Science Friday - Winter Birding. January 4, 2019, Part 2

Episode Date: January 4, 2019

Every year in the dead of winter, bird lovers flock in large numbers to count as many birds as they possibly can on a single day. This is the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count, a citizen science effort to track the trends of bird numbers over time. As the 2018 count comes to a close, Ira checks in with birders Jason Ward, Martha Harbison, and Laura Erickson about this year’s trends. Already many finches, including coveted grosbeaks, are showing up south of their normal winter range, much to the delight of avid birders from Florida to Vermont. The trio also share advice for beginning birders and making the most of the winter months, and which birds to look out for in 2019. As a bonus, Ira quizzes listeners on their bird call recognition skills. 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. Was your 2018 for the birds? If you're one of thousands of North American birders who participated in Audubon's annual Christmas bird count, maybe you spent a chilly day with binoculars frozen to your face, frantically fingering every finch, fringe, duck, or other feathered friend in flight. And as that count wraps up, tomorrow is the last day. We'll talk about, well, we're going to talk about it for the entire episode. It's our annual Christmas bird count show. What a bird is seeing more of than usual?

Rumor has it. It's a good year for Grasbeaks, for example. We'll talk about that. And what birds we should keep our eyes peeled for as we bird our way through January, February, and beyond. And, of course, we want to know what's the best bird you've seen this winter or even, well, not much of a year? How about all of last year?

Give us a call 844-724-8255. 844 SciTalk or tweet is at SciFri. And your photos. Your photos are welcome. Yes, send us some photos of what you're seeing. Let me introduce my guest. Martha Harbison is an editor for the National Audubon Society in New York. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you. Jason Ward, a bird educator and writer for Audubon in Atlanta. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you very much. Laura Erickson, a birder and author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of Minnesota. So she is, of course, in Duluth. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira.

Nice to have you. Well, let me begin with, all right, it's midwinter holiday season. The birders have decided it's a good time to get everybody together to count a lot of birds. Martha, why a Christmas bird counting? Jason, you can drop in on that answer, too. Why do you come in on a Christmas bird count? Number one, it's fun. But number two, it helps scientists, especially those at Audubon, track how the birds

are faring every single year. The Christmas bird count's been going for 119 years. So we have 119 years of great data. And the more that we get that, then the more we're able to actually track what's happening to the birds, you know, throughout the United States and actually the entire Western Hemisphere. Laura, I have to admit I've never been on one of the bird counts, although I love watching the bird feeder in my backyard. How does the Christmas bird count differ from other kinds of birding excursions? you're really keeping track of the exact number of birds you're seeing,

which is something that when you're just birding, you see a flock of siskins, and you try to count them, get a rough estimate, but you really want to find every bird in your area that you're responsible for on a bird count. So you have to know a lot of birds? You have to know the birds that are around. If you're up here in Duluth, you don't have to know nearly as many birds as you do when you're further south and some places in the west. We only had 57 species on the Duluth count this year, which was exactly average.

I guess Jason, average is good. I know you did a few counts this year. What were some of your favorite bird sightings? Oh, goodness. So I did a count in Portland, Maine. It was the very first time ever going to Maine, someplace that I've always wanted to visit. And first of all, the weather was great. And great for Maine is 45 degrees in sunny.

I thoroughly enjoyed that. But the highlight of the trip was undoubtedly the Great Black Hawk, a bird that is native to Central and South America and had no business being all the way in Maine. But we were able to see it. It was going for the lobster, you think? I mean, why would a bird be so out of place? There is a number of reasons why something like that would happen. This particular bird is a young bird. So what we have with young birds is that they'll disperse from their parents' territory

and they'll wind up places that they have no business being sometimes. So what other places have been to you that you've seen some interesting birds? I've been to Maine. I've also been to Texas as well. That is a very interesting place to be right along the Rio Grande Valley. and also to Cape May, New Jersey during the height of fall migration. Martha, did you ever, did you do an urban count?

Yes, I did. In New York? Where do you go in New York City? The Count of Birds. Do you count the Birds? We actually have multiple counts. I went to Greenwood Cemetery, which is a historic cemetery in Brooklyn.

But we also do it at Prospect Park. There's a count in Staten Island. There's a count in Central Park, in Wood Park. So there's a whole variety of places. But I personally went to the Brooklyn Count. A very special bird made Central Park famous this year, didn't it? Yes, it did. It was a duck.

I was thinking the Kurtland's warbler. Me too. I was thinking of the warbler. That's when you're like talking to a... See that's the difference with being a pedestrian like I am and being a bird expert like you. You're like, oh, the hot duck. Yes, the manoran duck. Probably an escapee from somebody's aviary is now hanging out and has been there for about four months now.

And people line up to go see this very colorful duck. Well, Laura, all the way up there in delivery. Duluth, did you hear about the duck? Yes, I did. My daughter lives in Brooklyn, but it made national news for bird. You know, birders were all aware of it. We in Duluth had a one-of-a-kind Christmas bird count duck, too. It wasn't nearly as stunningly gorgeous,

but we had, for the first time ever on any Minnesota bird count, had a tufted duck. They belong in Eurasia. Interesting. But you said you weren't going to talk about the duck. I was going to talk about the Curtland's Warbler. What is that? So the Curtin's Warbler is a bird that only summers in this really tiny region of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

And it winters down in the Bahamas. And you don't almost never find it anywhere else. And there's only, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was endangered for a while. And they need a lot of help in order to keep the population going. And one bird just randomly showed up in an early, an early man. this year in Central Park, and almost nobody believed it until a photo came out. And then every birder, like, pretty much dropped what they did and all ran to Central Park to go see it.

Wow. Let's go to the phones because so many people want to not chime in. I guess is the wrong word. Rich in Norwich, New York. Hi, Rich. Well, let me push that button. Hi, Rich. Okay, okay, there we go.

There we go. Go ahead. Yes. Well, I was going to talk about the large flock of evening gross weeks that I had, But just as I came on the air, they all scattered, and now I'm looking at what appears to be a Merlin, a falcon. He just swooped down. He's sitting on top of my bird peer right now,

looking around, like, where all the birds go. Where are you? Norwich, New York. Oh, cool. So the falcon lost its meal? Is that what you're saying? I think so, yes. I think that he was after the Ghost Beaks,

and they saw him, they all scattered. and now that's all there is right now with the falcons. Jason, you like falcons, I understand. Yes, I was so bummed hearing that story just now. I know. If you were the food, you wouldn't be bummed. Yes, but see, now this is the thing. I grew up watching tons of nature documentaries, as I'm sure most of us have,

and I was always that child who rooted for the predator to catch its prey. So whenever a gross beak or another passerine evades, A really cool predator like a Merlin, I get a little sad. We have to give equal time. You shouldn't have been at the Audubon offices today, Jason, because we actually watched a Cooper's Hawk take a pigeon out of midair right in front of our offices. And we're just like everyone started shrieking and then ran to the windows. Okay, I feel better now.

You saw this in New York City today? Yes. Describe what you saw? Yeah. So there is a water tower that is directly across the street from the Audubon. headquarters offices and a Cooper's Hawk sits up there very frequently. We actually have a bird alert that goes out to the office when the Cooper's Hawk is there. As we were watching the Cooper's Hawk and it basically went after a flock of pigeons and got one in front of us at lunchtime.

We need more Cooper's Hawk. Cooper's Hawks have been one of the main bird feeder hawks, the ones that come to birds at feeders for decades. But in Duluth, Merlins have had that role, and they're becoming more common at feeders elsewhere, like at our callers' evening gross weeks. And just yesterday, one of my friends watched a Merlin grab a pigeon in, and just he couldn't carry it off because Merlins aren't all that big, but he sat on the street eating his pigeon, his pigeon plunder.

Well, I saw, unfortunately, I guess, I saw, or my neighbor who has a small dog, came out one day while she was walking the dog and grabbed the dog as a giant owl was going after her dog and saved the dog. This does not surprise me. No. At all. And, you know, because I could hear the owl every night. Just like in the movies, I could hear it hoot. I thought, wow, I'm back in the woods. I'm in suburbia, but there was this owl.

and then she told me the story, and I, you know, put two and through together. Was it one of the soft hooting owls, the Great Horned Owl? That's a very good question. Well, give me a soft hoot versus another hoot. Do a hoot for me. Give me a hoot. Laura, you want to do that? As opposed to the more strident bard owl,

who goes in a rhythm who cooks for you, who cooks for you all. I thought it was the first one that you did. That's probably what it was because Great Horn dolls are the ones that will sometimes go for people's cats or very small dogs. They only weigh at most four pounds

so they can't carry it off, but they wouldn't mind trying to eat it in place. Wow. Martha, has it been a good year nationwide for birds based on results so far? I mean, it's been a pretty average year, so we haven't seen, like, any huge crashes of population. Again, this is super anecdotal right now

because we're just getting emails in. The data from this year is not, is only just only filtering in. But we've seen a lot of red-breasted nut hatch. That's something that's been sort of pinging all over the northeast. This is a bird that only shows up every few years. They follow the food. What's the regular?

Because I haven't seen nut hatches. all the time, but I don't know what they're red-breasted or not? Yeah, red-bredgets, they're really tiny, and they've got this sort of roughest breast, and they're really cute. The one that we see up here in the Northeast most often is the white-breasted nut hatch. It's much bigger. But we've seen, you know, the evening growth beaks. The pine Ciskins have kind of gone through and are now sort of hanging out in the Mid-Atlantic,

doing their thing. But we haven't seen, like, we haven't seen, say, an eruption of snowy owls this year. So it's been a fairly standard year. Okay, well, we'll come back with lots of calls, lots of tweets. We'll get to the tweets. We'll come back and talk with Martha Harbison, Laura Erickson, and Jason Ward. After the break, I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday.

Stay with us. We'll be right back after the break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We're talking about the joys of winter birding, and the birds are most likely to see this time of the year. With Martha Harbison, an editor for the National Audubon Society here in New York. Jason Ward, a bird educator and also a writer for Audubon in Atlanta, and Laura

Erickson, a birder, an author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of Minnesota. She's joining us from Duluth. And now it's time for you folks at listening. We're listening to show off to tell us what you know. Here's how it works. We'll be playing some bird calls throughout the rest of the hour and asking you to phone in to guess what birds they are. For example, the first one goes like this. Do you know that one? If you're thinking of the answer, phone us in.

844-724-8255. If you think you know the answer, because you make the call only if you make the call on that one. So here's how it works. If you were wrong, you're going to get the bird. Forgive me. But if you're right, it sounds like this. There you go.

That's how it works. And a reminder, let me replay the bird were I asking you to identify. That's it. This was one of the, this is our first one. Let me read some tweets because a lot of tweets coming in while you're phoning in and thinking about that. A tweet from John, 15, bald eagles in industrial valley, immediately south of Cleveland. First time in a century, he said. Wow.

Also, via Twitter, I saw a pink spoonbill mingling with the annual white pelican migration that makes a pit stop in lakes around the LSU. It's not a super rare bird down here, but seeing one is always a treat. Kind of fun. I love those guys. Yeah? The rosyed spoonbills. What makes them, for we birders who haven't seen that one?

They're big, they don't move real fast, so you can watch them very closely. They're bright pink, and they have a giant spoon. spoon bill. So it's like this big spatulate thing sticking out of its head. All right. The calls are pouring in. At least one call has poured in for the quiz guests. Let's go to a Wilmington, North

Carolina. Carolina, Greg, hi. Have you got a guess for us? Let me see he's punched in. I'm pretty confident that that's a barred owl. There you go. I wish you could win a prize. We don't have anything to give you. But

But I think he should get extra credit if he knows if it's a boy or a girl. Oh, my God. Now, there you got me on that one. I don't know, but I know that they make some crazy wild sounds when they're active. We have them all around my neighborhood. Well, Laura, because you ask that question, you have to tell us, sound-wise. What's the difference sounds between the two? That one's a female, and I can tell it because, first of all, it's just a little bit higher pitched than the male would be,

but also it had a whole lot of vibrato as it made that descending trill at the end. The male doesn't make as much vibrato. Wow. Can you do that one for us? Oh, just play it again. You did that first one so well. But the interesting thing is female owls are larger than males, and yet the female has the higher frequency sound. And that's because even though they're the same, the male smaller, he's got a slightly larger skull to make more resonance.

Jason, in Atlanta, have you seen anything of, you know, of real interest in Atlanta? Is bird watching easier in the south? There's a warmer. Yeah, so I'm doing one in Atlanta tomorrow, and the forecast calls for about mid-50s and partially cloudy, so we're going to get it easy in that part. The leaves have all fallen from the tree. We'll be able to see hawks nice and easy as well.

And even though we're pretty far from the coast, we still get a decent number of species down here in Atlanta. I'm assuming for my particular circle, I'm not putting any pressure of any of my members of my team, but I'm going to aim for about 60 to 65 species tomorrow. Wow. Wow. Let's go to the phones to Bakersfield, California. Hi, Bill.

Welcome to Science Friday. A report, my favorite sighting of the last 40 years. 40 years ago at my family's place outside of Bakersfield was the last time I saw California Condors in the wild. And two days ago, I saw one there again. And had a number on his wing and all that stuff. Amazing to me to see them back after so long. You know, you can tell I'm probably getting a little warbly about it. I had a question for the bird experts about, you know,

I know there's this ongoing study and the birds have to be monitored and taken in and tested for this and that. and the government shutdown might be putting a hiccup in all that. And I was curious if they knew, like, studies like that and the studies of the albatrosses in Hawaii and all that, what happened. Let me get an answer. Jason, Laura, Martha, do you know anything about whether the shutdown is affecting birds, a burning bird cow?

No. That's a great question. I know that a lot of the people who are in charge of taking, care of the habitat in the National Wildlife Refuge System and the national parks and national forests are furloughed right now, and that can cause a problem. Sometimes some of the surveys are done by volunteers, and they can continue doing their work if they can get into the places, if the places haven't been closed down. but it could be pretty tricky. For a short, right now is a critical time for the albatrosses out on Laysan Island because they're nesting right now,

and they've been having problems with mice attacking the birds on their nests. The mice have figured out how to jump on their upper back where the birds can't reach them no matter what they do, and the mice will actually start eating the poor birds alive. So that's very scary if we aren't sure that they're being monitored and protected. Wow, that's really scary. Let's go to Long Island, to Shinnecock, way out there on the island. Kim, welcome to Science Friday.

Kim, are you there? Well, wait a second. Did I punch the one? I think I did. Kim, go ahead, Kim. Hello? Yes, go ahead. My mistake.

Oh, gosh. There it was. So, yeah, I live out on Long Island, and I was going to a project. I worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension out in Suffolk, and I was going to a project that I run on Dune Road. And coming across the Pontiaclock Bridge, I spotted a brown pelican, which I, you know, was pretty shocked to see having gone to the Keys a lot and knew brown pelicans pretty well to see one on the bridge.

and I looked online that night because people were thinking I was crazy and there was a documented other sighting of a brown pelican that beat in New York. So I don't know if that's uncommon or if that's just me. Martha, what do you think? You know, you get a lot of birds that get actually blown up here from storms. So there was actually one CBC this year that had a magnificent frigate bird in Massachusetts. Those things usually hang out in Florida.

So it doesn't surprise me that you'd actually see a brown pelican, which is a relatively robust bird if it got blown off course and was hanging out, you know, out on Long Island for a while. I'll probably head back south soon enough. Do you think all this weather from climate change is blowing birds around where they might not usually be? I think if you get larger storms, yes, you're going to see lots of... They get turns.

And my friend sent me a photo of a turn in Kansas from like that had been like dragged there by the remnants of a hurricane a couple of years ago. So yeah, and usually you don't get them in there. So yeah, I think that, you know, if you see stronger storms because of climate change, you're going to actually see a lot more birds off course because of that. All right. Let's go ahead. Jason, go ahead.

No, just a couple of years ago, we had a brown booby in the middle of Atlanta, just perched on one of the office buildings down here. So, yeah, with stronger storms, you'd start. to see a lot more weird sightings like that. I think, you know, one of the weirdest sightings, me just being a suburbanite, and we have these trees that are 200 feet tall. It was passed when the leaves,

there were no leaves on the tree, so I could see it all the way to the top. And I thought there was this giant vulture up there because it was sitting by itself, and I looked at it, and I looked at it, and the more I looked at it, it looked like a turkey. Can a turkey get up? Yes, slide.

of that eye. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We underestimate turkeys. Unlike the, you know, what was that TV show with as God is my witness. WKRP. Yeah, WKRP in Cincinnati. But I've seen wild turkeys on the rooftops of tall buildings in downtown Cleveland.

Wow, because I've seen, you know, I've almost hit many flocks of turkey. here in New England, where I live in New England, a lot of turkeys around. But I've never seen one so high up I needed my binoculars. Yeah, we underestimate turkeys. They're pretty powerful flyers. And fun fact, young turkeys can fly when they're just about a week old. Now, they don't do that very well, but they are certainly capable of flight at that age, which is wild. That's insane.

It is insane. Speaking of insane, let's go to our quiz. There we go. So time for another round of our bird call quiz. Okay, this sound was picked by Laura Erickson, so let's take a listen. I want it to stop. I'm just transported outside. Yes.

Sitting at this sound, oh, it's so beautiful. Okay, if you think you know what that is, give us a call. 844-8255, and we'll see who can guess that the first. I was looking in your eyes. You knew exactly what that bird was. So don't give it away. Can't I win this? Yeah, you can win what everybody else is winning.

Nothing. High fives. There's so many people. Let's go to the phones. Let's go to Bert in Oakland. Hi, Bert. Got to turn your radio on. No, Bert, no.

Got to drop Bert because his radio. Oh, we have an answer. Let's go to the phones. See if we have an answer. To Lucy in Seven Hills, Ohio. Hi, Lucy. Hi, Ira. Thanks for taking my call.

That is a peewee. Oh, you got the bird. Oh, thank you. Good guess, though. That was a good guess. Well, Martha, what was it? Um, I think there's a... No, Jason, you get to guess what it is.

Do you want to take another call? Do you want to get a guest another shot? I can throw it out there. Okay, we'll give it. Well, you're right. That's a very good idea. We'll take another call, see if we have... Someone else who can guess what that sound was, and we'll go on and take more calls.

Here do we have somebody else on the line. Let's see. Let's just go to Tulsa and take another call from John and Tulsa. Hi, John. Hi, I'm so excited to be talking with you guys today. Thank you for taking my call. You're welcome. Go ahead.

Well, when I was growing up, my mom was a medical doctor, this is back in the day, and we would end up with interesting things in our first. freezer, that being a cedar wax wing one year, ended up in there, and no, don't judge us, but it's just a beautiful bird. And so they were always something of a curiosity mystery. And I grew up learning about birds, and I'm not an official bird watcher, but I sure love them. And here in Tulsa, I've noticed that the cedar wax wings just come in and big flocks to our neighborhood and are feasting on the Japanese holidays. And I just wanted to learn a little bit more about cedar wax wings. Where are they migrating through?

Where's their home territory? Can you teach me a little about this bird that I used to find in our freezer? And I wondered if anybody else there would admit to freezing birds in their freezer, or is that just an anomaly? All right. Let me just remind everybody first that this is Science Friday from WNIC Studios, talking about birds. And I see you were, you were, Martha, you were shaking your head.

I was nodding my, yes, we've had birds and freezers. I had a magnolia warbler in my freezer for a while. And occasionally when we find birds that have struck buildings in New York City, they will put them in the Audubon office freezer until we can hand it over to AMNH or NYC Audubon for autopsy. Jason, can you talk about the wax wing? Yeah, so in Oklahoma, waxwing, visit during the wintertime. So they're a wintering species in Oklahoma. And yeah, during that time, they'll travel in these pretty decent sized flocks and they'll just descend on a bush and just

gobble up all of the berries. They're a year round in some of the northern parts of the U.S. And they spend their summers in Canada. Ah, here you go. Nice little expose. Let's go to the phones. Another guest, Chelsea from Malpina, Michigan. Hi there. Let's see if I can get her on. Chelsea, go ahead. Oh, hi. Hi there. Ira and Company.

No guesses on the bird yet? No, you're the next guesser. Okay, I'm going to guess it's a trickety. Yeah, you got the right bird. That's your credit if you get the species. Yeah, I was going to say, like, we got a few of them. Yep, and I have very friendly ones that I can actually actually. Actually, if I'm really patient and sit out there, I've got a couple of them that will actually land on me.

So it's so much fun. Can you tell us what the species is, Chelsea? The species of chickity? Yeah, well, that's what my guests are saying. I don't know. Black cap or whatever you mean? Is that what you're looking for us? Yes, we go.

You need another ding on now. Okay. Does it a double ding? Woo! In the U.S. You're in my region. Thank you for calling. Thank you.

In the U.S., we also have Mountain Chickadees, and we have Chestnut-backed chickadees. Those are in the west. And then a boreal chickadee in the northeast. Don't forget about us here in the South. Oh, Carolina Chickie. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.

And in the extreme southwest in southeastern Arizona and the Chirikawa Mountains, there's also the Mexican Chiquity. Wow. Wow, my little chickadee. Okay, we're going to, this is great. We're going to take a break and come back and talk lots more with our show is going to the birds. 844-8255.

If you'd like to join us, you can also tweet us. We have lots of tweets. I'll go through more of them when we come back after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. We're closing out the bird book on 2018. We're doing our annual Audubon Christmas bird count, which wraps up tomorrow.

And we have a small flock of birders here. to talk about their favorite finds of the year, plus the joys of winter birding. I'm talking with Martha Harbison, Jason Ward, and Laura Erickson. We have a quiz going on. I want to just take a few tweets before I go to our last quiz question. Ryan Mendelbaum of Gizmoto, who's usually sitting across the desk for me when he comes in and talks to us about the news. He says, a flock of red crossbills, probably my favorite bird, to send it on me, just after I'd finish my Christmas bird count, in Taramac Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota.

What do you think of that, Laura? That's pretty cool. It's going to be interesting that the Red Crossville may be split into multiple different species, and the only way to tell most of them apart will be to actually make a recording of their song or call using your phone or whatever you have handy, because some of the calls are kind of hard, at least for my ears, to distinguish unless I'm actually looking at a recording. But Red Crossbills specialize on pine cones, and they're just a wonderful bird. Let's go to our last quiz question. Here it is.

This one, I'm sorry to say, might be a bit of a stumper. Interesting. If you think you know, give us a call. 844-7-24-8-25-5. if it just lulls me when he hit about them, forget him in the studio. I want to keep hearing them. Let's go to the phones because an interesting call from Bob and Lawrence, Kansas. Hi, Bob.

Hi. Happy New Year, everyone. Happy New Year. I would guess that that's some species of hawk, but one of the things that I really wanted to share is one of my favorite things to do here in Kansas is to go out to the lake with my laptop computer and a Bluetooth speaker and go to the Cornell Ornithology Bird Page, where you can call up a variety of bird calls, and just kind of see what you can recruit to come in and visit you.

It's an amazing way to bring you in birds and to be able to observe them. So you take your laptop, you go to the Cornell page, you turn on your Bluetooth speaker and play the bird call, and you see what birds come by to answer. Correct. Do you usually get a good response? Very good response. response. Bardels, I can set it out in the yard and barred owls will come in and a lot of birds will just come in. If you set it underneath a perch and a tree, they'll come in set right

above it. It's amazing. I have to try that. Oh, it's fine. I have to. That's my way. Don't do it during breeding season. You might get into a fight. What do you mean? Oh, it's because the birds are very territorial in breeding season. And so it could be that they think that you're another male that's about to move in on their territory. Yes, a hot button topic, really. I would say that when it comes to anything, moderation is key. I am okay with the use of playback as long as the individual. Using the playback is just thinking about the birds and being a little responsible when it comes to using the playback.

You just don't want to overdo it because you just don't want to unnecessarily stress the birds out. Hmm. That you remind me of speaking of stress. pressing birds out and wintertime, we are in the wintertime. Are the things we shouldn't do for birds, about birds, I have friends of mine who say, I won't put the feeder out in the summer, but I'll put it out in the wintertime. Is there something that's better than nothing? I mean, are there is etiquette or what are we doing that?

There's definitely etiquette. I would say that when it comes to a feeder, I mean, whatever works for you is best, the birds, They've been finding food sources for countless years. So whether or not an individual decides to put a feeder out, those birds will do a pretty good job at finding food in their natural habitats. What I would suggest is I'm a bird of prey kind of person. So when you do see a hawk or a falcon on a prey item, I would suggest keeping your distance. Because if you want to get closer and you want to get a really good photo of that bird,

what you may wind up doing is spooking that bird off of its food. And it's already so hard for birds to catch flying food. So I would suggest just keeping your distance and not stressing that bird out. A lot of younger hawks and falcons die within their first year of life because catching food is so hard for them to do. So I would suggest just suggest keep your distance, stay a safe distance away from them when they're eating. Can you put it?

I'm sorry, go ahead. I want to emphasize that he's not only right about that, but if you care about your chickenies and your evening growth speaks and all the other birds at your feeder, you can't help but feel a little angry at a hawk who's eating one of them. But if you scare the hawk away, it's going to kill another bird where it's got those calories and that may give it a little time before it goes to take another one. So give it space, let it eat.

Remember that hawks are birds. So when they come to your bird feeder, well, they don't see that you're supposed to be all that exclusive. That's 100% right. When you set seed out, you are creating a nice silver platter for not only chickadees and finches, but also for Cooper's and Sharpshin' Hawks as well. So if you don't want them to feed on birds in your backyard, that's perfectly fine. You should probably take your feeders down then. Okay. Oh, but if you are going to keep your feeders up, especially with climate change through the winter,

we'll be getting thaws and then freezing again, even up in northern Minnesota. And then at winter's end, when we get thaws, a lot of microorganisms can grow on that spilled seed on the ground. that can lead to things like salmonella outbreaks or botulism outbreaks in your neighborhood. So make sure you keep the spilled seed cleaned up, especially when the temperatures get around the 30s. Wow. I never would have never thought of that. That's quite interesting. That's why you sit there and I sit here.

I'm a little scared to look at your refrigerator. What do you have growing in there? On that note, let's go to the quiz. We have a contestant on the line. Bill from Juneau. Hi, Bill. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you.

And I'm very near Juneau. And I'm looking at my feeder and see a chestnut back chickadee, which was mentioned earlier, and also a song sparrow, which we have here during the wintertime. And looking at Oak Bay, I see Harlequin ducks nearby, and Barrow's Golden Eyes. Wow. So those are some birds here in Oak Bay at this time of year. All right. Do you have a guess for us for the bird chirp we had before?

I do have. It was some kind of a hawk. And I'm guessing it's a redtail hawk, which we don't have here in Oak Bay right now. But that's my guess. Let's see if you're right. I got a ding Annenberg. Wow. Well, we have to explain that.

Jason, can you explain why he got both of those? Yes. Okay. So what you were hearing was a Blue Jay imitating a red-tailed hawk. They do that? Oh, ho. So the difference is... We don't have them here, but I know them from Oklahoma,

and I know that Blue Jays have a cousin here called a Stellar's Jay. Oh, yeah. Wow. So tell me more about that, Jason. They can actually, they can imitate other birds. So now we have a lot of birds that practice mimicry. We have mockingbirds. We have thrashers.

They're really, really good mimics. But the Blue Jay takes that and turns it on its head because Blue Jays are known to primarily mimic birds of prey. So we have red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed. Hawks and also Broadwing Hawks being some of the more mimicked species. The interesting thing about Blue Jay mimicry is we do not know yet why they mimic hawks. We're not sure yet. Interesting.

Now, the difference between a red-tailed hawks screech and a Blue Jay imitating a red-tailed hawk is that Blue Jay, it sounds a little more whistled when he's doing that screeching sound. And it's not as, it's just not as deep, not. not as convincing as a red-tailed hawk would sound. But is it convincing enough to fool the bird? But it's convincing enough to make me pick up my binoculars, most definitely. I've had a Blue Jay perch within 30 feet of me, imitate a red-tailed hawk. So I started to look around for the hawk only to see the Blue Jay,

and then stopped and then started to imitate a red-shouldered hawk. The very same Blue-Jay decided to mimic two hawks. I'm not sure why. Maybe he just wanted me to keep one moving and get out of his area. But, yeah, these things are fascinating. We're not 100% sure we haven't cracked the case yet. That's interesting. There's a couple of theories why they do it.

One is that they scare off birds on their nest, and that might give the Blue Jay a clue because they do raid songbird nests for eggs or small nestlings. And the other one is just that they'll scare everybody. off a bird feeder so they can fly in and eat until everybody realizes that's just a blue jane comes back and that's the interesting thing about that because we have seen blue jays practice mimicry for those exact reasons however we've also seen them do it when no other birds are around when there's no food at a feeder so they probably do it for a number of different reasons martha i have a tweet that you might be interested in only read it to you that says that harris sparrow was

one of my favorite birds this year. It's from Mary Beth Cooper who says, it was in Central Park, and it was found by a local, very observant birder. The bird was foraging with a flock of white-throated sparrows. It was a true rarity for the park. Yes. Why is it? Why? Harris Sparrows, I don't have the range map in front of me, but they're usually found much farther west than here, and it's actually not, I've never seen the species. Like, I've never seen a Harris Hawk. I'm a Harris Hawk. I'm a Harris Hawk. Sarah Sparrow. So they, for one, to show up in Central Park, and then be able to find it. Because the other thing is, like, everybody looks closely at sparrows because those little brown things that run on the ground.

So you have to be really dedicated to bird every bird to notice that there is a slightly different brown bird amongst all the other brown birds. All right. Speak for yourself. I love sparrow. I love them. I'm just terrible at them. Let's go to Pittsburgh, P.A. Josiah. Hi.

Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thank you for taking my call. I wanted to tell you about a time I was out picking Golden Chanterelles, and I was getting back to a patch and walking through a stand of gray dogwood, and I saw Scarlet Tanninger's on the far side of it and got to see a mating dance where the male was very active with this tight formation flying through the branches of this dogwood stand, and it was definitely just the most beautiful thing you could imagine seeing.

Wow, thanks for sharing with it. Yeah. I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with Martha Harbison, Jason Ward, and Laura Erickson. And in the few minutes we have, what's your birding resolutions for 2019? Let me start with you, Martha. I'm going to go down to Atlanta, and I'm going to have Jason find me a brown-headed nut hatch.

Oh, they grow on trees down here. I know. I've been down there two times and I haven't seen one yet, so I have to get that ticked off my life list. It's become my nemesis bird. Why are you so interested in that bird? It's the only nut hatch in the United States I haven't seen yet. I see. And, yeah, they're everywhere in the sort of the southeast.

And I just love nut hatches. They're just a very, they're charismatic birds. And because I have not been able to find something that falls off a trees, kind of frustrates me and offends me. You know, when I put up my backyard feeder, like all suburbanites, I thought there were three kinds of birds that live, you know, the crackle or the sparrow, whatever. Once I put it up and saw a dozen or more different birds, the nut hatch was the first different bird I saw, and I was so fascinated by how it flies.

Oh, yes. The dipping up, the down, that's just amazing. You know, I never knew birds flew like it. Have you been able to watch them go up and down trunks? Oh, yeah, and they take the little nut with them and they crack it on the trunk or on the branch. Jason, what's on your list for 2019? I just want to see more birds. I want to crack 300 total for the year,

and I want to see more peregrine falcons. Those are my favorite birds by far, and I want to go each of these 12 months having at least one siding, and I would love especially to see one hunting as well. And Laura? Well, my birding goal is actually not to see anything in particular, but this year to be much more disciplined about reporting each of my birds in E-bird,

which is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon, work together to make the system eBird.org where you can keep track of every bird you've seen. Martha, if you're just beginning, you've listened to the show, you say, I want to get into birding, what tools, what tips. do you have? The first thing I would say is get an app. There are multiple free apps out there and just familiarize yourself with the birds in your area

just by looking at pictures or illustrations. I think that will sort of help you recognize when you're out in the field like, oh, there actually are very different birds out there as opposed to the three that you thought actually existed. And the next thing I would do is don't sweat it. Like, it's really hard. It can get me very frustrating when you start out

because you're like, I can't tell the difference between two, you know, what's something to be very obviously different if Jason or Laura and I looked at her, like, oh, yeah, that's clearly a blah. Novice birders can't do that, and it's okay. It is totally okay to be terrible at birding when you start. So being kind to yourself. I got the bird clock. You know the clock that strikes with bird calls on it?

Yeah. I actually learned a lot of those. We'll get you one. We'll get you one. I learned a lot of bird calls from that, listening, you know, as the clock was going around. This has been delightful. I want to thank all of you. Have a happy new year. And thank you.

And good luck with your birding and the last day of the bird count. Thank you. Thank you. Martha Harbison, editor for a National Audubon Society here in New York. Jason Ward, a bird educator and writer for Audubon in Atlanta. And Laura Erickson, Berder, and author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of Minnesota. And I want to thank everybody who called in, tweeted, otherwise helped us fill this hour with wonderful stories about birds. Happy birding to everybody and good luck in 2019.

BJ Liederman composed our theme music. And if you missed any part of the program, you'd like to hear it again. You know, subscribe to a podcast or just ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. You'll get the latest episode right there. You could go online any way you like to. And we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all our social media. Have good luck. Seeing the birds you want to see.

Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.