Science Friday - Christmas Bird Count. Jan 3, 2020, Part 2

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

For many, the new year means looking back on the past accomplishments and checking off your goals. For birders, it means tallying up your species list and recording all the birds you’ve spotted in the season. Birders Corina Newsome and Geoff LeBaron, director of the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, guide us through the feathered friends flying overhead—from nuthatches to ducks to merlins.  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 Ira Flato, as is our custom. It's our annual birdwatching segment where we team up with Audubon's annual Christmas bird count. We're devotees of the avian kind bundle up with binoculars in hand to count up all the noisy nut hatches, the diving ducks, and maybe one of these. Of course, it's everybody's favorite. Really, that's just a preview because later in the hour we're going to play name that bird quiz. We're going to play a call, and we want you to make the call and call in with your guests for the bird that made that sound. But first, we're going to talk about what birds you've seen this winter. Did you participate in a bird count? Or maybe you're taking count from your kitchen window. Some listeners checked in on the Science Friday Vox Pop app to tell us what they've seen. My bird feeder typically attracts gold finches, house finches, towies, but some of the science.

Suddenly a nut hatch has arrived, and I'm very excited to have found a new member of the bird club in my backyard. I was drinking coffee early on Christmas morning and heard this lovely bird song in my backyard. It's a Carolina Wren, and it's not real common in Iowa, so I felt really lucky to hear it. Don't you love that sound? It's so soothing the birds out there on the feeder. Those folks were Debbie in Citrus Heights, California. Lisa in Iowa City. And we want to hear about what birds you have spotted this winter migration.

Maybe a wayward wax wing or an owl that's come back every year. Or maybe you need help identifying a bird you saw. Well, that's what we're going to be talking about. And you can give us a call. Our number 844-724-8255, 844-S-4-S-I-Talk, or tweet us at SciF-F-R-I-R-I. Now let me introduce our bird guides for the hour. Karina Newsom is a birder and graduate students studying bird conservation at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.

She joins us by Skype. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to have you. Jeff LeBarran is the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count Director based out of Leemsburg, Massachusetts. Nice to have you back, Jeff. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on, Ira.

You're welcome. Let's first talk to you, Jeff. The bird count is wrapping up this weekend and your team will go back. and look through the data? Can you give us an idea of what trends you're seeing from the season? It's a bit early to sort of say the results of this year because at this point there's only just over 400 counts that have been entered onto the online database. As you said, the counts will continue through this Sunday, the 5th. So compilers actually have until the end of February to actually do their data entry. Then there's a review process that goes on. So it takes a while before

we actually finalize the database for a given year. I have been sort of trying to keep track of if there's unusual stuff going, being discovered this year. And so far, there hasn't been anything totally crazy. The most unusual bird that I sort of heard about, this was out, and actually it was, it was in a count circle that's actually in the very northwestern corner of Oregon, but it was actually in the peninsula of Washington happens to be in that circle. It was called a rustic bunting. And the Murphy's law was that it, it disappeared the day before the count. So it didn't quite actually make it into the database.

That's why we have count weak species for people. There's a commercial outfit, something like that. Yeah. Corinna, you've been birding in a couple of places in the south this season. What types of birds have you come across? Yes, I've been between Georgia and Virginia primarily so far this season. And I've been seeing a lot of the winter residents that I'm used to seeing. So some of the white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, I surprisingly have not seen any cedar wax swings yet, which really bums me out.

So I'm going to look out for those. And then, of course, my beloved brown-headed nut hatches, which are one of my favorite birds recently have been some of the birds I've been seeing down here. Yeah, I see a lot of nut hatches in my backyard. They are among my favorite because of the way they actually fly, little humps when they fly, and then they point downwards with their head. and then they take the seed and they crack it open on the branch. Yes. All kinds of good stuff, right? The smallest tool users.

And actually, the wax wings are still up here in New England, so maybe they'll get down there later in the winter. Yeah. All right, let's go. We actually have some folks who are still out on the Birdwatch. Let's go to Roseanne in Watertown, New York. Hi. Hi. This is Roseanne and Jim, and we're sitting here right now looking at a snowy owl.

The fourth one we've seen today. Oh. You lucky people. Yeah. We are kind of referred to as snowy owl central. This is not unusual for this area. We're in the town of Lyme, which is right on the eastern Lake, Ontario, where St. Lawrence River mouth is. And every winter, we've been getting beautiful snowy owls, males, females.

As a matter of fact, our land trust will be leading a snowy owl birding track on the 11th. Wow, that's great. That's excellent. You've seen four? I've yet to see my first. Today. Today. Wow, thank you, Roseanne.

What do you think of that, Karina? I am jealous because you have never actually seen a snowy owl in person. I always just miss them every time they show up anywhere that I've lived. So I am very jealous. Jeff, you've seen a few? I've seen a few, but not this winter yet. I'm jealous because it sounds like there is the movement that's happening southward this season is more out sort of through Ontario and coming down into the Midwest. And we have almost none here in New England.

So that's been a change in a flight bath, you're saying? It has to do with where they have a successful breeding season in the Arctic. And it sounds like this year the lemming population was good in the Central Canadian Arctic. and so that's where the birds are moving south from. And I haven't heard yet how they're doing out further west, sort of like in Montana and the other places where they sometimes come down. Maybe they will phone in, let us know if they're out there. They might.

Can hope. Now, Karina, I know before you started studying birds in grad school, you were a zookeeper. How do you go from zookeeper to getting a Ph.D. in birds? Well, I honestly have always loved birds. It started all in undergrad in college. And then as I was taking care of birds, as a zookeeper, I took care of lots of animals, but still birds are my favorite.

I was like, you know, I want to participate more in the research element of conservation, because I was focused mostly on the care of birds and educating the public about birds, and I wanted to dip my feet more rigorously in the research of birds. And so once the opportunity presented itself, I am now being mentored by Elizabeth Hunter at Georgia Southern for my master's degree currently. But that was kind of the jump. Birds were always my favorite, but a desire to participate in research really grew for me, especially in the face of climate change, which is an issue that many birds are going to be

facing very heavily very soon. Was there one bird that set you off on your bird career? Yes. So when I took ornithology in college, I had never gone birding before. And the first bird that I learned about was a blue jay, which is common most places, but I had never seen one. and I was like 21. And so when my professor, like, put it up on the screen and said, this is a blue jay,

I, like, had this huge reaction in class and people are like, you've never seen a blue jay. I was like, this bird has been around me all these years. I've never once seen it. I've heard it, never seen it. And that was kind of my gateway bird. Yeah, come to my backyard. They take over the feeder because they're big birds, right? Actually, the first bird I saw or heard this year was a blue jay.

Oh, nice. We have some tweets coming in. Sue tweets that a big block of Sand Hill cranes flew over my neighborhood in Grand Junction, Colorado on Saturday, exclamation point. There are a bunch of other people saying, oh, Becky tweets, I live in Atlantic Beach, Florida. This week we saw a flock of robins in our front yard so early, even for us. Wow. I think that has to do with the fact that we had a really harsh and cold late November. And in recent years, the Robbins have stayed more northward when it's been relatively mild in the falls.

But I think this year they got pushed south. I know we don't have anywhere near as many Robbins up here in New England. So far this winter, we have in the last several years. Let's go to Augusta, Georgia, where Elizabeth is telling us about her birds. Elizabeth. Hi. Hi, Ira. I love your show.

I try to catch it every week. I feel like I know you personally have listened to you for so long. Thank you. So the bird count, my team went out on the 21st of December, and it was very cold that day in Augusta, which is unusual. And we saw two flocks of hooded Morgansers. And we were walking alongside the Savannah River, which is border between Georgia and South Carolina. and I do that every day, and I have only once before seen hooded Morgansers here. So we had 16 in one of the flocks and 20 in the other, and they were mostly females,

but probably three to four males and all the rest females in the two groups. No, thanks. Very exciting. I don't even know what a hooded Morganser is, and you've seen. dozens of them. They're great. Karina, well, you're close to her, geographically speaking.

Yeah. So I haven't seen any hooded Morganzas yet so far this season. I've seen them actually in Ohio. I've seen them in Nashville when I used to live in Nashville. I've not yet seen them this season, but I did see them last year. So I'm expecting hopefully to see some hooded Morganzers when I go on the Atlanta Christmas bird count tomorrow.

Describe what they look like, so I'll know. So they have, like, most Morganzers, like a thin beak. and they have like a crest, a black crust that goes over the kind of top and back of their head, and on either side it's white. From a distance, they can be kind of confused with a bufflehead because that white patch is placed in a similar location. But they are larger than buffaloheads and have the typical Morganser bill shape to them. I'll have to look at it. The other thing that's cool about them is they're sort of like their transformers.

they can actually very much change the shape of their crest, and they can raise it up, and it's this great big, you know, football helmet kind of a thing with this huge white side, or they can slim it back down, so it's almost just like a white stripe. There's a lot of fun to watch them. I'll have to go look for them.

The only more gansers I ever knew ran the candy store down the block from me. We're going to take a break and come up. We have filled up our, oh, lots of people want to talk about what they've seen. Also, tweet us at SciFry 844724-825. We're happy to take your tweets. talking with Karina Newsom and Jeff LeBaron, ahead of National Audubon Society's Christmas bird count. Phone number again, 844-724-8255.

Oh, people are seeing all kinds of things. Hawks and hummingbirds and stuff. We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We're talking this hour about birding this winter season and what you've all seen.

We're talking with Karina Newsom, birder and graduate students studying bird conservation at Georgia Southern University. Jeffler Byron, who is head of the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, and that's in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. Okay, how about a little fun now? A quiz of your bird call IQ. It's our name-that-bird quiz.

I'm going to play a bird song. That's one of Karina's favorites. And if you think you know what type of bird makes the song, then you make the call by making the call. Our number is 844-724-8-255-8-44-Sight-Talk. and here comes our first clue. I just want to sit and listen. It's so soothing.

All right, that's to our listeners, do you know what that bird was? 844-724-8255-4. You can tweet us at SciFri. That was kind of cool. Jeff, let's talk about some of the big birding news this year. There was a study that came out in science recently. That was very shocking.

It showed that in the last 50 years, North American birds have been on the decline by 30 percent? Yes, it was a very interesting study. It was looking mostly at birds during migration, but it's also very interesting to note that when I was looking at Christmas bird count numbers from last season, from the 119th count, even though the effort was actually a record amount of effort and a lot of much higher area of coverage than we've had in past years, the number of birds that were tallied was actually the second lowest.

for the 32 years I've been in charge of the Christmas count. Wow. So it's a little bit, it's early to say what's causing that, but what I did want to mention is that the Christmas bird count is one of the most important tools that we have to sort of understand how birds are doing across the trends and how birds are doing across the continent, as well as where their ranges are shifting

as the climate is changing. So it's a really, it's not only fun and traditional, but it's a critically important data set for ornithological researchers. So that's observational evidence about climate change is what you're saying. Yes, and it's actually document. We were actually, Audubon was able to do a study and look at how birds have shifted their ranges over the last 60 years during the early winter period of the Christmas bird count

as the early winter temperatures have been moderating. And two to 300 of these species have moved as much as 200 or 200 miles northward during that time. Karina, I heard you gasp just a bitter when you heard that data. I, when I heard the, when that paper came out and I was reading it, I noticed that the sparrows, the American sparrows were some of among the most heavily declined species in North America. And the species that I study at school is a sea side sparrow. And so obviously I am very sparrow conscious. But it is very alarming.

And it was interesting because for the first time I had people in my life, like in my family, who never really think about birds and oftentimes make fun of me for thinking so much about birds. And they were asking me, like, is this true? Like, what is this mean? What's going on? And so I am grateful that the study came out because it brought a lot of people's attention to the forefront for bird conservation, people who I have known to never care much about birds. So it is shocking, but it has also brought a lot of good attention. And the other interesting thing that's Audubon's done recently is in October, we released our Survival by Degrees study, which actually was a nice compliment to the earlier paper with the decline of birds during

migration of the total number of birds. And what the Survival by Degrees website allows you to do is actually type in a zip code or a state and it actually shows you the birds and their likely trends over the next 20 to 70 years and things that you can do about it. So it's actually very interesting and interactive and gives you tools to. to actually think about what to do to help the birds. Lots of people sharing their bird experiences on the phone. Let's go to Santa Rosa.

Janet, hi, welcome to Science Friday. So one of the things I've noticed since the Tubbs fire in October 2017, I live in an area I lost my home in the forest, is a increase in the diversity of birds of prey. For instance, my daughter and I both noticed that we're seeing white-tailed kites in our area, which I've seen in Sonoma County, but I've never seen in our particular area. We live in the hills outside of Santa Rosa. And I've also seen some other birds of prey that I haven't seen.

Generally smaller birds of prey, whereas, you know, before we've seen a lot of, Red tail hawks primarily. Interesting. Interesting. Thanks for sharing with that. Jeff, what do you say about that? Is that a normal recovery? I think it's part of the recovery.

What happened, of course, the habitats in those area are radically altered by the fires. And what happens is it opens things up, and the larger prey items would probably either be killed or move out. And the smaller prey items would become more available and visible, and that's quite likely why the white-tailed kites are there. One thing that's also really interesting with the Christmas bird counts is going when, you know, many of these areas with the big fires for the last several years and also the hurricanes and things in the Caribbean are very well covered by Christmas bird count circles.

So that actually by continuing to do the Christmas bird counts, we're actually very well able to track the recovery, sort of follow the ups and downs and recovery of these areas after these major ecological events. That's terrific. Let's go down to some answers to our quiz. We had a bird sound. We wanted you to identify. Let me play it again.

Okay, we have a few folks on the line. Mike, hi, welcome to Science Friday. Have you got a guess? Yes, I do. Go for it. Okay, I would say a red-wing blackbird, a tricolored blackbird. Nope. Sorry about that.

Let's see if we have another guess. Let's go to Alan. Hi, Alan. Hey, Aloha. Hello. Yeah, but I'm not calling from Hawaii. I'm actually calling from Illinois, but I'm visiting family. But I thought it sounds like a bobbling.

Ooh, wrong guess. Sorry about that. Let's go to Deborah. Hi, Deborah. Hello, that would be a wood thrush. Tadda! I wish I had that little sound effect. We can't afford it.

So, Karina. It's just beautiful. Yeah. Do you see them around? I never see them, but I have about 15 minutes of them, a recording of one that I discovered this summer at Brown Deer Park. Karina is. In Milwaukee.

They're very, they're shy. But I have to say I cheat. I play a YouTube video of the song just to attract them. I think that's cheating, but I really would like to see one up close. All right, maybe you'll get the chance. Karina, that's one of your favorites, right? It is. They are oftentimes called the floutists of the forest, and hearing them,

especially when you're in the context of a bunch of trees, that call, that song is echoing in the trees, and it's absolutely magical. We have some tweets coming in, Jamie, tweets. My favorite from a local Christmas bird count was an Atwater Prairie Chicken. And at home, I've got a Rufus Hummingbird, who has taken up residence this winter. I'm located in Fulshire, Texas, west of Houston. Excellent.

Wow. Natasha tweets, I live in Santa Cruz. I've seen a peregrine falcon perched above the ocean three times in as many weeks. Hunting for sea ducks. I've watched Perkin Falcons come onto golf courses where they have fish stocked the lake with fish and come in from the ocean. Yeah. And steal the fish out of the golf courses. And Evan tweets got my very first pair of bard owls.

Did I pronounce that right? Yes. In one evening, first pair. Did they come in pairs usually? Oftentimes they do. And bard owls are the ones that have the call that sounds like who cooks for you, who cooks for you all. Can you do that for us? I can't, no.

Some birders can do it remarkably well, though. Yes. Evan also says, nocturnal birds need more love. Wow. I would agree with that. Well, I heard an owl. I'm going to tell my next-door neighbor bird story is I had a, I would call Central Casting Owl across the street from me many nights. I hear it going to the, you know, typical like that.

And one morning my neighbor came running up to me saying, got to be careful. I was just out walking my dog in the backyard. And I raced, she had a small dog. I raced a bird to my dog. Yeah. And I won. I won. And I thought it was the owl.

It probably was a great horned owl. Wow. How big an animal will a great horn take? Well, a lot of what they take, they're actually one of the few avian predators that will take skunks. But they will take things certainly the size of a house cat or a small dog, as well a red-tailed hawk for that matter. So Great Horns are sort of the nocturnal equivalent of the daytime red-tailed hawks in terms of their predatory niche and the kind of things that they take. They're one of the most powerful birds in the world, actually, Great Hornedale. Let's go to Casey in Marietta, California.

Hi, Casey. Hi, lovely to speak to you, Ira. Thank you. I was calling about hummingbirds this past year in 2019. I put quite a bunch of hummingbird feeders outside my house. While I love watching them, I really can't tell the species apart. I was wondering if any of your guests would be able to help me identify the species in Southern California of hummingbirds. Okay.

One of my favorite topics, hummingbirds. I did not see many of them this year in the Northeast. Can we help her out to identify what she's seen? In Southern California, probably the two most common species, are the Allens hummingbird and also Anna's hummingbird. And the Anna's actually has a sort of a twittery song. It's one of the few hummingbirds that actually sings vocally. And they have, the males have a really deep red gorget,

but also red over their crown, whereas the Allen's hummingbird is sort of rusty, orange, green with the green central part of its back, and it's a little bit sort of chunkier. But those would be the two most common types of hummingbirds in Southern California. And they're both pretty much resident. So you would have them year-round. Oh, I'm so jealous. Karina, do you have hummingbirds year-round?

The only hummingbirds that I see year-round here in Southern Georgia are the ruby-throated hummingbirds. I've actually not seen any other species of hummingbirds. So it sounds like I'll need to go to Southern California as soon as possible. And actually having the ruby throats in coastal mid-Atlantic is very new. They, that used, basically all ruby throat of hummingbirds used to go down to the Caribbean and Central America for the winter. But they have started wintering and increasing numbers as far north as Cape Hatteras. So having them there in the winter is a relatively new thing. Another climate change.

Exactly. Karina, I know you also started a study looking at nut hatches on your campus. Yes. Tell us about that. So the net hatches that we're focusing on during this project, the project is called Save Nut Hatches. We're focusing on the brown-headed nut hatch, which is a species that is really only found in the southeastern United States, but it is one that is found pretty popularly on our campus. That's the, for those of you listening, the bird played at the beginning. I don't know if that was going to be a question later, so I hope not.

But they have a very distinct call among nut hatches, among birds in general. But they are climate endangered, which the National Audubon Society kind of designated, meaning that a certain percentage of their part of their, usable habitat will disappear in a certain amount of time. And for them, they're going to lose about 95% of their habitat by 2080. And that's because of the temperature rises. They can't tolerate very hot temperatures. So on our campus, we wanted to know essentially what their breeding preferences were when it comes to temperature. So we put a bunch of nut hatch nest boxes made by Atlanta Audubon around campus, and they are all equipped with a temperature data logger. So it constantly records the temperature, and we're going to see how they choose, which ones they select, and see if there's a

pattern to temperature thresholds. And then when we find out, okay, they prefer this kind of temperature on our campus, we can kind of put more nest boxes in regions with that temperature and make our campus more friendly for them. Cool. That's really neat. Thanks. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios talking about the Christmas bird count. And we have someone out in the field, Gale in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Hi, welcome. What are you seeing out there? Well, hi, I happen to have your show on, and I was going to call and see I saw a bald eagle over by my house the other morning, and here I'm driving, and I see one zeroing in, and a bald eagle

just landed in a big oak tree down in the harbor in Ephraim right by my town next to where I live. So he's down by the harbor. Wow, what a signing. I hope you stopped to make the call. Yeah, I pulled over. I got my flasher done and all, and I called you right away. So how often have you seen this Bald Eagle? Is it the first time? You said it's the second time you've seen it. Yeah, I saw one. He was parked out in a tree across my property the other morning, and here he is again.

So they're out and they're flying, and they're just roosting and taking in the scenery, I guess. They're looking for the rabbits. Lucky you. Thank you. Thanks for calling, Gail. And happy sightings. Unusual, Jeff, to see Bald Eagle? It's always wonderful to see Bald Eagle.

Bald Eagle is one of the most successful conservation stories that there is for Ornithology these days. They've really completely re-taken over the lower 48. They were almost completely gone through about the early 1970s. they've recovered remarkably. So it's a wonderful thing. A friend of mine is an ornithologist from Brazil, and he was, he's from here in western Massachusetts. And when he left 30 years ago, it was a red letter day when you saw a bald eagle. And the last time he came up here to visit, and we saw three or four, and he's like, stop, you have to understand. This was so unusual before I left. That's interesting. That's really great.

We have a tweet from Nancy who said, The Best Bird of Our Area, Christmas Bird Count, a puffin flying over San Francisco Bay. Now, there was news about a puffin, this week. The first time they've seen a puffin use a twig to scratch itself. I saw that. That's really cool. The first time that bird used the tool. Itchy puffins. That's great. Barbara tweets, we see bald eagles all winter in Iowa City along the river. There can be dozens of them when it gets really cold, so cool to see them so close up. Will a bald eagle let you get close up to it? Jeff? Sometimes they will. These days,

They're not persecuted, and, you know, they're mostly interested in, you know, they eat a lot of fish and carrying and stuff like that. They are, I mean, it's horrible to say for our national symbol, but they're sort of trash birds because they do like, especially if you go to Alaska, you can see 100 bald eagles in the dump. They're recyclers. Yes, they are. They help keep things clean. There you go. There you go. Somebody didn't even recycle the waste.

It'll be piled up and we never get rid of it. We're going to take a break. And after the break, we're taking your calls and looking for birders in the Great Lakes area. So if you're out there, I already had somebody calling you from Watertown, New York, right on the edge of Lake Ontario. We want to hear about what you've seen in the Great Lakes. Give us a call. 844-724-8255-8-44-Sai Talk, or you can tweet us at SciFri. So stay with us.

We'll be back more with Karina Newsom and Jeff LeBarran. After the break, don't go away. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato, a brief program note on our website this week. What happens when trained scientists make it their mission to make biotechnology more accessible? Our digital intern Andrea Corona visited an open access biotech space called GenSpace to explore their projects. And you can find out more at Sciencepriday.com slash community labs. We're talking this hour about birding this winter season and what you all have seen out there.

Our bird guides this hour are Karina Newsom of Georgia Southern University, Jeff LeBaron, head of the National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. And I want to bring on another birder. And you know he's a real bird nerd? Because his ringtone sounds like this. Jeff Williamson is a birder from Chicago and runs third coast birding. Jeff, what was that? That was a barred ant shrike.

It's a bird from, uh, Central America and most of northern South America, rather widespread kind of bird in the lower elevations down there. And you've been birding in the Great Lakes area this season. If you're in any of the Great Lakes states, we want to hear about what you have seen. So give us a call 844724-8255-844-Sight-4-Sy-Tock. Tell us what is interesting you this birding season.

Jeff Williams? Yeah, sure. I think one of the more interesting aspects of this season is it's continuing this trend where we're getting during the wintertime more birds that typically clear out of town or are in only small numbers. So, and I know you were talking about the Christmas bird counts earlier in this season, mid-December I was out here doing a count within the city of Chicago and saw an eastern and Phoebe, a kind of flycatcher. They're not usually around here. And hermit thrushes,

though they do occur here reasonably regularly during the winter and not really in any kind of numbers. And the party that I was with had three of them during our day of burning, which was kind of unusual. We already have people from the Great Lakes calling in. Let's go to Paul and Traverse City, Michigan. Hi, Paul. Hello, this is Paul. Hi there. Go ahead. I live on a small Linden Lake, about a 500-acre lake, and there's an island across from where I'm at, and the lake froze in November, and then we had a worm spell, and it saw it partially. About a couple weeks ago, I'm looking out the window, and I see an eagle circling around the island, and then I soon see another eagle, both adults, and then I'm looking, and there's two juveniles,

you know, full-grown, not the right coloration, so they were probably with the parents. And along the edge of the ice, you know, there was open water, and there were some migratory ducks sitting in the water. Well, the adults were swooping down trying to catch them and to teach their juveniles on how to hunt those, you know, because there are areas around Lake Michigan on that where there is open water. What was amusing was the ducks were diving ducks. So when they sense the eagle come and they dove under the water. So my wife and I watch them for about 20 minutes doing that. Wow. Ducks ducking. Like watching National Geographic. Wow. That's a great story, Paul. Thanks for sharing that. Jeff, around Chicago, you see that happening?

Yeah, we have, I think the area near here that we go to to observe bald eagles in numbers are along the rivers, the Illinois River flowing over to the Mississippi River, and it's still pretty warm right now. When the temperatures get colder and the rivers start to freeze up, you get all sorts of eagles congregating around anywhere. There's a dam. So the dams keep the water open near the dam. They chew up the fish, and the eagles come down and feast on the fish that the dams have wreaked havoc on. Jeff LeBaron. We started. I'm sorry. I got two. Jeff's here to keep everybody seated. Jeff, LeBaron, do you have an update from the bird count in the Midwest on the Great Lakes?

What has been spotted there? I do know that it's been relatively open from the, you know, as Jeff was saying, you know, there have been more waterfowl and some lingering things like the Phoebe that you guys found. One thing I wanted to mention about the bald eagles is I've watched them hunting what we call puddle ducks, which don't normally dive, things like mallards and black ducks, but when the eagle's trying to get them, they can learn how to dive pretty quickly, the ducks can to get out of the way from the eagles.

But, yeah, it's going to be a very interesting year, I think, this year to see what happens overall in the big picture with the Christmas bird counts. And there is more of this sort of general shift of a lot of the birds that don't have to go or aren't programmed to go to Latin America or the Caribbean that just linger only as far south as they have to for, you know,

where there's less, snow cover or less frozen water. I wonder if that's the origin of the word duck to duck down, you know, ducks going underwater, something dimming. Interesting. Somebody interesting is Madeline in Manatee, Michigan. Hi, Madeline. Hi there. I wanted to comment that two weeks ago I saw one of the Arctic owls down here in the harbor where the Manistee River has an outlet into Lake Michigan. Also, So when I lived downstate before we retired in a suburb of Detroit, near, not too far from Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie, and Lake Huron, we had grackles and those brown-headed cowbirds, which I hate.

Anyway, they would come. I had put mothballs out to discourage the rodents. They would come and pick up those mothballs, and they'd pick up a mothball, and they would scrub under their arms like they were going to put the odor in on or something, and then they'd wipe all over their body with that mothball, evidently to either to smell good or to discourage parasites. I don't know which. I suspect it's the latter, but that's pretty bizarre.

Well, thank you, Madeline. We'll have to write that up someplace. You know, have to publish that. Well, have you ever heard of that? Jeff Leimson or Jeff LeBarran? Jeff LeBarran, let me ask you first. I have not heard of that. Certainly birds do, I mean, they're meticulous about maintaining their plumage.

And one of the things they need to do to do that is to keep control and get rid of the parasites that, you know, the lice and things that are in there that do, you know, get on the feathers. So this would be something that would certainly do that. but I think it's amazing that they would learn or somehow figure out that whatever that funny, round, white thing is, is actually going to do that for them. Karina, you study birds. You must be taking great interest in this story. I am. I always find great interest in, like, seeing, you know, the ways that birds use anthropogenic human-made objects. And that is just so bizarre to me because, of course, birds, you know, they use dust, for example, to keep down the parasite load and they'll regularly take dust baths.

which you can see often sometimes, but a mothball. I really actually do want her to record that on her phone, if she wouldn't mind if she's still listening, because someone does need to write that up. Well, we'll have a record here forever at Science Friday, I hope, for seeing what's going on there. Jeff Leimson, one of the big stories in Chicago, I understand, was about Rose and Monty.

Who were those birds? That's right. So this past summer, we had two. piping plovers nest on the busiest beach in the city of Chicago. The piping plover, the Great Lakes population of piping plovers is in danger. There's only about, I think, it's 75 pairs of these birds. And these two, they tried to nest up in Waukegan, which is further north of Chicago on Lake Michigan, and this past summer came down and tried again on the Chicago beach. And it was quite a, quite a saga. I have to hand it to Rose.

She laid eight eggs over the course of the summer, two different clutches. The first nest got flooded out. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources came in and pulled the nests right before. We had a big blow of wind from the north that flooded the beach and flooded the nest. And unfortunately, those eggs were not able to hatch in captivity. But Rose went again and laid four more eggs. Three of those hatched and two of the birds that hatched fledged. and headed south. It was pretty exciting.

That's interesting about flooding because, Karina, I understand that you study sparrows who are having issues with nests being flooded. Are we seeing climate change flooding more nests? Well, there has not necessarily been documented for the species that I'm studying and increase in nests flooding, but what we do know is that there is an increase in the height of high tide, which is precisely what floods seaside sparrow nests. And they are behaviorally adapted to having a nest flooding occur during their breeding season. And when that happens, what they do is they will just build another nest immediately and they'll nest higher off the ground as a result.

So they are adapted to be able to do that. But the strange thing is that when they nest higher, they are more vulnerable, more visible to predators. So they're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to dealing with nests flooding, especially in the face of sea level rise. And there's actually a closely related species called Salt Lash Sparrow, which is greatly at risk from, basically they think if sea level or when sea level rises two inches,

that species won't be able to nest successfully. So that is pretty creepy. Friend of Mite says they're two inches away from extinction. Oh, that is creepy. Let's go to some better or more other news. Let's go to Mount Oreb, Ohio. Sarah, welcome to Science Friday. Hi.

Hi there. I had two owls. Like I had had my dog out with he's like 76 pounds, and I put him up, and I went back out to turn the light off on my shed, and I had two owls come chasing me. I was doing there at Greyhorn Ows. I looked into it and tried to search it, and I've seen they will do that with dogs or cats, but it was pretty scary, like they were doing, and I couldn't find anything where they, like, chase team is before.

Wow. Well, Jeff Leimson? I don't know if that's typical. There's a reason they did that? I don't know. Wow, thanks for that. Jeff LeBaron? What do you think?

Is that a typical thing? Well, it depends what, sorry, what time of year? If Great Horned owls are one of the most aggressive birds that they are, that there is around their nest. And if this was, Great Horn El is actually nest there, here in New England, they're actually courting and setting up right now for the season. So if this was like in late winter or even early spring, and if they're, they're also very, great horned owls are very well adapted to sort of urban environments. So if there was a nest around, that might have been what was going on. They might

have flown at you because of the, because there was a nest nearby. I'm Ira Plato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. A great number of tweets coming in. Let me just go to a few of them. Well, here's an email. We watched a great. blue heron in our mountain area at 3,000 feet near Yosemite hunt gophers in our yard. We watched and photographed him catching and swallowing a gopher. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Have you all seen that? Yes. Corrine? I haven't seen him take gophers. Well, there was a video that kind of started going viral on Facebook and Twitter of a great horn, or excuse me, a great blue heron in someone's front yard eating a gopher. but a red-tailed hawk was also looking after that gopher. So then the red-tail hawk came in and fought it, you know, for the gopher. But that was the first time I'd ever seen that.

And that was a few weeks ago online. But apparently they're walking through people's yards looking for the mammals. That's great. We hear Christy tweets, loving today's show. The past two seasons, we've had a single male piliated woodpecker who visits our suet feeder. Well, guess what? This year he met a lady. We are crossing our fingers for baby woodpeckers in this spring.

I suspect it will happen. I hope so. We could bring love to birds that would be Science Friday's mission. Let's see if we have a lot more people calling in. Let's go to Caroline in Hudson, Ohio. Hi, Caroline. Hi. Hi, there.

I've been following the kindness and justice east leg eagles on Facebook. We've been following a pair of eagles that have been nesting on the Shigrin River just east of Cleveland. And they've had a successful hatch of eaglets two years ago. Last year they laid eggs, and then they had some competition with some female eagle come in. And I think they left the nest too long, and the eggs got cold, but we didn't see them hatch. Oh, there you go. They didn't see your catch. Let's go to Davenport, Iowa.

Hi. Is it Leanne? Yes, it is. Hi, there. Go ahead. I was watching, doing my Cornell Feeder watch on a Sunday. and I saw a white cardinal at my feeder. Oh, wow.

Wow. A lucistic cardinal. Or wow. Yeah. Lucistic or al-Bino, yeah. That's really, that's wonderful. Yeah. Did it come back?

It's come back several times, yes. We're all in awe of you. That's always so exciting when you get the... Take a picture. It really is, yeah. Yes, we did. We took pictures. Does it have a mate?

That's great. Were there two white ones? No, I believe. There was only one. There was only one, I believe. That is. That's great. That's wonderful. How rare is that, Jeff? Which Jeff? Jeff LeBaron. Which Jeff, yeah.

For birds like Cardinals and Robbins and some of them more widespread and abundant, it's very unusual. Don't get me wrong. But for birds that there are a lot of them and they're sort of around humans, it's one of the, they're among the species that where we do see partial albino or lucistic birds quite, you know, with some frequency. But to have the whole bird white, that's really cool. It's cool. Jeff Williamson, last question.

Any favorite sightings for you around Chicago the season? Oh, around, I think the earlier in the season, the most exciting things that happened through Chicago were we had a King Ider come by and spend a few days in the city. And then an ancient Merlet, which is a kind of in the Auk family, kind of the northern version of penguins. Wow. That's great. You know, I wish I knew any of these birds. It's like I'm watching Star Trek and we've gone to another civilization. I guess I'll have to get out my bird book.

I want to thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Jeff Williamson, Berder from Chicago, who runs the Third Coast Birding. Karina Newsom, graduate students studying bird conservation at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. Jeff LeBarran, National Audubon Society, Christmas Bird Count Director. You're based out of Leemsburg, Massachusetts,

and you can see photos of this year's Audubon Christmas Bird Count. And bird listeners have spotted stuff up there, All those bird pictures are up on our website, ScienceFriiday.com slash bird count. Thank you all. And happy New Year to all of you. You're welcome, and happy new year. You're welcome.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. And also, I want to remind our listeners, we have a new question we're asking you on Science Friday Voxpop app. We want to ask about political polling. We're going to be doing a show on political polling. We want to know, have you been contacted by a political poster? Polster.

If so, how? Was it text, landline email? Tell us your experience of being polled on this science. Friday Vox Pop app. Have you been contacted by a political pollster? And if so, how? Text, landline, email. How did that happen? Charles Berkowitz says our director, senior producer, Christopher and Talia Taliata. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. We had technical and engineering help today from Rich Kim, Kevin Wolf, and Lisa Gosselin, B.J. Leatherman, composed our theme music. And as I said earlier, we're saying goodbye this week to our digital

intern, Andrea Corona. We're going to miss her insight. Comments at our story meetings. fun and her commitment to making sure our coverage reaches more eyes and ears. And you can check out Andrea's Capstone Project about the world's first community lab in southern Brooklyn, where professional scientists and citizen science do DIY DIY biotech. ScienceFriiday.com slash community labs. We wish her all the best. I'm Ira Flato in New York.