Science Friday - Turning The Binoculars On Birders

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Birding is a hobby that attracts a very particular group of people: the kind who get up at sunrise, go into the woods, and wait for hours for a little tiny feathered friend to fly past. Author and illustrator Rosemary Mosco guides us into the world of birding with her new book, The Birding Dictionary. Plus, biologist Sara Lipshutz fills us in on the surprisingly high-drama world of some female birds.Guests: Rosemary Mosco is an author, illustrator, and speaker whose work connects people with the natural world. Her latest book is The Birding Dictionary.Dr. Sara Lipshutz is an assistant professor in biology at Duke University. Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

I'm Flora Lickman and you're listening to Science Friday. Today on the show, why the story we're told about female birds just won't fly. Female animals make up, you know, roughly 50% of populations, but they've historically been neglected in biological research. But first, lace up those comfortable sneakers, get out your bug spray and your binoculars because we are going bird are watching. That's right. We talk a lot about birds on the show, but we are turning the binoculars onto the people who are. watch them. We're swooping into the culture of birding. What is it about getting up at sunrise, going into the woods, and waiting for a tiny, feathered little muffin to fly past that thrills so many people? Here to bring us into the surprisingly high drama world of bird festivals,

avian stakeouts, and spotting your nemesis bird is Rosemary, a science writer, illustrator, birder, and author of the brand new book, The Birding Dictionary. Welcome back to the show. Hi, I'm so excited to be here. How deep are you in the birding world? I would say you could probably see like the top of my forehead sticking out of the swamp that is the burning world. Deep. I am pretty darn deep. Yeah.

What was your spark bird and please define what that is? A spark bird is a bird that gets you into bird. Like you might have already noticed a few birds and gotten kind of excited, but a spark bird is the the bird that turns it in. into an obsession. And it's hard for me to say exactly what mine was because I was burning since I was pretty little. But I have a really strong memory of looking out my backyard in Ottawa where I grew up and seeing some people call them perulas, some call them perillas, a fun bird and quirk. These beautiful little warblers flilling in my backyard and I went, whoa, those exist. You know, I was like a little old kid, blew my mind. And so I think those were my sparks. Okay. So you wrote this book about

bird words, kind of like a glossary of birder terminology, and it gets into the nitty gritty of bird behavior and birding culture. You've been birding for a long time. What's the most surprising thing you learned writing this book? I was surprised by how much I had absorbed, honestly, because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to write this book. You know, there's always a moment of imposter syndrome and, oh, do I really know enough terms to fill an entire book? And when, my editor suggested this, I sat down and just started writing terms and I think I had like 200 in the blink of an eye and I thought, oh my goodness, we really do have our own terminology and I have fully absorbed it and there's just so much. And you don't even notice you're

using words like steakout or butterbutt and then you are. What's a butterbutt? A butterbutt is a word for a yellow rumped warbler. These really cute little common songbirds that fly around and are really, really lovely to see just little warblers. Some of them stick around all year in the States. And what I think is funny about them is that you may hear the word butterbutt and chuckle. And then after a while, you're using it completely seriously and earnestly. And you're like, there's five butter butts in that tree. And what's funny about them, too, is that they have yellow armpits, too. So I think we should also be calling them butterpits. Butterpins. Absolutely.

I mean, this is a term of endearment I'd like to see go viral. Like instead of babe, how about, hey, Butterbut. Exactly. Okay, what happens at a birding festival? Have you gone? Take me there. I just got back from one. I go to them all the time. I just got back from the biggest week in American birding. That's what it's called and also describes it. It's in northern Ohio, just like hundreds to thousands of birders descend on this pretty empty part. of Northern Ohio on Lake Erie, and just we're swarming there. We're everywhere. And I've been to music festivals too. I'm actually a big metal fan, and they're quite different. Wording festivals

are pretty calm. Everybody gets up really early. They get excited about birds. They're different from a metal festival. Yeah, not as much screaming and slamming into each other. It's more, you know, you take out the earplugs because you're trying to hear. Are there cultural norms, you know, or practices at a birding festival? Like, if I went, what would be the biggest foul paw that I could do? You know, I am someone who earnestly believes that everybody is a birder, no matter how deep into the culture they are. And this is a soapbox that I will scream from forever. Get on.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there is no other culture that's quite. like birding. I will go to bird watching festivals and I will see people with binoculars and bird guides and they have all the apps on their phone and they're really keen and they've seen 10 birds are excited about and they're wearing a bird themed t-shirt. And then I asked them, are you a birder? And they're like, oh, I'm not really a birder. I'm sort of a birder. You know, I believe that anyone who just looks out their window and sees a bird and likes it is a birder. So I personally think

it's a faux pot to be judgmental at people at bird watching festivals. We asked our listeners to tell us their most thrilling birding moments. And we got so many great stories, and I want to share one with you. Yes, please. Hello, this is Karina Newsom. I'm based in Atlanta, Georgia, and I saw Science Friday's post about high-drama birding tails. Mine is that on Valentine's Day of 2015, I was on the hunt for finding a pilinged blipcker.

I just learned how to bird, just take an ornithology, but the pylated woodpecker was so hard for me to find in North East Ohio when I went to school. on Valentine's Day, I had tuned into an AM radio station in Northeast Ohio that literally only gave bird alerts. And I found out that it was in the middle of a forest about an hour away from me. And it was a torrential snowstorm. You couldn't see six feet in front of you. Me, my partner at the time and his mom, we drove all the way out to this forest, height for a good distance into the forest, snow up to our knees. and then all of a sudden we heard the laughing call of the piloted Lepecker.

I literally fell on my knees into the snow and cried on that snowy Valentine's Day and I will never forget it. Oh, that is exciting. For folks who don't know, Karina Newsom is a superstar of birding. Absolutely brilliant birder, brilliant communicator. I love her so much. I have not yet met her. That story gave me chills. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is, that's another point when you know you're a problem. birders when you see something and you cry or you see something and you do something really ridiculous. I had this experience where I had not seen a bohemian wax wing and I was very excited to finally see when I had heard there was a report of a whole flock of bohemian wax swings.

And so I drove like an hour and I got to the spot and I heard them and I approached and they were all in this tree and I hurried up and I stood open mouth under this tree just like mind blown, just taking it in mouth very wide open. I'm worried. I'm scared. They had just eaten a lot of berries. And I learned, don't stand under a flock of wax wounds that are resting after eating a lot of berries. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Are you okay? I seem to be okay. I haven't grown any feathers yet. What's a nemesis bird? A nemesis bird is a bird that you really want to see that eludes you. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a super rare bird. It's kind of more of a nemesis if it's a really common bird that you just, you'll show up at the spot and it's not there.

You cannot find this thing to save your life. And then when you finally find one, you, you know, dropped to your knees and cry and you feel so much better. Do you have one currently? Have you had one in the past? Yeah, for a while. Mine was this gorgeous duck called the King Ider, which will occasionally show up on the East Coast. And I finally got one and I was very excited. And then my next nemesis bird was this little chickeny bird called a spruce grouse.

And I went up to northern Vermont to try to see one. And I got to the spot and I start walking down the road. And the thing that grouse will do is they'll hunch and sit and wait until you're like a few feet away. And then they'll explode into the sky and fly away as fast as possible. And this thing flew away when I was still far enough that I couldn't tell which species it was. And it flew away, and I still don't know if that was a spruce grouse. I still haven't seen them. I don't believe that they exist at this point.

We have another listener call I want to share with you. This time about the dangers of bird watching. Hi, I'm Randy Minotaur from Rochester, New York. I am an author of hiking guides and birding guides. My husband and I made a terrible error several years ago when we started up a trail in Big Bend National Park. looking for the Kalima warbler. You may know the Kalima is only seen right along the Texas-Mexico border. So if you want to count it for your North American Life list, you need to go up into the Chesos Mountains, go up a trail that has about a 1,400-foot elevation change, and you need to do this in May when it's 110 degrees. So this is what we did, looking for the Kalima Warbler, and hoping to photograph it.

So my husband was carrying an 18-pound lens, and we had a gallon of water each and all of that. We thought we were doing everything right. It seemed we did everything wrong. By the time we got to where the bird was supposed to be, we were out of water. We were severely dehydrated, and we were so disoriented that even when we saw the bird, bird. I swore up and down. It wasn't the bird. So we didn't photograph it. It was the most ridiculous day of my birding life. What do you think of that one? Oh, that's terrifying. Please bring enough water. Oh, that's so scary. Yeah, you know, anytime you're hiking,

it can sound so mild if you say you're birding. You know, oh, I'm going to go look at a bird, but you're out in the elements. It can be really intense. I distinctly remember when I was a little kid going to kind of a nearby green space in Ottawa. And I saw this flock of American goldfinches, not necessarily the most uncommon bird, but there were a ton of them in this one tree. And I was very excited. So I went off trail and kind of like moved through the brush towards them. And I got so stuck in this like rose bush greenbriar situation that I was physically like restrained by this tree. And I was like, well, now I live. here and my parents are going to find me. So you have to be careful. You're going out into the elements

and the birds are not going to come for you, but what will come for you is the heat and, you know, the cold and all that. So yeah, take care of yourself, people. What do you think is the thing that non-birders most misunderstand about birding? You know, I think that one of the things that they don't understand is that these, even the little, little birds can be so spectacularly beautiful. I don't think I totally got that really early on when I was a little kid. You know, cameras were not as good. And so, you know, I went to Florida and I saw these big egrits and these big pelicans. And I thought, now this is burning.

The flashy birds. The flashy birds. But as I got older sort of and, you know, I got, you know, you don't even need a fancy pair of binoculars. Just a little cheap pair of binoculars. You can find these tiny, tiny, tiny things. And then you look at them and, gosh, it's hard to describe just the colors and the patterns. and the shapes are so incredible. So I think there's something special about focusing on this

tiny spot in the world and just immersing yourself in those, you know, those colors and textures and patterns that's really special and that, you know, we could all, we could all enjoy. I think that's the perfect spot to land. Or perch. Even better. Rosemary Moscow is the author and illustrator of the Birding Dictionary, and she's based in Massachusetts. Thank you so much. After the break, IRL, angry birds. Grabbing on with their claws, pecking with their beak, and even plucking out feathers. Don't go away.

From birder misconceptions to bird misconceptions, there's this pervasive view in the bird world that male birds are the ones to watch. They've got the showy feathers, the interesting displays, while female birds, their lane is blending into the background, being docile. sound familiar? Well, as usual, actual data is complicating that narrative. Here to tell us more is Dr. Sarah Lipschutz, a behavioral ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Sarah, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Sarah, do you think female birds have gotten the short end of the twig? Absolutely. So I'm not just female birds. I mean, female animals make up, you know, roughly 50% of populations, but they've historically been neglected in biological research. We've heard this story before.

Absolutely. Even in humans, the National Institutes of Health Guidelines didn't require inclusion of women and minorities in clinical research nearly 25 years ago. So tell me about your new research on some female birds that are ruffling feathers with their aggression. So we were really interested in what makes an individual aggressive. Why does that vary between females and males and across species?

And our study examined a repeated behavioral target of natural selection in birds. We focused on this nest strategy called obligate cavity nesting, which is when in order to reproduce, a bird has to nest in a natural or abandoned tree cavity. A hole in a tree. Exactly. Yeah. These birds will also read a nest boxes, which makes them relatively easy for scientists to study. And we thought that competition for those limited nest sites might generate higher territorial aggression and especially in females because they require this nest site in order to lay their eggs and raise their offspring. And so we measured aggression in 10 different species

across 300 individuals in both females and males. And we tested the hypothesis that nesting in this cavity is associated with increased physical aggression. And that is exactly what we saw. What species fall into this category of, you know, obligate cavity dwellings? Would I know any of them? Yeah, these are common backyard birds. And so it might be surprising to know that female bluebirds, female eastern bluebirds, are particularly aggressive. And female tree swallows were some of the most aggressive in our group, along with female prothonatory warblers. What does higher aggression look like in a female bird?

Well, birds have a lot of different strategies to be aggressive. And so we had to think carefully about what is a kind of aggressive behavior that might be more universally. across species. And we came around to physical aggression. So we put these decoys out at birds' territories. And then we measured how much they physically attacked. Decoys? What were the decoys made of? So we needed to make the territory holders think that another bird was intruding on their territory. And so we actually stuffed birds. It was kind of like a taxidermy, except it involved more caught flu. Wait, you took, you took bird bodies and you made taxis.

Exodermade birds? We did. We used 3D printers and hot glue and beads for eyes. So part of the study was also to look at gene expression in the brain. And so every time that we collected a bird for the research, we also made use of its skin and stuffed it so that we could make these zombie decoys. Just another day in the life of being a scientist. Okay, here's the thing I want to know. Are these birds actually more aggressive? than their non-cavety dwelling counterparts, or are female birds just generally more aggressive than we give them credit for? I think it's both. I think we've understudied female aggression

for a long time, kind of based on some cultural or historical expectations of how females should behave broadly across animals. But then also, we really were curious to know whether there were certain species that we expected to be more aggressive when they fight over that resource. And so we did find that eastern bluebirds are more aggressive than their close relative female robins.

Those robins can build a nest anywhere, whereas those female bluebirds have to fight over that limited nest site. Okay, so you said the female birds were really aggressive to these decoys. Give me an example. What did they do? What they did was a number of different kinds of behaviors. And so this included things like grabbing on with their claws, pecking with their beak, and even plucking out feathers. What about those fake eyes? How did they fare?

Yeah, they pluck them right off. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you. Dr. Sarah Lipschutz is a behavioral ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including Sandy Roberts, Jordan Smudjick, Emma Gomez, Valisa Mayors.

I'm Flora Lickman. Thanks for listening.