptors, industrial-sized Easter eggs, old-timey contaminants, breeding and captivity, lunchtime for carrion connoisseurs, apartment vultures, my favorite book, adopted owls, the cause of India's mysterious vulture apocalypse, and if they fixed it, commuting with flesh eating dinosaurs, and the sexiest hat you've ever seen. So get in the pass van to meet up with the folks who run the center,

including a person who has acted as the Paragrin Funds Director of Global Conservation Science. He spearheaded the Global Raptor Impact Network, published roughly 90 peer-reviewed articles on the subject, and is the associate editor for the Journal of Raptor Research, Ornithologist, and Certified Raptor Enthusiast, Dr. Chris McClure at the Paragagon Funds World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho. Let's go. We're in town for a wedding. So we figured, yeah, we're like, we're boys eat. This is the world center for raptors. It's just a freaking raptors. We got words.

Sweet. The idea was we'll just show you all the center and then go over, we'll show you the library and the specimen collection. Let's go check it out. All right. Yeah. So your podmom, myself and some of our best pals, arrived at the world center for Birds of Prey,

on kind of a mild cloudy, idle afternoon via an 11-person to your passenger van that we rented for the weekend, which we figured we might as well drive people around on this wedding weekend to be helpful. In this van, prompted at least one cashier at Stinker, a boy'sy local gas station convenience store that has a wonderful skunk mascot to ask if we were all in a band. And that made me feel good. So we got out of this van, the six of us, and we tumbled out into the welcoming arms

of a bunch of raptor conservationists. Can you t last name and your title he use. Carolina, Grandthin, uh, in Shea her. Christmas lour president of science and c him. Okay, uh, Carolina's a are you serious? And the entire ponder crew is fan. Really?

Yeah, we go to the dairies in Twin Falls and it's like three hour drive. And so go every week. So that's Caroline and Grandthead. And she's the center's research coordinator. She's a petite, brunette woman wearing sensible outdoor fleece. And Chris is tall with sandy brown hair, also wearing sensible outdoor fleece.

But wait, didn't Carolyn just say that they listen on the way to a dairy? Weekly, why are there van fools of bird nerds taking regular road trips to a milk farm? Do birds of prey secretly love sour cream? Do they live off strawberry milk? Oh, my little oligites. What do lides earn, store-fuel?

We're gonna get there. But first, why is the world center for birds of prey located like 15 minutes outside of Boise, Idaho? Now is this area like this valley? Is it really hospitable to birds of prey in general? Like are there a lot naturally occurring in the wild or like why this spot? So the the Snake River birds are prey, national conservation area, is one of the highest densities of raptors in the world actually. Oh.

Yeah, so there's a canyon that runs through it, so there's lots of nest sites there, lots of cliff ledges, so that's one thing they need. So they need a bedroom and a pantry, basically the pantry is the sort of planes outside there. So they hunt jackrabbits and ground squirrels and stuff out out there.

And it's these two things coming together to make it a really great place. So we're actually founded by Falconers. Tell us everything. Okay, so we were founded by Tom Cade. Okay. He was a professor at Cornell University at the time at the Lab of Hornifology. And he was a Falconer. He was worried about his favorite bird, the Paragon Falcon,

almost going extinct from DDT. And so from his falconry knowledge, he had a way of captively breeding these birds. And so he founded the Paragon Fund in 1970, basically to bring back the Paragon Falcon through captive breeding. How are they doing now? They're doing great.

Populations are on the increase, and they are no longer on the endangered species list. And it said that there are two reasons that the Paragon Falcon was delisted. One is the banning of DDT, and another was Tom K. And his partners that helped to captively breed these birds. Wow. What an inspiration. Does he have his own day in Boise? Like, does he have a Tom clay day? He should. and his partners that helps to captively breed these birds. Wow, what an inspiration. Does he have his own day in Boise? Like does he have a Tom Clayton day?

He should. He should, every day is Tom day. Every day, yes. Chris pointed a few yards away to this life-sized human figure saying, that's Tom right over there. And it was a statue of Ornithology professor and Paragrand fund founder Tom Cade.

And it's one of those bronze castings that you see sometimes in the middle of like a town square, maybe by a gazebo and some nice flower beds. But this statue has Tom dressed kind of like Indiana Jones, but with a dad cap instead of a fedora, and wearing a tucked-in button-up shirt under a leather jacket and binoculars around his neck and a satchel draped across his body, I imagine, probably full of dead mice. And in the statue, he's standing with his arm outstretched with a big thick glove on his hand,

so they're a beautiful bronze, Paragon Falcon can perch on the end, and stretches wings for Tom to case upon with kind of paternal admiration and affection. It's a really good statue. For one second I thought that was a real bird and I was like are you got me? But that's so cool. Yeah, sweet. Let's go look around. All right. Thanks Tom. So we spent time kind of bopping between the outdoor sanctuary that has unreleasable birds and also birds in the captive breeding programs and

then we also wondered inside this tiled, high-ceiling visitor center and through a carpeted library that kind of has excellent college campus vibes. And Chris mentioned that in the 53 years since the Paragon Fund's been established by Tom Cade, they've helped repopulate like a hundred different raptor species in 65 countries around the world,

including some critically endangered species, including the California condor, who were going to get to meet a minute. Plus the Paragraphalcan and the Mauritius Castrol, which was down to just four individuals known to remain on Earth. So they've done this by working with ornithologists to figure out the best shot for chick survival that they could. Is it difficult if one is really, really endangered in the wild to bring it in and try to get it in a captive breeding program? Are they ever just like, this is so different that I don't know what to do or yeah, yeah, happens often animals won't breed in captivity. But luckily, raptors tend to do so pretty well.

Oh, that is lucky. And our part with condors was actually the politics of the people. There were organizations, very prominent organizations, saying let them die with dignity and basically go extinct. So sitting here now in a time where the world center for Birds of Prey exists, and quite a few species of raptor have been successfully rescued from this brink of extinction, it's kind of hard to imagine a time when conservationists argued against captive breeding programs. But in 1981, when converse, we're down to just 22 birds in the wild.

And with this failed attempt at captive breeding them that happened in the 1950s, many a lover of the big birds really opposed trying to rescue them again. They're like, we tried it in the 50s. It didn't work. There's only 22 birds left. Let's give up. And the National Audubon Society and the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Los Angeles and San Diego Zoo, they supported plans for capturing and breeding the last wild condors. The largest chapter of this national Audubon society, the Golden Gate Audubon, stood in really strong and vocal opposition. The Bay Area Audubon society was like, don't do it. Let's not breed any more condors. Why? Why? Why would you ever stop? A giant, caped, goth bird from love love making itself out of extinction.

Well, one argument made by Point-Rays Bird Observatory Board member and an Ornithologist out of UC Berkeley, this guy named Frank Patelka, argued that, quote, the millions of dollars needed for a risky condor recovery program would be better invested in less expensive efforts to save many other endangered species, he said. And this sentiment echoed many haters viewpoint that condors were just too fragile. They're too high maintenance to be saved by the clumsy hands of the humans that endangered them

and that they're every other year breeding cycle would just not produce enough offspring to make a difference. Don't bother. Now, the award for the most sentimental opposition, however, must be given to Rich Stalkup. He was a longtime leader of Bay Area Burning and the Ornithology community

who helped found the point-raised bird observatory. And he was given the nickname Mr. Magic by fellow Bay Area birders because he had this knack for finding rare birds. He had a gift. And Rich wrote a brief, kind of more bitter than sweet public letter in 1991, which began, quote, farewell, Skymaster.

And he argued that condors were ecologically extinct, and that we owe them the freedom of the sky, and that a grounded condor couldn't be much happier than a grounded whale. And he asked, must we burden and demean the doomed skymasters with electronic trinkets and then imprison them in boxes and demand that they reproduce? So we're going to link to the whole letter. It's really quite worth a read.

It's pretty dramatic. But from an emo standpoint, ahead of its time, he wrote a passage like, allow them to die with a dignity that has always been theirs. So obviously, Rich Stalkov did not stop the Condor captive breeding program. And now he has flown himself to the grapey on. He passed away in late 2012 from leukemia, the age of 67. But by the time of his death, the number of living condors and swelled to 405, with only 179 of them in captivity. So I hope that he was comforted by that success

and that maybe he felt that taking the Skymaster under our wing for a while was worth it in the end. And the point of all this is to say that a lot of people thought it would not work, but Condors are making the comeback and for more on these fascinating birds and the people who protect them We have a whole episode linked in the show notes called Condorology with Dr. Jonathan Seahawl We have the largest flock of California condors here on site We we still do cats with breeding here. We release those birds in

California and Mexico and Arizona. I don't think i've ever seen one in real life but yeah as i strul to the next very prominent enclosure with the tall chris and the diminutive carolina i saw that the concrete walkway was decorated with imprints of some enormous bird feet who's big feet are these on course those are kinder are those actual condor imprints?

Them's big feet, though. There is big as your feet. What size should you wear? Five? Oh, you must find the best shoes on sale. Well, we happen to have someone with tiny feet next to giant bird prints. That was a, how fortuitous is that?

Yeah. That's rad. Are you stored with a condor? Like, when you hold them, they're so big feet next to giant vertebrates. That was a, how fortuitous is that? Yeah. That's rad. Are you stored with a condor? So like when you hold them, they're so big that they're like as big as me pretty much. And they're like 20% of my body weight. Oh my gosh.

It's funny. What is it like to hold a condor? It's crazy. They're strong. They're like 20 pounds of, I want to get out of your arms right now. Oh my gosh. Wow. Holy smokes. Giant. I was so I was an intern on the project once, once upon a time. And I was coming over a hill.

At the same time, a condor was coming over a hill and it baint. And one tip of the wing was on the ground and the other tip was just up nine and a half feet in the air and we were both terrified of each other. On this particular day, the condors were really active, like more active than usual, we were told. And they were kind of flapping around and swooping onto each other's perching spots, displacing each other. And they were generally engaging in what I would describe as horse play. But for giant almost once extinct birds. Maybe it was a bird play.

I don't know. Is that a thing? Let's ask an ornithologist. Now, are they just playing tag? So they, uh, they will display each other. Uh-huh. And this is the most active I've ever seen these particular birds actually. So you're seeing a show, right?

Yes. But also they're like trying to get to the best birch. Mm-hmm. And so they all long the best birch. Okay, so these very big, very goth birch, were playing a tug of war over something pretty big, like the size of a big dog or maybe like a medium-sized bench. But none of us could quite understand what we were seeing right away. And well, remember those road trips to the dairy that we mentioned earlier? Well, they don't drive out there for soft serve kiddos. So we get free cows from dairies around here.

Oh, I see hoops now. Oh, wow, that's straight up a dead cow. It's so wild just to see a dead cow in there, just like snacky snacks, you know, but I mean, they must be so excited when you bring them. Yeah, it's the most natural thing to give them. Yeah, I'm sure it's just like a pizza delivery. It's gotta be stoked.

So later in the visitor center, I couldn't stop thinking about that weird, like elliptical circle of life relationship that we have with raptors. That's really wonderful of the dairy farmers to, like, elliptical circle of life relationship that we have with raptors. That's really wonderful of the dairy farmers to be like, I got a calf for you if you need it, you know? Yeah, it's not the most glamorous part of the job. Do you have to go pick up a dead calf sometimes?

Yeah, when I was in propagation, we would go every week. What'd you got for me? Yeah, right. And sometimes, you know, we have a huge like chest freezer that we set up for them and they just put the calves in there. There's mostly still born organic calves. Yeah, organic berries.

Oh, only the finest. Yes. But sometimes like, you know, five calves. Other times it's like 15 calves. And you're like, oh my God. Do you get to use a company car for that or your personal? We take the company truck. That's smart.

You imagine putting it on the back of your centra. Speaking of vans, again, when I first saw the California condors as a Californian, I kind of wondered how they got up here to Boise. How did they make their way up to Boise Idaho? Mostly by van. So it's actually a neat story we breed the California condors here And then they travel by van to wherever they're gonna go and it's actually

Quite the process because we keep it very quiet in the vans So Chris says that in an effort to keep the birds from getting too comfortable around human beings When the ornithologists drive the birds to their new home in the wild, no one's allowed to talk or listen to the radio, and they have to keep the AC cranked up ice them out so that the birds don't overheat, because heading west for them to California is a 13-hour drive. So just imagine a big cold, silent cargo van full of razor-beaked flying dinosaurs with nine-foot wingspanes. Fairly recently, basically brought back from the dead, it's just deeply spooky in the best way. Oh, it warms my little science dark heart. Maybe we should have told

the stinker guy that that was our band, Condor Caravan Cult, just touring with hit singles like Calbaby Tug of War or cold and quiet as the grave in the instant classic Eaton led and they came back from near extinction in the wild. It's right There were 22 individuals and they trapped them all up in the 80s and started breeding them and now there's over 500 in existence and about half of those exist in the wild. Wow And I know that off the wild. Wow. And I know that off the coast of California, they're like, oops, we found barrels of DDT, right? That's right.

There was lots of DDT spilled off the coast of NLA and stuff and it's been getting into the marine mammals and then the mammals die eventually and wash up on shore and the condors eat them. So that is a problem. So you may remember that we talked about this both in the Carnivore Econology episode with Dr. Ray Wingrande and in the aforementioned Carnivoreology episode with Dr. Jonathan Seahawl. Here's a quick aside from that episode.

But things that contributed to their extinction in the wild around 1987, this was before the captive breeding programs were things like the use of DDT, which has been known to cause really fragile shells that break in the nesting process. And these effects of DDT were still happening decades after it was banned in 1972 because it was stored in the blubber of sea mammals that the condors ate years later. And while DDT is certainly very bad for birds. The main problem for California condors, though, is lead poisoning from spin ammunition.

The parent fund is actually the only entity that breeds California condors, releases them in the wild, and tackles lead poisoning. So we hit on all three aspects of condor biology and restoration. And is that like using copper bullets and things for hunting? So we want people to start using copper bullets and actually we do workshops, we give out copper ammunition so you can either use copper ammunition or you can bring in your gut pile. I'm sorry, come again. So often folks will shoot an animal, they skin it and leave the guts there. But those guts then have lead in them if they were shot with a lead bullet.

So yes, lead ammo. Don't leave, say, a deer's viscera for the scavengers if it's contaminated with lead ammunition. And we talked about this in the two-part servidology episode about deer, kind of touching on conservationists who choose to hunt mammals and birds over factory-farmed meat. So it's haul in your guts or copper ammunition within the bounds of their namesake, California, which for the record was the first day to ban all-led ammunition for hunting in 2019. And for more on how Conor has become lead poisoned by tainted buckshot. all led ammunition for hunting in 2019. I'm doing my part. I'm doing my part. And for more on how Connors become led poisoned

by Tainted Buckshot, again, go back and check out the Connorology episode, which of course, linked in the show notes. But if you were to visit the World Center for Birds of Prey, you might get the chance to see different big birds each time you go. They will rotate which birds are on display based on the genetics in whose genetics

are needed out in the wild. Wow. So these birds are too young to be breeding right now, but sometimes there will be an adult in here. But these are three juveniles that are waiting to be bred later. So they don't reach maturity until like six or eight years old.

Oh, wow. Yeah, so it takes a while. So these are going to stay in captivity to breed. And so we want them to get a little bit used to people and to be a little bit more manageable. Are they boys or girls? Do you know? So I believe that one on the left, that's 98, that's a girl.

She's almost four years old. Oh. She's the oldest one in here. Carolina pointed to a few more towering creatures whose leading wing edges bore these black and white numbered tags. And then the other one is 1032 that's boy and 286 here is a girl. It's interesting. So they were down to 22 individuals and it's really hard for a species like this to bounce back because it takes some six years to breed and even then they only breed every other year.

Oh wow. 22 individuals before the breeding program and now they're over 500 and at this moment, a very friendly and knowledgeable volunteer approached us and asked like, what were we up to? Because we were carrying microphones and we looked like we were in a very cool band. And I'm someone who worked as a volunteer dose in the Natural History Museum. So, sweetie weirdos who stand around in science places to chat, they're my people, I am them. Naturally, me and this retired man had a lot in common.

And we hit it off. This is a podcast. Yeah, the science podcast. Are we on right now? It's not live, so don't worry. How long have you been volunteering? 15 years. Wow.

What's the most common question people ask you? How long did I live? Is it a boy or a girl? I've asked both of those questions already. That is a good question. A friend Jason asked a question and this dosant delivered like an unlimited vending machine of bird fax. Are you guys now exactly the population?

A little over 500 on the planet Earth. Yeah. We have 50 here on the premises. So we have a tenth of the world's population in roughly right here. We have 14 eggs right at the moment, 57 days of incubation for the egg. The first egg was laid on February 2nd. Well guess 57 days from February 2nd. Guess what day that is today.

Is it early? It is today. It is today. It is today. Are people standing around watching it with balloons? Today is today is today Are people standing around watching it with balloons? Well, you know The nest boxes have cameras. Yeah, yeah, well like white smoke come out like in the Vatican We didn't that day, but there was some bird hatchling gossip afoot. These are the parents, but I don't know if they actually have that egg.

Because sometimes we switch eggs around. Let me read it. This isn't regards to that first egg. Pull to incubation at day seven. Parents left to recycle. Yeah, so they don't have their egg. So yeah, they don't have it. They're hoping for a double clutch, huh?

Yeah, and they did. Oh, so if they put the egg in the incubator, they might have another egg. Yeah, double clutch. Double clutch. Oh, a double endow. Wait, hold on, what is that again? What is a double clutch?

Okay, the double clutch, it sounds like a gamble that you would make at a craps table in Reno, but double clutching is a way to get more condors in less time. So the wild condor will usually only lay one egg anytime they nest, and that only happens once every year, and sometimes every other year. Also, condor couples only raise one bird at a time. So you can see they're not exactly rabbits when it comes to the ease of progenesis. So first, you need to understand that condors

are not necessarily the most careful birds and the bird nerds at the visitor center told us that sometimes they'll break their own egg in a nest. Ugh, it hurts me to think about. So to avoid this, when the mama condor isn't looking, Sometimes they'll break their own egg in a nest. Ugh! It hurts me to think about. So to avoid this, when the mama condor isn't looking, they swap out the real egg for a replica, which it sits on until the real egg pips, which means it just starts to crack. And then, they switch it out for the mom to sit on until it's fully hatched, such capers.

And this year, this new double clutching technique yielded 14 baby birds, which is huge for them, especially considering the wild population of California condors lost 21 from a flock in Arizona to this highly pathogenic bird flu. And they were even able to rescue a mama bird's egg after she died, and they carefully hatched it in Boise. And in this interpretive visitor center, you can watch all the various potential parents

kind of like it's an episode of Love Island, but filmed on like a security camera. And when they're double clutching, they'll just sneakily remove that real egg and they'll not replace it. So you know, you might think that this would be a great trauma for the condor parents and who knows. Maybe it is. I don't know, but the San Diego Zoo says it isn't too unusual for a wild condor to lose that first egg. So they'll often lay a second egg about 30 days later, netting two new baby birds hence the double clutch. Well, what happens to the first bird baby

that they took away? Okay, don't worry. Another currently childless condor pair adopts the would-be feathered orphan. And if those aren't available, sometimes they're parented by a human with a puppet and a puppet that has been described as slightly terrifying by the Irish newspaper, the independent.

Now, will the baby condor be unpacking this pop-apparent decades later in therapy? Who's to say? What we do know is it makes more condors and gosh, Gully, we do need more condors. This is our interpretive center. Holy smokes! Oh, they're the camera. You can see the camera, it's yeah. And are these these are paired? Birds, do you ever put them together? And they're like, I don they're the camera. You can see the camera, see it? And are these, these are paired? Birds, do you ever put them together? And they're like, I don't like this one.

Usually the first year, they're like, trying to test new water, seeing like what's up? Who are you? Yeah. But yeah, usually they, they pair totally fine. And we have a pair that has been together for like four years and they haven't.

You know, they tolerate each other. They, you know, they live together, they're roommates. But yeah, breeding, you know, nope. Just friends. Do you think you're gonna have to remix and match? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we do that every few years. This bird over here. That's a single male. And so he's not paired. And so nobody's laid an egg for him. He's just by himself, but he's like surrounded by like everybody else. And so nobody's laid an egg for him. He's just by himself, but he's like surrounded by like everybody else. And so they kind of get into the breeding mood. And we give them a dummy egg, so like an egg just like this one.

And so at the visitor center, they have this heavy white object. It's about the size of an oblong softball. And it's been scuffed up from thousands of visitors, having this hands-on learning of what these dummy eggs look like that they sneak into the nest. And yeah, he just went in and he was like, I don't know where you came from, but I love you and your mind. this hands-on learning of what these dummy eggs look like that they sneak into the nest. And, uh, yeah, he just went in and he was like, I don't know where you came from,

but I love you and your mind now. Oh, no. And we use these guys as extra parents. And so, for example, like we were talking about double clutching, so they'll have, you know, two legs, two shakes, but they can only, I mean, they're only gonna race one. Yeah.

And so, but the other young can be race by this guy. Whoa, like a doting uncle. Oh, that's so sweet. And they're only gonna race one. Yeah. And so, but the other young can be race by this guy. Woo! Like a doting uncle. Oh, that's so sweet. And they're really good at it. Uncle's are the best. They're like, eat whatever you want. Let's go race, talk cars and stuff. He's the viewer.

Mentor for the pre-release bird. So, he was doing that last year. And we just moved him into, you know, breeding again. And he's by himself and he was like, I miss breeding. Let's do this. Okay, so, Condors, breeding again, and he's by himself and he was like, I miss breeding. Let's do this. Okay, so Condor's, we're gonna give you some privacy onto some other species.

Oh great, anyone else we should see you while we're here? Oh yeah. Great. Yeah, let's go have a look. Holy smokes, there's a bald eagle right there. Why do I have the inclination to whisper around them? It's just for spectre, I guess. They command respect.

She looks like a Chippenwolf. I know. He's like a Chippenwolf. So this female bald eagle is at a large enclosure sitting on a perch as regal as you would expect a bald eagle to be in three dimensions. You know I'm about the calls and stuff. I remember I learned like last year about all the Eagles not making the sound that everybody

thinks that they made. That's a funny yeah. So if you're ever watching a movie or a TV show and you hear that, and they show a bald eagle, that's actually a red-tailed hawk. And it just, it sounds cooler than a bald eagle does and so they play it over and it's a running joke with bird people. But bald eagle sounds kind of like a seagull or something,

right? It's that kind of goofy, yeah. What? What? What? What? What? How old do you think bald eagles can live for? In captivity up to 40 years, probably.

How? And in the wild about half that. Oh, I've seen a few in the wild when I visited Alaska for a TV shoot. But you know who else has seen bald eagles in the wild? Dr. James Malley from our Ornithology episode in 2017 allowed me to share an excerpt. I've lived in Alaska for a long enough to see kind of what bald eagles really are.

Yeah, oh no. Which, if you ever go to Homer, Alaska. I've been there. I've been there. Yes. Did you look at the dumpster behind the McDonald's? Because it was probably full of eagles. No, but no, I have to go back.

Yeah. They're really scavengers. They. Oh my God. They're sort of There are some birds that only steal from other birds. Mm-hmm. And other things they're called kleptoparasites but Bollygles are not kleptoparasites. They can catch their own food

But more often than not. I've seen them steal food like I saw one steal a flounder from a river otter It's like come on the The river otter's just Finally caught his dinner and you steal it. It's just rude. That is a pretty American tradition Oh bigger their nests giant, right? They can get huge. Yeah They can weigh about it as much as a car. Oh my gosh. And it's because Generation after generation just keeps adding to it and they can weigh about as much as a car. Oh my gosh. And it's because generation after generation just keeps adding to it and they can get pretty big. So the nests, you can grow up in one nest

and then end up using that later, like the inheritance? You could, yeah, yeah, totally. I had no idea. I love that they're just like, we'll just keep doing additions, adding on a sunroome and... Mother and law, sweet. Yeah. Now aside from the condors, doing additions, adding on a sunrooming. Mother-in-law suite. Yeah.

Now aside from the condors, who will be chauffeured silently by van to their new homes to live out lives in the open sky, many raptors at the World Center for Birds of Prey will be lifelong residents of Boise. And all of these birds are not releaseable out the wilds, because they're imprints or because they're injured.

What's an imprint? Oh, they've imprinted onto humans like were they were they raised by humans and they got it. We also rounded the corner in the visitor center to see a bird that looks kind of like Dorothy from Golden Girls. If she were wearing a hat made out of a feather duster, I mean the vibe, the presence is immaculate. Oh, I love a heartbeat, Eagle. They look so cartoonishly beautiful.

With the plumage, the crest, it's gorgeous. So this particular bird lived in the wild for a while. So this bird lived off of monkeys and sloths. It was, it was getting a little too familiar with people. So they trapped it back into captivity. This particular... This, this is Grayson. Grayson.

Where was he born? Panama. And so getting a little bit too familiar with the public. Does that also mean like, and the bird isn't dangerous, maybe the public might be as well. Right, exactly. It's usually not good for people or raptors when the two get too close to each other. What a beautiful bird. What a vibe. Oh my gosh, you wouldn't do it with bowels as

well. Oh, it's checking out. Look at how tiny this cowl is. Oh yeah. It's a size of a parent and a saw wet owl. Is that tiny? Oh, the great gray owl is pretty giant. That's as big as my dog. So this great gray owl has the volume and majesty of my 13 pound poodle, but weighs just two and a half pounds, the fluff on this bird. The volume to mass ratio is astounding. Oh, do you want to see an owl eating something? It's dinkled angling, a little bit of meat

might be a whole rodent. So we're looking at a bard owl. Where's a bard owl typically from? So they're really common out east, but then they have expanded their range into the west and actually now it's a big problem They're competing with or they're spotted owls. Barred owls, not to be confused with barn owls, are described by the fish and wildlife service as larger, more aggressive and more adaptable than the threatened northern spotted owls. And so, barred owls have become an invasive species

in parts of the Pacific Northwest, where they are currently barred from existing sort of. So, since they displaced spotted owls and they mess up their nests, and they compete with them for food, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did an experiment removing barred owls from an area where they'd been encroaching and they found that indeed had a very positive effect

on the northern spotted owl survival. So it looks like they're going to continue controlling their presence. Not just to keep helping northern spotted owls survive and thrive, but to prevent declines in California spotted owls, who apparently are also common targets of barred owl bullying. How many of you have ever felt personally victimized by Regina George? And then who do we have in here?

Oh, this is a paragraph? Yes, the paragraph fellkin. White neck, striated breast and back, big glossy eyes, and feet and a beak that match your favorite number two Dixon Teconroga pencil. How beautiful! I didn't expect such fluffy plumage, is that because it's chilly out or is it recently melted? If you ever see a fluffy bird, it's not a fat bird. It's just fluffy. If you ever see a fluffy bird, it's not a fat bird. It's just a flopped up. It's not fat, it's fluff.

For the record, people do this to my daughter, who's a dog, Grammy, all the time. She gets into her little ragged muppet Ewok Teddy Bear mode. And people start saying, hmm, she's getting a little thicker than a snicker, huh? And then she gets a haircut, and she's tiny, because she's always just a teeny tiny baby, speaking of tiny babies. The bird who was simply fluffy, I thought was a juvenile, was in fact a Cassini Paragren Falcon, which is a non-migratory bird found throughout South America from Ecuador, to Bolivia, Northern Argentina, Chile, down to Tirat, Del Fuego, and the Falklin Islands. It's just a little guy, this Cassini Paragrand. I don't know if I've seen falcons in the wild ever.

I know we've got a lot of great hawks in LA, but... Yeah, you should have Paragrand Falcons downtown, I bet. Man. I say New York City has one of the highest densities of Paragrand Falcons. So cool. Well, Paragrands, again, falcons need a bedroom in a pantry, right?

So they need a cliff, New York's full of artificial clips, right? And then they need a prey full of pigeons. So that's all they need. So they're not going after the rats as much as they are the pigeons? It's mostly pigeons. OK, good.

Because I was in St. Petersburg, denticides must be wild in New York. Yeah, peasant's's mostly pigeons. Okay, good. Because I was in St. Bridedente's sides must be wild in New York. Yeah. Parents eat mostly other birds. Oh, okay. Well, plenty of pigeons. No wonder. Yeah, if I were going to, if I needed a cliff and a pigeon, I would go straight to New York. If you feel like having your tender heart weep sweetly about sewer rats, I'm going to link the urban road andology episode we did in the show notes. Oh, it's a certified banger. Anyone in that one? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a Falcon too.

It's an Appalmato Falcon. Oh, wow. Oh, they're beautiful. So this is the only Falcon on the US endangered species list. Really? Right. And they live in South Texas. Actually, we had a project where we captively bred thousands of apple-motto falcons and released them into South Texas. And there's now about 23 pairs down around Corpus Christi and Brownsville. So if you breed, say 1,000 and there's 23, like, do you know what happened to the ones that maybe didn't make it?

Like, how do you figure out what proportion might survive? It's called a marker capture analysis. So each bird that we release gets an anclet basically. And if you go and you see how many of those birds you can recite every year, you can get a proportion of the ones that are still hanging around. And that can help you get your survival probability. These oplomato falcons have dark brown heads and backs.

They've got striped black and white tail feathers and kind of a rusty colored face and then these deep red ochre head stripes that look kind of like blunt graphic eyeliner wings. Oh, they're such beautiful birds. What do they tend to eat in a while? Mostly other birds. Yeah.

These do a real cool cooperative hunting strategy where the male and the female will help each other in the wild. Mostly other birds. Yeah. These do a real cool cooperative hunting strategy where the male and the female will help each other catch the prey. Does one like chase it into some area then the other dive bombs it? Basically, yeah. Cool. Oh my gosh, who's this?

So come over here and watch it. Oh, it's a video too. So people just say hello. Oh my see, hi Lucy. Any idea why Lucy is here? So we called in a friend because... Volunteers never. Mm-hmm.

Hey Jeff, how you doing? Good, good to see you. You too? I have any idea why Lucy's here, like what her back story is or anything. Lucy has the craziest backstory of any bird that we have. Really? The issue was found by a fishing game being kept as a personal pet inside somebody's house. No crate, no mues, just in the house. What were they feeding her leftovers? I have no idea. Just a poop factor alone would be. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Vulture poop on a couch seems like a real pickle. Yeah. Not quite as

cublious bowser or your cat or whatever. So any idea how old she might be? She's 21. She's 21. How long was she living in a house? About five years and then she's been with us ever since. But she definitely imprinted on humans. So because of this imprinting, Lucy's not able to be released into the wild or re-homed. I mean, definitely not a free to a good home via Craig's list situation. So Lucy has a defense mechanism where if she gets excited or scared,

she will vomit at an attacker. Oh no. So I can't imagine having that in at an attacker. Oh no. So I can't imagine having that in your house too. Oh yeah, every time the mailman comes, someone's at the door, you're like, you think your dog barking is bad? A pass. What about in say South Asia?

Well, in the 1980s, there was a little thing called very ominously, the Indian Vulture Crisis, where regions lost nearly all statistically of their Vulture populations. So in the 90s, Vulture populations in India just plummeted and no one knew why. We're talking about like the birds went from being the most abundant large raptors on the planet to nearly extinct. They plummeted by like 99% and nobody knew why.

And there are all these hypotheses about was it a disease? Was it something else? And it was actually scientists with the paragraph on at the time figured out that it was DiClophonac. So DiClophonac is an anti-inflammatory drug and you can actually get it prescribed for you if you have something like arthritis or whatever. is an anti-inflammatory drug, and you can actually get it prescribed for you if you have something like arthritis or whatever.

But there's a lot of cows in India, and those cows live to old age, they get old age problems. So people were giving their cows die clofinac to help with inflammation. Those cows would then die. The vultures would eat the cows, and it would cause kidney failure for the vultures. They would die within like 72 hours.

And so it was this problem, this very acute problem that scientists with the paragraph fund and of course other collaborators helped figure out. Did they find something else to give the cows? Yes, yeah, they found less toxic alternatives. Man, that's what an episode of house or something, you know. It would just be like a medical mystery. He was a miss. Oh, looking at theater named after Tom. Here is a bird show. Oh, there should be a way. Oh, is there? Oh, yeah, should we go check it out? Let's see it. Yeah. Let's see it. Yeah. Let's see it.

It's great. Welcome to the polls. My name is Kelsey. I'm one of the rappers that this year. And we're going to be free flying over here for the next few minutes. I'm one of the record specialists this year and we're going to be free flying over here for the next few minutes. I'm not really excited, but I can have everyone's been as calm, why inform me may see the entire time and most importantly, this here is Penny.

She is our seven year old female American Kestrel and American Kestrel are small at Falcon here in the United States. Kelsey explained that these tiny kestrels inhabit all kinds of places from deserts to shrubblins and grasslands and forested areas, riparian areas, and that their diversity and habitat also reflects in the diversity of their diet. And Kelsey said that Penny will eat anything she can get her talents on from small mammals

to lizards and snakes and bugs, but they need to eat about a quarter of their body weight each day, usually in mice. So imagine if a 200-pound person had to fight a rat the size of a doberman pincher every single day, it's kind of a rough way to make a living. And the US has lost over 50% of their cultural population in the last 50 years. Before there are any questions? What's Miss Penny's story? Yeah. Okay, so, um, way back from the day, he was a little wild actually and someone thought she could make a really good check. And I love these birds, love them so much.

Anyone you ask who works with these birds will tell you how high they are. Oh buddy, so she was taken in a young stage. So many kind of considered it. What exactly does that mean? Well, it was great because it was a baby bird in the first thing. Seas years. That's very important. We're learning a little more complicated that species specific.

Basically, the general kind of new information is that it is a series of learning windows, and you can expand their entire life. So, raptors are an ultra-spatial species, which if you remember from the chickinology episode, means they're born with their eyes closed, barely any down, no fuzz on them, so they rely completely on their parents to survive. Now, prococial birds, like chickens or duckies, for example, those are born with their eyes open, and they imprint on their parents immediately upon seeing them. But since they don't have vision right away, raptors and other ultritional birds like parrots and pelicans, they have to use other sensory input, like sound, to recognize their

parents. Also, ultritional birds, like raptors, take a longer time learning, and they do much of that by watching their parents and their environment. And one paper about another, Altricial Species of Animal, called Humans, entitled Origins of Social Knowledge in Altricial Species, suggests that altriciality actually serves as an adaptive trait in that in the extended period of care required for altricial species to grow self-sufficient, they end up learning many more important

and really intricate mechanisms for complex social interaction and survival strategies from their parents. And right now in our backyard, we have a red-tailed hawk and its baby and we're watching the mom-a-bird teach a baby how to hunt. We've never seen this before, and it happens right outside our window. But anyway, what do they learn first? So basically those learning windows, the crucial one they're younger is where's food, what

in mind, and what should I be afraid of? A lot of fear based learning, right? And can you learn the exact opposite, unfortunately, in our learning windows, which should have been up forwhatever. Meaning, she was her phone friendly, they made food, she hung out with other birds in prey, close by, that would naturally be your predators, and he could have gone wild, she'd be like, oh, we ate red tailhawk best buddies.

So she didn't learn where food properly comes from, who her mate properly is caught at hunt, and then what's the afraid of. So she was deemed non-reversible by fishing game and I'm definitely to our education program and she was just almost two years old. So even though Penny super cute with her young super cute with some tone, she is not like that. She is incredibly. I have

the same respect I have for her as I would any other while creature. I tell you what she can throw quite big attitude. I know that what, she can throw a white thing at it too. And I'll let you guys on a little behind the scenes secret with her. So a lot of people can eat her full name. It's Dino Lovie, right? That's a short hint.

Actually, her full name is a play on pandemonium. So she's pandemonium because of how spicy she was. She was young. She's not very spicy now, but she's matured. That's a long answer. Thank you. I'm going to do interview and then we'll come back out and head on back. Is that cool? Yeah, that sounds great.

I broke away from the band to ask Chris, executive vice president of science and conservation and resident burdenard. Some of your questions, but first, every week, we donate to a different cause, and this is going to shock you. But this week, we're donating to the Paragon Fund, and they're also obviously behind the World Center for Birds of Prey. Founded in 1973, the Paragon Fund's mission is to restore rare species through captive breeding

and release to improve capacity for local conservation to conduct scientific research, and environmental education, and to conserve habitat. And we link them in the show notes, and thank you to sponsors of Oligis who make that donation possible. Okay, onward, upward, and to the library. Okay, birds, have you always been a birder?

What's your deal? I started in high school, actually. Did you? Yeah, I went to a really great high school that had an own anthology class. That's rare, I feel like. Yeah, I went to a really great high school that had an ornithology class. That's rare. I feel like. Yeah. And so was there a bird that got you hooked looking for it? Yeah. Well, I wasn't looking for it, but I remember seeing it and it had a yellow rum. And I was like, oh, it's a yellow rum to Arbore. I can do this. And so it's not the coolest bird, like spark bird or whatever, but that's my spark bird

is yellow rope to watercolor. You mentioned to me earlier when we were coming in here from Georgia, is it common for the area that you lived in to have an ornithology class or? No, no, it was, it was a private school. So I was very fortunate to be able to go to this high school. What a pipeline to be like, I took an orthodoxy class and I'm an orthodox. His name was Mr. Sam Pate and many of his students actually ended up being ornithologists. When I went to college at University of Georgia, Go Dogs,

we would meet people and they were like, you're from Columbus, I bet you like birds, don't you? It was all because of this great high school or mythology teacher. Did he know that you became an orithologist? Did you ever let him know? He did, yeah, yeah. He was great.

I was very fortunate to grow up the way I did, I guess. And what about raptors? So I really wasn't a raptor guy until I started working for the parent fund. I actually circled back around the parent fund. So my undergraduate degree is in environmental economics. And right. Exactly. What's the thing? What in the heck is environmental economics, you'd like to know? Well, I wanted to know

too. So it is the application of economic principles to study how natural resources are developed and managed like in determining the costs and the benefits of environmental policies. And it comes into play when looking for solutions to things like environmental toxins and global warming and development of biofuels and so forth. And the EPA puts out all kinds of environmental economics reports, such as

the benefits and costs of the Clean Air Act 1990 to 2022. And the handbook on valuing children's health. So yes, environmental economics. I mean, one day maybe we're going to do a show that's just X like economics. Although we do have an upcoming Disgustology episode that discusses the ICC, but back to environmental economics. It's hard to get a job, an environmental economics turns out. So I took a seasonal position, releasing Appalmato Falcons in West Texas for the Paragon Fund, and it's there that I was like, this is what I've got to do. But I didn't have the degree for it.

So I had to go back to school. I did a few more jobs, and I ended up here in Boise doing a post-doctoral research study on noise pollution and songbirds basically. But it was in Boise, and they heard that I was good at statistics, bird math basically.

And I ended up doing some work at statistics, bird math basically. And I ended up doing some work for them and they hired me. So I got to circle back around with the Paragand Fund and it's been a dream. And what do you do? I mean, you're the lead of research here. What is that encompass, exactly? It's a lot of pressure, actually. So I oversee all the research, monitoring, and conservation that the paragraph fun does

around the globe. And it's a big job. It's kind of like I feel like the dog that caught the car sometimes. I can't believe I did it. It's a fun job too. All grad students in ecology and conservation want to make a difference. They want to make sure that their work is important. And I say be careful what you wish for.

Because at some point someone's going to come to you and ask you to make a conservation decision and your decision will one cost money and two, have an effect and you need to be prepared for that. That's kind of the position I've landed in. And so I'm again really fortunate to be here. And especially with Paragrand Falcons and with Falcons in general, I feel like Paragrand Falcons are such a mascot of things were going really bad, but we turned it around. So there's a legacy there, I imagine. And, you know, for me, I think I always heard what a falcon and there's a, there's like a respect and a dignity and like a mystery to it. But if you had to ask me, what is a falcon in terms of raptors? I'd be like, I have no idea.

I don't know actually. What makes one raptor a falcon as opposed to an eagle or an owl? It's evolution basically. So all falcons are in the genus falco. Okay. So that makes it easy. And you can move up to the family that they're in as falcon. Okay. So that makes it easy. And you can move up to the family

that they're in its falcon today. Now, they share that with the caracarras. Okay. So caracarras are pretty cool. They're like falcons. They're related to falcons. They also, they do more scavenging than most falcons would. So the caracarrot usually has a bright red beak and a whitish speckled head.

But with a black streak on top, So the carrot carrot usually has a bright red beak and a whitish speckled head, but with a black streak on top, that sometimes looks like a spiky crest and sometimes kind of resembles a little comb over. And they mostly have these long yellow legs and these bluish silver hooked beaks. And they look a little bit like an eagle crossed with a parrot, but if it were a falcon, which actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that they are indeed members of the family, falconed eye. And something interesting, I think, you'll think, about all falcons, is that their closest relatives are not other raptors, like eagles and owls, but in fact, closest genetic relatives are songbirds and parrots, which they are estimated to have diverged from somewhere around 60 million

years ago. I think that's neat. Do falcons eat anything dead or do they have to hunt what they eat? So they prefer live prey, but pretty much any predator will scavenge if the opportunity arises or they have to. How do most falcons hunt? Do they have amazing eyesight? Do they tend to be daytime hunters, nighttime hunters?

Most of them are daytime hunters. Some of them have amazing eyesight. It turns out everyone thinks raptors have this great eyesight. Many do. In fact, the wedge-tailed eagle has the best visual acuity of any vertebrate that's ever been measured. So some raptors have amazing eyesight, but even like the American Kestrel has lower

visual acuity, at least the ones that we've measured so far, have lower visual acuity than your average human. How do you do an eye test on a bird? Well, there's the clean way and the dirty way. You can cut open the eye and count the number of rods and cones. No, thanks. Or you can do some behavioral tests, you know, when they see a certain thing, they act a certain way. And so that's that's basically how you run the eye test. It's not like the big E. Yeah. So one way researchers evaluate visual acuity

and animals is with this measurement called cycles per degree. Okay, basically how this works is imagine you're in the middle of a big spinning barrel. Or like one of those old zootrop early movie things where it spins around and it looks like a horse is running. You know what I'm talking about? Yes, okay, so imagine the inside of the barrel you're facing is white with black stripes running vertically, top to bottom in front of you. So they begin spinning the barrels. So you see white, black, white, black, white, black.

And you can tell that there's distinct lines, spinning in front of you. But then they make the lines smaller and closer together, making the pattern denser and harder to distinguish. And eventually you're just seeing a gray blur instead of distinct lines rushing past. So the highest number of cycles per degree able to be distinguished is how they can get an idea of just how sharp an animal's vision is. And humans threshold is right at 60 cycles per degree, whereas falcons threshold is 160.

However, that great eyesight, don't be too jealous because it's really dependent on luminance. And when the lights go out, they lose visual acuity very quickly. So hawks and falcons and eagles are diurnal, but owls are, they're, they're night owls. And how many kinds of falcons aren't there? 64.

Oh, that's it? Yep, that's it. I had no idea. And are they all over the world? They're all over the world. They're mostly in South America and Africa. Oh, is there something that the Southern hemisphere that lends itself to falconology? Well, it's the tropics basically, and there are just more species in the tropics than there

are elsewhere. And I'm pretty sure that the radiation of falcons happen mostly in Africa. They are said to have evolved right alongside humans. So according to a 2015 study, rapid diversification of falcons due to expansion of open habitats in the late myocene, falcons diverged and diversified on a timescale similar to that of early hominids due to similar ecological and geological pressures. Also, there's evidence that falconry has been practiced in the Middle East for at least 5,000 years.

And the relationship between Falcons and humans may have had long-term effects on the genomes of falcons through things like interbreeding between escaped falconry birds and native falcons. So why is a falcon party closer to the equator? Well, since the temperatures at the Earth's waistband don't fluctuate nearly as much. Prey is more readily available more throughout the whole year. And as a result, the predators in those regions usually are not keen to migrate, because why would they?

We've got everything we need right here. What about where they nest? Are they all rocked-willing or tree-drolling? It's mostly cliffs. Yeah, they don't really build nests. So often like the Applemato Falcons in South Texas have to have a nest already built for them. So they'll just take over old nests of other species. Really, so they can maybe find like an old osprey nest to be like, it's a little too big, but it'll work for us. Yeah, that's basically how it works. And so we've, our biologists down there have put up artificial

nest sites for aflomato falkins. And they're barred, so it looks like a little jail sale. Oh, welcome on, jailbird. But the bars are just wide enough so that the falkins can get in and out, but their predators can't. Oh. And we've basically doubled the productivity of the population through those boxes.

When did they figure out that that's something that they had to do in order to help them out? Do they realize like, okay, these nests are working, but they're getting picked off? Yeah, it was Tom Cade, our founder, and Grainger Hunt, who is still around. He's still a great friend and mentor to all of us here at the parent and fun. They figured it out. They actually drew it on an Appkin.

Oh, I love those stories. That's what it does. That help stories. Is the napkins somewhere in a museum? It should be. I hope they have the napkins still. One day, maybe I'm going to open a museum of important napkinery or like an institute

for napkins of impact. And what about the Paragon Falcon story? You know, when you're talking about the Paragon Fund, I mean, the Paragon Fund has now, from what I've learned gone on to help in conservation of many other species but the Paragrand story as this kind of iconic comeback. Can you tell us that in a bit of a nutshell? I can sure try. So DDT was in high use after World War II. And biologists realized that it was causing egg shell thinning in predatory species, so we're actors mostly.

And it was causing Paragon Falcons to plummet the populations because they weren't reproducing as much. So Dr. Tom Cade was out of Cornell University at the time and he founded the Paragon Fund in 1970 to reverse the decline of the Paragon Falcon. There were basically no Paragon Falcons east of the Mississippi in North America. There were a few pairs scattered here and there out west, but none in the east. And so he was a falconer, and he took that falconery knowledge and put it on an industrial

scale of how to captively breed these birds. And so we, I say we, I wasn't there. The Paragon Fund released about 4,000 captively bred Paragon Falcons into the United States. And of course, we did this with a slew of partners that I can't name, but they all deserve credit in a lot of them were Falconers. And there's a good chance that if you are in New York or in LA or even in the Grand Canyon, and you see a Paragon Falcon that is one of the progeny that was created here in Boise, Idaho. And how many pairs were they down to or how many in the wild were they down to?

Very few. They're one of the first species listed on the endangered species list. So this was via the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969. And when it comes to breeding and captivity, what did falconers know from having raised from young chicks to imprint on them? did they have any secret hacks and tips? Yeah, so actually they, you said hack, there was a technique called hacking. What?

Yeah. Yeah. This technique is basically a soft release into the wild. So they put the birds, the young fledglings into a box that has a barred front, so they can't get out, but it helps acclimate them to the environment that they're in. And they feed them in the box,

and then they release the birds from the box, but they keep feeding them there. So they learn to hunt, but they're like reliant on hunting their own food immediately. And that was one of the falconry techniques called hacking that helped save the parent falcon. And there were one of the falconry techniques called hacking that helped save the parent and falcon. And there were other breeding, like direct breeding techniques,

like artificial insemination with falcons and stuff like that that were directly from falconry. Do a lot of falconers, do they rear their own chicks or adopt? I imagine with falconry you want the bird to imprint on you and it's also a sport, but it's also Husbandry it must be kind of like horseback riding. We have a relationship with an animal many raised their own Some buy you can buy falcons to you or raptors to use Mm-hmm and many of them will take them from the wild and it's perfectly legal to do so You can get a permit. Well actually, so the US Fish and Wildlife Service does a great job with setting Falconry take. So it's the number of birds that can be taken from the wild. And actually,

my good friend Brian Millsap runs the models and his team that does it. He's a Falconer too. So he's one of the big proponents of sustainable Falconery.. Okay. And so it's just like, you know, so many ducks get shot a year and so many falcons get taken a year for falconry. And as I say often, we cannot exist on planet earth as humans, using roads and living in houses and eating farmed foods without negatively impacting other species. And that's tough ethically, I think about it often. And as we were touring the facility, I wondered how these bird researchers

felt about falconry in general. And Chris told me that there are a few bad apples to watch out for in terms of poaching eggs and not in a branch way. But that ornithologists and falconers tend to have a good relationship because they're both in it for the love of the birds, and falconers tend to have such a deep respect for the birds and have assisted in conservation when few other people cared.

Are the populations of those species stable enough, I imagine, to do it, or what species tend to be used in falconry? Well, American castles get used a lot, red tones get used a lot. Oh. And then there is a sustainable level of paragron take now. Paragron falcons are doing so well that people are allowed to take them and use them in falconry.

Wow, that's really shocking. I would have thought that they're like hands-off paragrants literally forever, but they've really rebounded that well. Yeah, they're doing great. Wow. Is there any species of Falcon right now that you are looking at? Let your worried about, like, we better get ahead of this before it gets critical?

Yeah, sacred Falcons. What are those? They're an old world species, so they live over in Asia. And there are several power lines in Mongolia, where they're getting electrocuted. And there's a great team of folks that are actually retrofitting the power lines, they're putting plastic covers on them basically to keep the birds from getting electrocuted.

Do falcons and other birds of prey do they learn from previous generations anything to avoid or? They don't seem to, especially given the sheer number of birds that were getting electrocuted in Mongolia. They didn't seem to be avoiding the poles that had dead birds under them. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where it's like you have millions of years to evolve and then you've got about a decade of power lines that you're like, what?

I would love to ask, I forgot that I have Patreon questions for you. Can I ask you a couple of questions? Yeah. Normally, I would lighten around you with a bunch, but this is an interesting weird episode. So we're just kind of like, yes. Just rolling it. Just wing it. We're winging it. On a wing in a prayer.

Taylor wants to know, do they mate for life or do any falcons strife in the partners? Yes and yes, actually. So they will hang out together for life, but they will also cheat on each other. Yeah, they're called extra pair copulations in the bird world. And do most of them do that? It's a pretty common practice. It's just mixing those jeans up. Yeah.

That's what it's all about. It's evolution. Kelly Holder has a very serious question. Ask about Falconer hats for collecting semen, who makes them and what makes a sexy hat? So I actually met the guy that invented that hat. He's a Falconer. Again, this is, I wasn't going to bring it up.

We need to ask about Falconer techniques, but that's one of them is that you heard earlier that the falcons will imprint on their falconers basically and see them as a mate. And so this hat was invented to be mated with and collect the semen so that the females could be artificially insuminated. Oh, how delighted I am to be able to share with you tales of the very horny bird hat. Okay, so this copulation hat was invented by Lester Boyd, a man who loved birds, but I'm sure not nearly as much as they loved him. So in the early 1970s, he made a felcon sex hat, and it looks kind of like a rubber boulder hat or a still rolled up condom, but

the whole surface of it is dimpled with like a honeycomb pattern on top. So male falcons raise in captivity imprint on their human handlers, so during the nesting season, their handlers court the birds by bowing and mimicking the female falcons chirp. And the male falcons down, he's down to do it. He's going to flap over, he mounts the hat, which is again, on top of a human person's head. And then once the bird is done, the lucky falconer collects a couple drops of semen and takes it to the female falcon for artificial insemination. And there's a really great video from a local Sacramento news station, KXTV, ABC10, where you can watch reporter Jim Bartel get fucked in the hat by a very excited and flappy paragon falcon. Oh, I love it. Enjoy.

by a very excited and flappy, paragon falcon. Oh, I love it. Enjoy. He's ready to do his thing. So many good questions. Michael Hiker, best movie with Falcons and hopes that you say Lady Hawk. I've never seen Lady Hawk, but any movies with Falcons that you like?

I've never seen Lady Hawk. That's going to be on my list now. I've never seen it either. I'll tell you who has seen it. Your old pot mom, Jared. So Jared loved this movie. He told me he's a kid. And it stars Matthew Brodrick as a thief who escapes this dungeon only to join up with

a traveling warrior and his beloved Hawk companion played by Rutger Hauer. And spoiler, but not really, because it's on the cover of the movie, the Hawk companion is also his lover, played by Michelle Fyfer, who has been placed under a satanic curse by an evil jealous bishop, which makes her a hawk in the daytime and then makes Rucker Howard a wolf at night so they can never really be together as humans. But anyway, it's very 80s. It's apparently a mess, but a delight. I wish they still made movies like that.

And so does Jared. And you've seen the old, old My Side of the Mountain movie from the 60s? No. Oh, I got to send you a copy of that. That's right. Because it's, if you liked the book, I mean, there's a lot of falconry in that.

A lot of just wild falcons to, here's the deal. I love My Side of the Mountain so much that I had brought it up earlier on the tour. There was this book I read as a kid called My Side of the Mountain. Oh, yeah. Do you know that book? It involves like falconry and he like gets a falcon and uses it to hunt with. Was that a paragon falcon?

I think so too. Yeah, I think so too. So that book was, I think it was written by Jean Craighead George. It was. It was. And the Craigheads were big falconers and orthologists and raptor biologists. We should do some research and see if there's some cross over there.

Oh my god, I will. Guess what? Turns out there is. Remember Tom Cade, the bronze man who founded the Paragon Fund? Turns out he first got interested in falconry at nine years old after reading a national geographic article titled Adventures with Birds of Prey. And that was written by twin brothers John and Frank Craighead. And now while Frank and John did begin training Falcons at age 15, these twins are most known

for their research on grizzly bears in the 1960s that saved the bears from extinction in Yellowstone Park. But the writings on Falconry that they did also had a significant impact on the popularization of the sport. And their sister, however, is Jean Craighead George, and she holds a very special place in my heart, because she wrote an illustrated more than 100 books on nature,

including The Summer of the Falcon. She also wrote My Side of the Mountain, in which a fed up nature loving adolescent just to fuck off off and lives in the woods and his parents were like, Well, that's what he likes. And I loved that book so much that my dear friend who you heard from in the field trip WGA episode about the writer's strike, Dr. Tegan Wall once found a signed copy and gave it to me and I cried so hard. So that author's brother wrote the article that inspired Tom Cade to start the Paragon Fund. And then the author's nephew, Derek Craighead, went on to serve on the Paragon Fund's Board of Directors for over a decade. So yes, I'd say there's some crossover here. Sarah of a Sarah wants to know, I've heard that American castles can

see UV light in which it reflects off rodent urine. Is this specific to falcons or all raptors? Thank you so much for asking this. This is actually one of the hills I'm willing to die on. Okay. Let's do this. Because actually that study that everyone's sight about American Castles using UV was

conducted on Euras Kestrels. So we don't know about American Kestrels and that study was refuted afterwards. So the study that that purported to show Kestrels using UV was published in Nature, which is like the biggest journal in the world. So we got all this press and everything, but then the one that that refuted it was published in Journal of Experimental Biology. And so it is not as big as a journal and it didn't get as much press. And so this idea has really stuck around. And it's migrated over to American castles. And so everyone still thinks that American castles hunt using the UV reflectance of like Voluerin.

And really the evidence is mixed at best. Do you think anyone's going to end up doing a PhD on it just to be like, I have to figure out this swim flam. I hope so. I would love to be involved in that. Uh, Dan Tween. Good name. What's your know? Is the Millennium Falcon named after the bird? If so, why? Good question. So I love Star Wars. You know who would know this is my kid? This feels more like Star Wars trivia than Falcon trivia.

I mean, I have to look into that for us. Why was the Millennium Falcon named after the bird? OK, there's no definitive answer out there. But besides the obvious stuff, just like Falcon's being the fastest creatures in our galaxy that we know of, I mean, they dive up to 200 miles an hour or over 300 kilometers an hour, which is triple the land speed of a Cheetah. But aside from that, there were some other Star Wars series. Here are my two favorites. One is that the character of Hans Wollow was inspired by Humphrey Bogart's noir anti-hero character in the 1941 film, The Maltese Falcon.

And so the name was a nod to that film. That's a pretty good possibility. But I really like the idea that the Millennium Falcon may have drawn some design inspiration from another ship featured in a mid-70s sci-fi serial called Space 1999. That ship is called the Eagle. So if you ask me, which nobody did, it seems very possible that George Lucas was inspired to name Han Solo Ship after another bird of prey like the Eagle,

plus a reference to the 1999 of Space 1999, which is also the closing year of Millennium. Pretty neat, birds in space together at last. So ship that made the castle run in less than 12 parsecs. Okay, David Clark, first time question asked, what's new? Are hawks actually strong enough to carry away an adult chicken? I'm guessing they have chickens. Hawks are not falcons, though.

Correct. Okay. Yep. Can any falcons carry away a chicken? Maybe a gear falcon. Gear Falcons is the largest falcon in the world. Mm-hmm. There's probably a lot of variation among chickens, right?

You got your broilers, you got your layers. Yes. And so I would imagine that different ones are heavier, but like your average chicken, most falcons probably wouldn't fly very far with. Okay. So the geofalcon is the largest falcon in the world. And about the size of a buzzard. Males can reach up to 61 centimeters long, females up to 65 centimeters, which is like two

feet long, and they live in the high Arctic and they nest in these far reaches of Canada and Alaska, and they prey on other bird species, including sage grass and termagen and yeagers and goals and turns and fulmers and ox and fesins and hawks and owls and ravens and songbirds, but they can also hunt mammals like as big as hairs. So yes, one could probably carry a chicken. And if you want to hear all about busty broilers and teeny heritage breeds of chicken, get yourself to that recent two-part chickenology episode next. Okay, one more question. Carly B wants to know, they look pointier than most birds.

Are there beaks pointier? What's with their beak shape? They're hooked. And so they do have pointier ends of the beaks, which makes sense because they need to be able to tear apart their prey. And actually, falcons have something called a tomeal tooth that helps them break the neck of their prey. Where is that tooth?

It's right on the beak. And so it just crunches down on a vertebrae? It breaks the spine basically, and severs the spinal cord. Is that how they're doing most of their killing, neck breaking? Yeah, it's just quick and easy. Yeah, for that genus of bird.

Yeah. So Falcons have what's called a tommyle tooth on the front part of their beak, and it's a sharp, triangle-shaped ridge on the outer edges of the upper mandible. And it kind of reminds me of having a little bottle opener, but instead of opening bottles, they use it to break next with. Casual. Biggest flimflam about falcons that you wish you could debunk. Like, if you could get on a soapbox and be like, this is a perception about falcons that is incorrect.

Well, you, we already spoke about the UV. UV. UV. Raptors in particular, this is more pedantic. Love it. Love it. Don't have chicks. What?

What? Mic drop? What? For the listeners, I just, I'm to mic drop. So they have fledglings, they have nestlings, but chick refers to a percochial young, right? So like, birds out walking around, I'm doing a hand walking motion. Yes. And so the raptor nestlings are altricial, meaning they're stuck in the nest to their nestling. So an earthling is like stuck on earth, you know?

Nestling stuck in the nest. When they're altricial, they come out kind of eyes closed. Alien looking. Alien looking. So how long is it before they can go off on their own? Well, let's use the American Kestrel for example. That's easy because it's about a month in the egg. The mother is incubating.

And then they hatch and then there's about a month of brooding in the nest. And when the birds actually flged, they are fully grown. They are the size of their parents and they are out in the world. They're not as smart. They aren't as good at hunting, but they are about the same weight as their parents. Oh my gosh. And so they get them all the way up to that size. Yeah. They grow. Think about how long it takes a human to grow from a baby to a grown-up. Yeah. And then these American castles do in 30 days. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. What's the hardest thing about studying falcons? What's either the most annoying, the most tedious, the hardest, most challenging? Well, there's a lot to it. So they tend to nest in remote areas and on cliffs. So that makes it hard. Raptor biology in general is just kind of hard

because they're predators and they're big, so they need lots of space, so they don't cram themselves in very often. And so to get like a big sample size or to get enough data for it to actually matter, you have to cover a very large area. So Raptor biology in itself is pretty difficult. And is that why there are spatially colleges working on it too, like really understanding the

geography of things? That's right. Yeah, we need, we definitely need spatially colleges. Geography itself is incredibly important for ecology. What about the best thing about your job? Because you've got a tight job. I would have to say you've got a pretty cool job. Yeah. What's the best thing about it? Well, it's that it matters. That's one of the benefits of working at the Paragon Fund, instead of like being a professor somewhere, is that oftentimes an academic will just publish a paper, hope the right person

reads it, and that that person can do something about it. I can run an analysis, call Thomas, ask him to release a certain amount of Ridgeway's hawks in the Dominican Republic, and he can just do it. Just real quick context, who is this baller? Who's Thomas? He's talking about, does he have a briefcase full of cash and a burner phone to call bird lords?

Not really. He's just a guy named Thomas Hayes. He's the Ridgeway Hawks Project Coordinator for the Paragraphund Down in the Dominican Republic, which is a small area, which is the only place in the world where the Ridgeway's Hawks exists and is now endangered due to a number of factors, including some particularly vicious bot fly larvae

that sometimes eat the nestlings. But since 2011, however, Thomas and Christine Hayes, some particularly vicious bot fly larvae that sometimes eat the nestlings. But since 2011, however, Thomas and Christine Hayes, who are a conservationist couple and very adorable, have assisted in not only raising the number of Ridgeway's hawk significantly, but also getting them spread across more diverse areas, making them less susceptible to going extinct

if there were a single catastrophe, like a forest fire. Anyway, that's Thomas. And that's just one of the more than 100 species of birds around the world, the Paragon Fund is working to protect. And the opportunity to do direct work is something that theologists here really seem to love. So I have a direct pipeline to on the ground management. That's probably the best thing.

Oh, what a great place. If anyone's ever in Boise, they've got to come here. Oh, yeah. So this is the joy. It's coming on. It's fun. I loved it. So go out, see what you can see, ask fabulous folks,

some felony questions, and big thanks to the Paragon Fund for having us and to Coda and Monica and Aaron and Jason for coming along for the ride Jared, but a lot of bird merch and honestly his Falcon sweatshirt is has become a wardrobe staple I love it. We have merch at olangeesmarch.com Thank you Susan Hale for managing that and running so much at olangees headquarters Chris and the World Center for Birds of Prey have social media handles linked in the show notes We are at olange allergies on Twitter and Instagram.

I'm Allie Ward on both the Allie G's podcast Facebook group is admin by the lovely Aaron Talbert, Emily White of the Bordery makes professional transcripts, which are up at allieward.com slashologystashextras. Those are linked to the show notes. We have so many other episodes up at alliegees.com. Smaller Gs are shorter kid-friendly episodes up at allieward.com slash smalleges.

Those are linked in the show notes and edited by Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas, Jared Sleeper and Mercedes-Mateland also work on those. Kelly Arduire works on the website, Noel Dilworth does our scheduling. Laurel McCall helped research this episode and this week additional research and producing and some writing was done by the man the myth,

the guy in a raptor sweatshirt, Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media, and Leighn D'Editor is Mercedes-Mate Land of Madeleine Audio. So Falcon sex hats off to them for making this episode so possible. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music, and if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. Let me tell you. This week has been bonkers.

I needed to call in so much help on this episode and it's still coming out a day late because for the last like eight days, I've been on the road. I was in Philly. I think I did nine interviews total and I also visited with a near-squidly friend, two-thologists, Dr. Sarah McAnalty, and I recorded some field trip episodes. I recorded a bunch of sit-down interviews. I also had to go out there for a keynote for this education conference. Hello, Iste. You're lovely. So, yesterday morning, I did this speech for 5,000 people went straight to the airport, landed in L.A. This morning got on a boat to go to Catalina Island, where I'm recording this. I'm an instructor for the USC Science Communication Program here at the Riggly Institute. People I am

bushed, but after I get back to LA, I'm going to put like a cushy quilt under a tree in a park. I'm going to draw some pictures of bugs in a nature journal. Maybe I'll have an ice blended or a Thai iced tea and then I'm going to take a nap on the blanket. I'm going to smooch my dog. Maybe I'll make Jared go to an antique mall or something. And then we're going to work on the next episode. We've got some really, really good ones coming up. Also, if you have Google podcasts and you're listening on that,

you might not be listening because Google podcasts has been having an issue with the RSS feed last couple of weeks. And it hasn't up and updating updating so listen on another app. Google saying that they should hopefully get a fixed in a week. Anyway, enjoy, go out and have fun. Okay, bye bye. I'm gonna go.