Science Friday - Anonymous Data, Birding Basics. July 26, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: July 26, 2019

The Science Friday Book Club is buckling down to read Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds this summer. Meanwhile, it’s vacation season, and we want you to go out and appreciate some birds in the wild. But for beginning birders, it may seem intimidating to find and identify feathered friends both near and far from home. Audubon experts Martha Harbison and Purbita Saha join guest host Molly Webster to share some advice. They explain how to identify birds by sight and by ear, some guides that can help, and tips on photographing your finds. Plus the highlights of summer birding: Shore bird migration is already underway, and baby birds are venturing out of the nest. We challenge you to get outside to see your local clever birds in action! Join the Science Friday Bird Club on the citizen science platform iNaturalist.  In this era of the Equifax breach and Facebook’s lax data privacy standards, most people are at least somewhat anxious about what happens to the data we give away. In recent years, companies have responded by promising to strip away identifying information, like your name, address, or social security number.  But data scientists are warning us that that isn’t enough. Even seemingly harmless data—like your preferred choice of cereal—can be used to identify you. In a paper from Nature Communications out this week, researchers published a tool that calculates the likelihood of someone identifying you after offering up only a few pieces of personal information, like your zip code and your birth date.  Dr. Julien Hendrickx, co-author of the study out in Nature Communications, joins guest host Molly Webster to discuss the risk of being discovered among anonymous data. And Joseph Jerome, policy council for the Privacy and Data project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, joins the conversation to talk about whether data can ever truly be anonymous. Plus, the Ebola crisis in the D.R.C. is now the second biggest outbreak on record. That, and other science stories in the news this week.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Molly Webster. Ira Flato is away. Later in the hour, the risk of being identified among anonymous, supposedly, data. But first, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has now infected 2,600 people and claimed more than 1,700 lives. It's the second biggest outbreak on record. It's also been tough to treat because health workers have been attacked, some have been shot and killed by armed groups in the country. At least one Ebola treatment center now has barricades and snipers to protect those inside. And this month, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak, quote, a public health emergency of international concern.

Here to explain what this means is Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American. Hello, Sophie. Hi. So tell me what prompted this latest declaration by the World Health Organization? So the reason that they've chosen now, so this outbreak has been going on for about a year, and the reason they're now declaring it of international concern is because there was a case in a border city. So it's been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and there's been at least one case in a border, a city that's on the border with Rwanda.

So that really emphasized the danger of this spreading internationally. And because it's been a tough outbreak to fight, the idea is making this. declaration will encourage other nations to put their resources towards, you know, financial resources, but also security forces to protect health workers. How often do they make a declaration like this? I'm not sure. I think in this case, it's not a particularly common declaration to be made, but it is fairly common for a disease to be an international problem.

We live in a really connected world now, and often diseases jump borders. and you can see this with the spread of less scary diseases in some ways as well. So, for example, measles outbreaks in the U.S. are often caused by an international traveler, and then they can be exacerbated in an unvaccinated community. So once you make a declaration like this, what does it mean? Like what protocol goes into place? Right. It's sort of like sending up a flare to be like, hey, international community, UN,

help us with security forces, encouraging other countries put some money, towards helping us fight this outbreak, towards helping pay for vaccines, towards support for health workers and that kind of thing. So the next story you want to talk to us about, still in the sort of medical frame of mind, but it's about an infectious fungus that's resisting our drugs. That's right. So this is a fungus that's been classified as a superbug. It's called Candida Aris.

And the latest news on it, it's been, we've known about it for about 10 years. And the reason it's kind of scary is because it's been shown an ability to resist every antifungal drug we have. And it's often, it often infects people in hospitals who already have compromised immune systems. And when it does infect someone, there's a 30 to 60 percent chance that it will kill them. So this is a big problem not having treatments for it. And another odd thing about this one is that normally funguses can't really thrive in the human body. And so a new study has suggested that the reason. and this one has been able to infect humans is because it adapted to global warming.

So it got used to higher temperatures and then used this new found ability to thrive in those environments to infect humans. So it's like humans have essentially been protected by diseases because we're 98.6, that number we all hear all the time? Right. Specifically from fungal diseases. So if the idea is that if this one particular fungus has jumped into being able to infect humans, will other funguses follow?

and will those also be as resistant to our antifungal drugs as Candida orases? So that's the kind of scary thing about this one. It is insane to think that outside temperatures somehow are affecting what's happening inside our body. Absolutely. I think a lot of times when we think about climate change, we think, okay, maybe more extreme weather. We think, you know, conflicts over water. But not a lot of people think, oh, fungus is going to evolve. But that's exactly what's happened.

That's exactly what this one particular paper has posited is happening in this case. Oh, that's interesting. So it's not like, this is conclusive. We know this is happening. Right. So far there's been one paper, but I think that one of the, because Candida Oris is a relatively new microorganism, not relatively new, but we only became aware of it about 10 years ago. So there's a lot that's unknown about it.

And I think that a lot of researchers are hoping to spur more study into it. And it's worldwide at this point, did you say? Yes, there's been, there's differences in the strains that have arisen in different areas. So a strain in South Africa might be different from more. in Japan, but it has spread to countries all over the world. It's been found or identified there, yeah. Something will keep our eye out for. I know in New York, it's like a big thing in hospitals. Yes, it's a big problem in hospitals, especially because a lot of the people who are in hospitals are there because they're already sick or they're there maybe recovering from surgery and they're

in a situation where having this infectious fungus around could be very dangerous for them in a way it wouldn't be for the general population. Right. Right. Okay. So you've got another story that's about a prosthetic hand, a very sensitive prosthetic hand. Do you want to tell us about it? Yes.

This one is really cool. Essentially, researchers took an existing robotic prosthetic hand, and they modified it to make it much more touch sensitive. And so basically we think, oh, there's five senses. You've got your sight and your smell and you've got touch. But you can actually break touch down into a little. a lot of other little sensory abilities, like the ability to pick up a vibration, to feel temperature, to feel the texture of a surface. And we don't even, we're not even aware that we're taking in

all these inputs, but it happens every time you touch something. So researchers had a man who had lost his hand, and they mapped essentially the nerves on his forearm that had been connected to his hand to figure out where are all these, when you get input, when he was getting input on his real hand, how were those signals traveling to his brain? And they use that to, to, to map how to connect this hand. So, and they also did it the other way. So when he's sending signals to his hand to do things, what, what does that look like? And so they learned, basically, they matched the hand to him. So the signals going from his brain to the hand, and then the hand back into his nervous system and they allowed it to become much more touch sensitive.

He was able to, with his eyes blindfolded and his ears covered, he could squeeze different objects and tell whether they were hard, whether they were soft. He could do really delicate tasks like picking up an egg or plucking grapes off of the stem. Like one grape at a time. Yeah. It's really amazing. It's sort of this science fictional version of we think of when we think of prosthetics. Well, I also think of prosthetics as something that does something.

If I'm missing a leg, I want to be able to walk. I don't actually think about it providing feeling or sensation. That feels like a big step here. Yes, one interesting thing they found was that the, so the subject who had this hand, he suffers from phantom pain, which is when someone who's an amputee, they might feel pain in what feels like the lost limb, even though they no longer have it. And when he was wearing the prosthetic, that phantom pain was lessened because it felt like he was still, he was feeling things with. an actual one of his appendages as opposed to with a tool attached to his arm. Wow. Right.

So it's fascinating. And just there's this emotional component too, right? So in one of the things he was able to do was to shake his wife's hand and to feel her hand in this, in the prosthetic. But it felt like, you know, he had the sensation of holding her hand. Of like feeling another human again? Yes, exactly. Wow. That's insane.

It's very cool. How is it like a technology that? is ready to be deployed or is it unique to this one individual? So so far they've tested this with actually eight subjects. The issue, the real barriered entry here is just cost. So the researchers were working with an existing prosthetic system called the Luke arm, and that can be anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000. And then the other issue is would insurance cover this?

Because in many cases, it depends on your insurance, but some insurance companies won't even cover prosthetics that are much more rudimentary than the one they have here. So I think the issue isn't, I think it's definitely applicable to other subjects. The question is whether it would be affordable. So I know that the researchers are looking into getting FDA approval, but this question still remains. You can get FDA approval, but I think you're going to have a limited subset of people who can afford this type of thing. So from one kind of sci-fi feeling thing to another, there's a ship up in space? up in space floating around in our, floating around our planet at this point?

We have a solar sail up in space. So just the way that a boat on the ocean will be propelled by the wind blowing into its sails, the sail in space is literally propelled by sunlight. The photons from the sun hit this big, silvery-colored sail, and they propel it with this slight amount of force. So I think they've compared it to the force of a fly landing on your hand. That's the amount of force that's being exerted on this sail. Wait, that's all they need?

That's all they need. Because you're up in space, there's no air, so there's no air of resistance. So this little bit of a push is able to propel it the slightest bit. And then our last, maybe my favorite story of this week personally, is about a shark that is very, very small. It is. It's a pocket shark. Or as they call it, Molesquamma, Mrs. So they actually have found a pocket shark before.

That was back in 1979. This is only the second specimen they've ever found. And it turns out it's a different species from the first one. And this one glows in the dark? This one glows in the dark. So a pocket shark isn't actually called that because it can fit in your pocket, although it can because it's five and a half inches long. It looks a little bit like a teeny tiny sperm whale because it's got this bulbous head.

And it has these little pocket structures. near its gills. It actually has pockets on it. Yes. It doesn't fit in your pocket. It has the pockets. Yeah. I mean, unless you really wanted to carry a shark in your pocket, in which case, I suppose you could, but I don't think the shark would enjoy it very much. And very quickly, the glowing in the dark is... It has light-producing organs all over its body, and the researchers think that this could be some form of camouflage. So if it's floating in the water, it can pattern itself to look almost invisible. I would like to put the pocket shark in my pocket that's funny that the name is.

The name is incredibly appropriate. Yeah, there's multiple meanings. Do you know, and they call it that because of all the pockets all over it, not just to distract us. So it doesn't actually have pockets all over it. So its pockets are specifically right by the gills. It has these two structures that are sort of pocket shaped. And those do produce glow in the dark fluid. But its glow in the dark ability actually comes from organs on the rest of its body,

which aren't pockets. Okay, this is great. Sophie, thank you so much for coming and sharing all this with us. Sophie Bushwick, Technology. at Scientific American. Thank you. When we come back, new research suggests a small amount of anonymous data can be used to identify you. What data makes you? You? We'll talk about it after this. This is Science Friday. I'm Molly Webster. So we've all signed up for something online, like multiple somethings, an app, an email newsletter, credit monitoring, even a store loyalty

card. And in exchange for signing up for that thing, a company has then collected some data about you. And you might feel a little anxious about that. I do. I think about this a lot, especially in this era of sort of the Facebook privacy drama, the Equifax. So companies have responded to this fear by promising to strip away any information from the data they collect. So they're saying, we're going to hide your name. We're going to hide your address. We're going to hide your social security number. But in a paper out this week in the journal, Nature communications, data scientists are saying that is not enough. For the paper, scientists published a tool that calculates the likelihood of someone identifying you from a few pieces of personal

information like your zip code and your birthday. The likelihood is very high. Even seemingly harmless data, like where you take a walk, can identify you. So we're going to talk about this study and here to talk it over with me is one of the study's authors, Julian Hendricks, a professor of mathematical engineering at UC Levan in Belgium. Dr. Hendricks, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, Molly. So maybe we can start with just basics.

Like what actually isn't an anonymous data set? So that's a very tough question. The ideal definition of an anonymous data set is that it's a data set where it's impossible for someone using present technology to find that if you are in the data set and if you're in the data sets, then it's impossible for the person to find relevant information about specifically you or a specific human being. That's the theoretical definition, but it's not a very operative one because it relies on the inability

of doing something. And so we would have to characterize what it means to be unable to find you. And that's the whole challenge. So when I think of things that are important, I think of my name, I think of an email address, I think of my social security now. maybe my birthday, but you're saying that even if I don't have those things, like if someone says we're going to strip those things away, someone out there can still figure out who I am. Precisely, yes. Well, it depends. If the data set says we have a female person in New York, then, of course, I cannot find it to you.

But if I have sufficiently many such attributes after a while, or if I have attributes which contains a sufficient amount of information, typically birth date will contain other information. after a sufficient number of attributes, there would be a way of knowing, with almost certainty, that it's actually you indeed. So you showed something like 99% of Americans could correctly be re-identified from data that people had said were anonymous. Is that true? That's true. If you have 15 attributes, so 15 attributes means you already know a lot about the people, but those attributes are typically publicly available. So you could recover 99.8% of the Americans like this.

But already with a small number of attributes, you can correctly identify, I mean, depends on the people, but 80%. And that's or be certain of identifying a person with 80% of certainty. And that's already a lot. So even with a small number, you already reach a reasonable degree of certainty. And from any application, a reasonable degree of certainty is already something. That's so interesting. So we want to put a call out. if you're a data scientist or if you work with data in your job, we want to know how you

protect users' identities. So give us a call. Our number is 844-724-8255. That's 844-Sy-Talk, or you can tweet at us at SciFri. So, Julian, I did your quiz, and it was very fun to do. And listeners, you can find this quiz online. I did this quiz. The first things I think you had us enter were.

birth date, zip code, and maybe my age. And I was only identifiable 55% of the time. And I felt very good about that. But then I... She did very good. I'm 85. You're 85. But then I entered one thing, which was that I had never been married.

And it went up to 99%. I think I gasped at my computer. Indeed. So sometimes it's surprising. For me, the killer information was that they have only one car. Somehow they make it shoot up to 99%. And yes. it's sometimes very surprising.

So this shows also that there's not a specific information. I mean, for certain people being married or not married, will not tell you a lot about you. And for other people, one specific information, like number, of course, for me would just make me absolutely unique in my zip code for some reason. Can you talk at all about, like, when we say 15 characteristics, like what some of those characteristics are, even if it's just a quick list? I don't remember the whole list, but typically there would be zip codes.

You don't have to name all 15. You know, zip code, birth dates, gender, I believe there is occupation. So certain, I would say, benign information, typically information which every single one of which you would not think identifies you. I mean, zip code is zip code. Like your kind of occupation in a small set of occupation, you would think like many people have the same kind of occupation. But when you combine all of them, eventually that makes you essentially unique. And I think one of the things that was really interesting about your paper was it wasn't just that anonymous data sets could be made non-anonymous. It was that even if you just had a tiny, tiny amount of information from that data set, you could make, you could re-identify people.

Can you talk about that a little? Yes, and that's very important because it's an argument that has often been made by people releasing or selling data sets that, okay, not only we remove names, but we're actually going to remove 99% of the data. So even if I were to find someone whose demographic matches yours, I have no idea whether it's actually you or if it's someone else because 99% of the people are not even in the release data. What we show is that based on this 1% of the data, we can compute the likelihood that if I find someone that looks like you, that it's actually you. And in most case, it will actually be you as soon as we have a reasonable number of data. So somehow we debunk the idea that because we've sampled the data, we've just removed most of it, that it became safe. That's, in most cases, simply not true. This is so interesting.

I want to bring in another guest to help us think a little bit about. policy. Joseph Jerome, he's on the Policy Council for the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. He was not involved in this study that we're talking about this week. Welcome to Science Friday, Joseph. Molly, thank you. So Joseph, my question for you is, is there any way that data can actually be anonymous, or have we left that behind? I think we have left it behind. And I think what Dr. Hendricks' research really shows here is the tremendous disconnect that exists between data science and the lawmakers and policymakers about what we can now do with data. So many of our laws and our privacy laws assume basically that information

is either personal or not. Law in general wants to have firm dividing lines, good, bad, in out. And that just does not work here because information sort of exists. It's not a binary. It exists on a spectrum. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Go ahead, Julian. Yeah, maybe if you can comment on it. One thing is indeed, it's very hard to have really anonymous data set, but that doesn't mean things are hopeless. There are a solution being developed or research where, for example, suppose they have this big data set which contain a lot of information that could help researcher or policy makers. There are ways of

making queries about the data or computing interesting about the data without me giving you the data to make it very simple if suppose you're interested in something about traffic in New York and I have all the data but the cars in New York you would send me specific question and I would make the computation

for you in such a way that I do not reveal anything about any personal individual but nevertheless you have the results that would interest you in your research or in your policy decision making and so there are I mean it's not unfortunately as simple as I have a data set, and I'm going to make it anonymous,

but there are ways of having a system that become, where I can query data sets to get relevant information without having to have actual access to the data. And this is, I believe, something in which you should invest. That's interesting. Joseph, just speaking about systems, like one of the things is, you know, we're doing this radio program predominantly from America, but there are other countries that are trying to tackle this,

and my understanding is that the EU has a pretty... strict or strong legislation on data and what to do with it and how to keep it anonymous? That's absolutely correct. The reality is we have a lot of different legal rules around de-identified information. And, you know, one of the big stories around privacy was the general data protection regulation where everybody got emails in their mailboxes last year. And the GDPR has an incredibly high bar of not just de-identified information, but truly anonymous information. This is information that can absolutely almost never, you know, be related back

to an individual data subject. But what I think is really interesting about that law is, again, my notion of a data spectrum, it introduces a middle category of pseudonymous data, where the information, you know, is covered with some of the safeguards in that law, but then, you know, some of the rules and regulations about giving individuals access and the ability to correct and delete that information isn't provided. And what I think is interesting for American listeners is a lot of that thinking around different spectrums of data in the law is starting to appear in U.S. laws, including in the California Consumer Privacy Act.

So it's like the idea that some data we might want to protect more than others? Yeah. Well, it's basically trying to incentivize companies to put in place technical and administrative procedures to protect information. I think Dr. Hendricks is right that there's some incredible. thinking going on about how to protect information, privacy-enhancing technologies at some of the major tech companies that we all think about. But the real challenge here, and I think what this study reveals, is we are living in a sea of information. There's data available everywhere. And while

some folks are doing really sophisticated thinking here, it's really unclear if that's trickling down to the day-to-day practices of all the data brokers that people have never heard of, or frankly, all of the sort of small apps that are aggressively using information. Yeah. Julian, is there like a piece of data that I should just be so protective of that I wouldn't want anyone to get? Or I don't know. I guess is that just something that doesn't mean anything at this point?

Well, you know, the problem is that most of the data you have, in my opinion, you have to share it with some people at some point. I mean, if you go to hospital, you would like them to know you're, medical history because they need to know it. The IRS has to know your salary and what you may because they have to know it. So of course people have to be careful. You would not want to share your social security number and credit card number with the random people. But apart from that, I mean, our studio really tells about how information should or should

not be shared to third parties. But in your day-to-day life, it's very hard to not share information with specific parties because just if you want to live it in a normal life. Well, it's funny because I feel like I live in this, like, my friends will say this like this half in, half out world, where like on, you know, I'm not signing up for certain apps because I don't want to give them stuff. And I, you know, sharpie out all the information on like my prescription bottle

before I throw it away. But then in other instances, I'm just, you know, throwing my boarding card in the trash and thrown out my, you know, student loan bills or something. But, Molly, I guess I would just, just say that that doesn't necessarily matter. Talking about trying to control information in this way, if you are on your phone and one of your apps is a financial app and another one of your apps is a health app, and as you mentioned up the top of the show, you sign up

for a loyalty card, well, all of these companies reserve the right to sell and share de-identified information. And so they are all doing whatever they think that they can to de-identify that, and then they share it and distribute it. And then, you know, you sort of can layer all of those different data sets back on top of each other and re-identify folks and put the puzzle, the portrait of the person back together. I'm Molly Webster, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're here talking about how and if we can actually keep our data anonymous. Joseph, I'm wondering if there's any reason I actually wouldn't want my data to be anonymous.

Well, you know, there, I think, again, to live in today's life, you want to share information. you can do a lot of great and beneficial things with information when we talk about machine learning and algorithms to sort of drive new inferences to, you know, provide better health care outcomes. That's a very real benefit of information that you don't want to be anonymous. That's interesting. Julian, why did you choose to publish this tool now or like what were you hoping for? Well, we were interested in the science behind this, and we wanted to know whether data was anonymized and such a trade was indeed anonymous and not. It would have been great if it had been, but it turns out it is not. One of the reason we did publish this tool was to make the general public aware of the finding and to make them, you know, to transform something that would have been a sort of dry scientific paper available for, like, specialist research.

to the general public to test, oh, okay, I can test, and indeed, I would not be anonymous in such and such condition. Hmm. That, yeah. And I think it's important, you know, to raise awareness of that. On the other hand, you know, many, many of my colleagues are doing great research project where they use a lot of data that does contain some sensitive information. For example, I'm thinking of medical science, but also public policy question and thing.

And so one of the fear we sometimes have would be that no single data would be available anymore and that would remove many opportunities for very good research and good results. So we have to find ways of allowing relevant people to use the data for good purpose without damaging privacy or without creating risk for people's privacy. Joseph, is there an option of just not collecting data in the first place? Not really. I mean, we obviously push companies to try and minimize the amount of information they collect, But frankly, companies see data collection as a strategic asset.

And we've created a culture, both in Europe and in the United States, where everybody wants to get their hands as much data as possible. And we live in a sort of always-on ecosystem where we're all generating a whole lot of information. And so, you know, I hear you trying to say, like, I want to protect certain bits of information. But really, individual consumers are not going to be able to control what's going on here. And I think that's sort of why privacy advocates like myself are really asking for more law and regulation here. Yeah, it's funny. I don't know whether I should try or just throw up my hands. You should never throw up your hands.

I think we just need to be cognizant of the challenges we face in a data-driven ecosystem. Hmm. This is great. Thank you guys so much. We have two guests here, Julian Hendricks, Professor of Mathematical Engineering at UC Levant in Belgium and Joseph Jerome, policy council for the Privacy and Data Projects. at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. Guys, one follow-up question. Is there a way, Julian, in which you don't give up your data?

Are there apps that you won't sign on to? Okay, I'm generally cautious with the app I'm signing up to, for example, if they ask me to whether they want to access to my phone directory and things, I typically tend to refuse, but I'm saying this is not really driven by my research. I, yes, I am generally curious like the general public should be. I'm not sharing any information with, I mean, I'm not sharing just all information with anyone, but otherwise, no, I'm not being particularly careful there. Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you, Julian. Thank you, Joseph. This is Science Friday. I'm Molly Webster, sitting in for Ira Flato. This summer, the Science Friday Book Club is reading Jennifer Ackerman's The Genius of Birds, all about the many ways that birds can be brilliant. from tool-making crows to the artistic genius of Bowerbirds. And it's not too late for you to join in. Learn more at ScienceFriday.com slash book club. As part of the celebration, we asked you our listeners to share stories about birds

on the new SciFri Vox Pop app. That's this app where listeners can record answers on their phones to SciFri questions. So here's some of what you said about seeing smart bird behavior and defining animal intelligence. Here in New Zealand we had two little blue penguins trying to make a nest under a sushi shop in Wellington City and then Waddle in the shop looking for food. I think a smart animal is an animal who can reach its objective

either through communicating with other animals or figuring out a way to communicate with humans or figuring out how to problem solve. I think every kind of animal knows how to do what it needs to do So I think that defining smart is in a way trying to compare apples to oranges. Once when I was fishing, I was repeatedly whistling the theme song to the Rifleman television show. After doing it many times, I went silent. Not soon after, I heard a mockingbird repeating back the first few notes repeatedly.

Thanks to Michelle from New Zealand, Moralia from Oregon. from Pennsylvania and Greg from Kentucky for sharing those stories. We want to know from you, our listeners, have you seen a bird do something surprisingly smart? Go on and tell us. Go to the SciFri Vox Pop app. Find it wherever you get your apps. That's SciFri Vox Pop with a V as in Victor. And while we're talking about birds, we want you to go out and look at the ones near you. Whether you're in your backyard, you're on the beach, you're hiking through the woods this summer. the one great thing about birds is you can find them anywhere. But if you're a birding beginner like me, really never done it, or just need a few more tips, we've got help for you today here.

With some birding 101 advice, here are my guest bird nerds, Martha Harbison and Perbita Sah. Both are birders and editors for the National Audubon Society here in New York. Welcome, Martha and Perbita. Hi, thank you. Hi. Hi there. So you guys are joining us from Wisconsin. You're actually not in New York right now. What's happening there? Well, this is Martha. Perrida and I are actually attending the 2019 National Audubon Convention. That's put on by the National Audubon Society. And is this like a conference of fellow bird nerds as you describe yourselves?

Yes. There are about 600 of us actually descended upon the city of Milwaukee. Are we expecting some big breakthroughs, or are we just conversing about all the types of birds? We're talking a lot about conservation of birds, but also just like sharing the joy of them. A bunch of us have gone out birding. Pretty much the first thing I did after I dropped off my bags at the hotel room was to find a walkway along the river. And I found two juvenile Cooper Sox. Oh, my gosh. What does that bird look like?

You see them a lot in New York City, actually. they are a mid-sized hawk, and they're brown on their backs, and they have streak chests and really long tails. That's excellent. So if you have any summer birding questions, give us a call. Our number is 844-724-8255. That's 844-Sai Talk or tweet us at SciFri. We will try and answer your birding questions. Per Bita, if I go outside and I start looking at birds, is that considered birding or is

Is there something more that I have to do at that point? No, it definitely is. Once you are, birding is just about being tapped into and aware of the many different species that surround us on the every day. So, yeah, once you go outside and you're intentionally paying mind to the variety you're seeing, what you're hearing, if you're seeing scraggly little baby birds or, you know, the lustrous sleeve feathered older ones, That's, that's, you're, you're getting into birding right there. So maybe I am a birder and I, I just didn't even know it yet. Martha, yeah, go ahead, Perbita.

No, I was just going to say, I would assume millions of, millions and billions of people are. Martha, this question's for you. So you said you landed in Wisconsin, you immediately started to go out birding. If, if I'm just getting started, I don't even know what to do what to do first. So you landed in Wisconsin. Are you looking something up or do you just go stand somewhere and hope you see a bird? No, I actually do a little bit of research beforehand. I mean, honestly, you can do this research even on Google Maps.

I was looking for basically just little patches of green space in cities because there'll be trees there. And therefore, you're going to be finding a lot more variety of bird life than if it's in like a big white field or a parking lot, for example. Although, you know, you can find a lot of birds and parking lots, too. But I also then look at there's online, there's a lot of online tools that you can use to find where other birders go, including looking up the local Audubon chapters. They usually have websites and say, this is where you go birding. Or you go to eBird, and that's where a lot of birders log their sightings. EBRD. They will.

Yes, eBird.org. And that's run by Cornell, and that's where you can basically pull up Milwaukee, and they'll have all these birding hotspots. And they're like, oh, yeah, a lot of birders go there, and they've seen collectively 300 species over the course of since we've been keeping records. So that's, like, going to be a really good place to find birds. Perbita, once I find those trees, that green space, do I need to bring something with me or do I just go? Yeah, ideally you would have a pair of binoculars. You know, a solid parric can range from $200 to much higher if you want to get fancy. but, you know, it can be, especially now in summer when the trees are leafed out,

it can be kind of frustrating to get your sights on a specific bird. So the binoculars will really help you hone your focus and obviously, you know, increase your visual quality times like 10. But, yeah, binoculars is really kind of the staple. If you can take along a field guide, it can be a paper guide, or it could be, you know, there are a variety of digital apps now. Audubon has a free one that has, you know, hundreds, hundreds of birds in their calls. Cornell and Sibley, they're a great variety to choose from. So those are really the two key, you know, tools, but also sometimes you'll get stuck without binoculars without a field guide, and you can still go birding.

So it's really not ride or die. Okay. So we have a question for you guys from Terry on Twitter who says, why are robins so successful and why aren't indigo buntings or scarlet tangiers or gross beaks or belted kingfishers? So why do the robins reign supreme? It's an excellent question. I think in for me to feel free to chime in here. But I think it has to do among other things with Habitat.

Robins can thrive in a lot of different areas, whether it's, you know, in a city park or if it's, you know, out, you know, in the suburbs or in rural areas, whereas indigo-bontinks and scarlet tanagers have much more rigorous habitat requirements for their, especially when they're breeding. So they'll only want to nest in one type of tree, or indigo-buntings really love to sit on the top of trees and shrubs. So if you don't have those around, then they're not going to hang around. And so I think it has to, you know, basically, robins are just a little bit more flexible than the other two that were mentioned. What about if I find a nest of birds? What I always grew up hearing was if you find a nest, don't touch it. If you find a baby bird, don't touch it because the mom will abandon it or the nest. Is that true, Martha? Yes and no. If you find a nest, like, don't disturb it and, you know, keep your distance from it.

but there's actually a lot of nuance in, you know, it's like if you touch a bird, it's not really true that the parent is not going to, that the parent will abandon it. There are some species to do that, but for the bird that you're typically going to run across, like a robin, they don't care that much. But, and with the nuance comes in is that if you find a baby bird, if it's a really tiny one that hasn't to have feathers, then, yes, you probably want to intervene because it's not going to survive, like basically pick it up, try and find a baby bird. If it's a really tiny one that hasn't to have feathers, then, yes, you probably want to intervene because it's not going to survive, like basically pick it up, try and find the nest, put it back in, or take it to the wild bird front, which is, you know, a rehab place in New York City. But if it's like kind of a scrably-looking bird, maybe it's got some feathers, and if it's looking a little confused, that's probably a fledgling, and it's learning how to fly. And so you just leave it alone because that's part of its life cycle. Perbita is you guys are in Wisconsin right now you want to go out birding Is there a difference with birding in the summertime as opposed to I think of July is like a very lazy time

Is there a difference with summer versus other times of the year for birding? Yeah, I mean there's a big there's a big switch in just which birds are available We're not we're not in migration season now so we're limited to any birds that would be what we call resident species in our area and at the moment they'll either be nesting or, you know, taking care of just sledge chicks or even just gearing up for fall migration. So they might, largely the songbirds might be laying low. You can still hear some of them calling some common species like gray catbirds and goldfinches. They'll keep singing all summer long.

but otherwise shorebirds are really, really abundant at the moment. If you go, if you live along the West or East Coast and you go to your local beach, you might see some nesting plovers or, yeah, they're really fun. They're spunky. They love to run across the beach, turns diving on the waters. so shore bird season, shorebird habitat is where it's at during the summer. Martha, do you have any favorite summer birds you're looking for? I love all some of this is like a cop-out, but I love all summer birds.

I love the little, I love the surly teenage birds. They've just come out of the nest, and they're sitting on branches, and they're yelling at their parents to get fed and flapping their wings a lot. So it doesn't even matter what species it is. I'm always charmed. I'm like house fairs, like, rolling around the ground. Like, that's perfect. But in the summertime, yeah, like Pramita said,

I actually really love American oyster catchers. They're these, like, very charismatic shorebirds that have huge orange bills, and they're black and white otherwise. And they're always, like, running along the shore and trying to pull up crabs. That's so wonderful. I'm Molly Webster, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're here talking about birding with Martha Harbison and Perbita Sahah, who are in Wisconsin, ready to go birding. I'd like to take a call right now from Bobby from St. Cloud, Minnesota, who wants to ask about identifying some birds.

Bobby, are you there? Yeah, this is me. I'm in the St. Cloud area, so not too far from you guys in Wisconsin. And I was just wondering about a bird that I saw yesterday while I was walking my dog. Actually, it was a pair of them. And they looked like, I mean, I assumed that they were a mated pair because they were sitting on a wire, actually, right next to each other. But I've never seen so much of a difference between two. I'm assuming it was based on gender.

But one of them was, like, roughly pigeon-sized, and it was totally white. So I assume that was some kind of dove. And the one next to it was maybe about three quarters, even half the size, and was mostly blackish gray with like a few spots of white around it. And I didn't have my phone with me, so I couldn't take a good picture of it. Unfortunately, I have the Cornell bird identification app on my phone, and I tried plugging in some of the characteristics as far as where I was when I saw it and everything, but I was just wondering if you had any idea on what that might be.

Perbita? Does that sound familiar? If you're, I mean, if your first impression was that it was a pigeon, pigeons have a very, well, pigeons and doves have a very distinct shape where it kind of looks like they're headless almost. They have pinheads. So, and just the variation you're describing in the feathers makes me think it is a pigeon just because you'll see a lot, even if they're the same species,

you'll see a lot of variety in how their bread and what their plumages look like. I'm not so sure about the size difference. That might just have been the way the birds were postured. But, yeah, I can't really think of what other options there might be. But you're completely right. Between sexes in the species, depending on the species. You could get a lot of,

variation in how the bird looks, how it's sized. So that's the technical term for that is sexual dimorphism. But yeah, Martha, what do you think? I was thinking the same thing as you, that if it reminds you of a pigeon, it's very likely going to be a pigeon, and there is such a broad range of plumages in the pigeon family, especially when it comes to the Faroe Rock pigeon, that that would be my first guess. And again, I'm not sure what to make it the size difference because you don't see huge size dimorphism in most bird species. There are some, but it's fairly, it's fairly rare, so it could just be a postural thing. Awesome. Well, we are out of time. Thank you so much, Martha Harbenson and Perbita Sahab, birders and editors at the National Audubon Society in New York.

Thank you for joining us. Now that you've got some birding 101 basics, it's time for everyone out there to go outside. You can join me and the rest of Science Friday at the Science Friday Bird Club on the citizen science platform, I Naturalist. And whether you're a veteran birder or you've never picked up a pair of binoculars, it's a really collaborative citizen science community that you can be a part of and just kind of geek out and have fun. We're also collecting photos of birds. So you can tell us where you saw them and snap what they look like. And all of this can actually help research and science all around the world. So learn more about the Science Friday Bird Club at Science Friday.com slash birds. Charles Burkwest is our director. Our senior producer is Christopher

in Tagliata and our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. Our intern is Camille Peterson. We had technical and engineering help today from Rich Kim and Kevin Wolfe. B.J. Leederman composed our theme music. We're active all week on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Insta, and download the new SciFri Voxpop app. We're taking your questions and comments all week long. Ira's back next week. In New York, I'm Molly Webster.