The Science of Birds - Three of the World's Weirdest Bird Species

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Ivan was a recent guest on Just the Zoo of Us, a fun podcast about animals. The full conversation between Ivan and Host Ellen Weatherford is included in this special episode. They talk about three of the world's weirdest bird species.Support the show

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This is episode number 118. And if it sounds a little different right now, that's because I'm recording this in a hotel room in Sichuan, China. I'm here leading a birding tour, and it is about day 12 of the tour. Everything is going really well.

We've seen some incredible birds, birds like the monotypic Percivalski's pink tail, as well as some really great pheasants like the Chinese monol and Tibetan snowcock, as well as some of my favorites from my last time in China, the giant laughing thrush and blood pheasant and all kinds of other birds. So this episode is a special episode. I'm not actually going to be talking about my experience here in China this time. If you're interested in the birds and birding in China, go back and listen to episode number 108. That was one of my from the field episodes where I talked about my experience in China last time. And that visit was during the winter. I explored Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in December. Now it's June, so I'm seeing

Sichuan in an entirely new light. I'm seeing it in the midsummer, and it's pretty wild. It's absolutely beautiful, and the birds are everywhere, and it's fantastic. I'm actually in the town of Wollong today, and we're going to go visit the panda base, the place where they have the pandas for their breeding program and research program. So we're going to go get to see some pandas up close, which is pretty exciting. So what's happening in this episode? What you're going to hear is me as a guest host on another podcast called Just the Zoo of Us. Okay, maybe I'm not a guest host, but I'm a guest. Just the Zoo of Us is a great podcast about animals. It's hosted by Ellen and Christian Weatherford, and they have nearly 300 episodes where they talk about either one

or several animals, and it's just a really fun, lighthearted podcast. And I think that If you're a fan of this podcast, The Science of Birds, that you might really enjoy just the zoo of us. So in this episode, I'm talking to Ellen about what I think are three of the weirdest birds in the world. And it's just a casual fun conversation between me and Ellen talking about birds, and I hope you really enjoy it. So yeah, here it is, me talking about the three weirdest birds. Enjoy the episode, and I'll catch you at the very end. Hey there, everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford. And welcome to Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast, where we rate your favorite animals out of 10. This week, I am joined by a friend who is familiar to the podcast. If you've listened for a long time, or if you listen to a lot of other podcasts about animals, not an unfamiliar voice. This is Ivan Philipson. Hi, how's it going?

Ivan, what are your pronouns real quick? He, him. Thank you so much. And you have been on our podcast before. It was quite a few years ago. You came to talk about the joy of loons, which was really, really fun. For people who maybe are new to your voice, could you let our friends listen know. What got you into the work you do with birds?

Sure, thanks, Ellen. Yeah, it was really fun to be on the podcast the last time. So I have a background in biology. I went to grad school for a bunch of years, getting a master's and a PhD. ironically not studying birds, studying other cool critters like frogs. And I kind of fell into the world of being a birding guide. I started off as being a naturalist guide. I left academia, bought a van, started leading local tours around Portland, Oregon where I live. Portland activities, typical typical typical average Portland behavior. Yep, totally. Just buy a van,

you know, go do stuff, go look at nature. So, you know, yeah, I got around talking about everything from birds to plants to geology. And the birds were just always so compelling and so exciting. And one thing led to another, and I eventually started leading multi-day trips for my local Audubon group, which is now the Bird Alliance of Oregon. And then I started a business doing just that. And so it was all birds all the time, all around the world. And then with the pandemic, couldn't do that for a while. So I started the podcast, The Science of Birds. Okay. Talk to us about the science of birds because it is a true delight. Yeah, thank you. It's been really a huge passion of mine. You know, again, started just as this kind of pandemic project. And now it's this thing I'm really proud of and I love doing. It is a scripted podcast. It's just me. And it comes out every two weeks or so. And I talk about either an individual bird species or a family of birds or something about the basic biology of birds. And it's very lighthearted. Try to be funny. I do my best, but also go into, you know, some relatively deep scientific information,

but keeping it general enough for just a curious person to understand what's going on. I actually have people listening of all ages, which is amazing. I have kids from, you know, six, seven years old listening all the way up to people in their 90s, which is pretty wild, all around the world. So, yeah, it's just something I've really enjoyed. And I learn a ton by producing the podcast, right? Every episode I make, I learn a lot too. and that's something that just enriches my life immensely.

That's my favorite part, I feel like, doing notes, because I feel like teaching other people helps you learn something like better yourself, right? Because like sometimes in the process of explaining it to somebody else, you're like, you come up with a new way of understanding it that I think helps enrich your own understanding of it. I also wanted to ask, were you an animal kid? I was an animal kid, yes, 100%.

150%, yep. Were you like out in the woods or like a zoo kid? Like what flavor of like animal kid? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Well, I grew up probably my formative years route in kind of deserty, dry environments in Southern California. So my first love was reptiles and amphibians. So I was a herp kid. And so I'd go out and catch snakes or frogs, turtles, lizards, all those kind of guys. So that was my thing. And I had a lot of them as pets, both, you know, wild caught and pet store things. So the room was full of terrariums and aquariums and all that sort of thing. And the zoo. Yep, totally a zoo kid too. My dad used to take me to the Los Angeles Zoo. San Diego Zoo, many, many happy memories of all that. So yeah, that definitely, like, that was my whole thing pretty much was animals. Now, I very recently have spent more time in the American Southwest in the deserts than I had previously in my life.

I spent some time in Joshua Tree National Park. Wonderful. And I got to spend some time in Sawaro National Park. Also wonderful, yeah. So we got to spend some time out in the desert, doing some real sort of dry, dry, dry, hot and dry hiking. And that is definitely, I can see a place that will really foster like an interest in animals because the biodiversity out there is so, because it's such like a hostile environment, I feel like you get just like the wildest adaptations in the animals that live

out there. Like, do you feel like that was something that kind of like caught your attention about them? Yeah, I really think so. I mean, you hit upon something. I recently did an episode on deserts as bird habitats. And I love deserts. I mean, it's quite possibly my favorite. type of ecosystem and for the exact reason you're pointing out which is it's so extreme it can be almost like visiting an alien planet where you know you have these bizarre plants with all these weird growth forms and all these weird adaptations for surviving in hot hot and dry conditions as well as the animals and it's just yeah if you're a naturalist or a biologist it's just utterly fascinating yeah we were what we were having a lot of fun watching the cactus wrens and the

the heila woodpeckers were very very charming to us so I was like I was like, yeah, I could totally see how someone who, like, grew up in this kind of climate would definitely have an interest in animals because the animals that live out here are bonkers. Yeah, they're totally bonkers. And, you know, the other thing that's nice about the desert is, you know, compared to, let's say, a tropical rainforest or something, everything's just kind of out in the open, you know, where you can see it more or less, right? It's not all way up in the canopy or hidden in the bushes. It's everything's just kind of running around right in front of you like that, like the woodpeckers and all that. Letting their freak flag fly there just let it all hang. out. They don't care. They don't care, man. I live in the desert, man. I don't care. Take it or leave it.

On the topic of, you know, animals having interesting and unexpected adaptations to either strange environments or strange circumstances, you know, animals kind of getting creative with it, getting a little weird. You have joined us today to talk about your three weirdest birds. And this is a fascinating prompt to me. I would love to know what direction of weird we're heading in. How are we interpreting the word weird? as it applies to birds yeah well i'm super excited about this as well yeah it's an interesting question right like what makes something weird and of course it's very much a subjective thing and it's from a human perspective because you know the birds don't think they're weird they think everything else

is weird right they think we're weird they're like we're all like this where's your beak yeah what the heck man so you got this weird fleshy soft face what's that good for nothing wear your feathers you can't fly weak totally so i was thinking about you know what makes a bird I can think of it at several different levels. And the first would be just looking weird, right? That's probably what most of us think about. You look at a bird and you go, that does not look normal.

That does not look like what I expect a bird to look like. And of course, we have at our minds different categories of birds, songbird, raptor, you know, water bird, whatever. But we know when something's a little off, right? So that would be one of the categories. Something's not quite right here. And then the second one would be maybe something like behavior, ecology like does it do something really different compared to other birds regardless of what it

looks like does it do something different does it forage in some weird way does it nest in a weird place and so that would be another factor sicko mode yeah yeah it's just it looks normal on the outside but it's got some really dark stuff going there's demons a deeply haunted bird in the closet so and then the third one which is one i often think about is taxonomic distinctiveness right so So I actually have on the podcast, when I talk about a bird family, I actually have a weirdo alert. So if there is an individual bird in that family that is a standout outlier, then that one gets a weirdo alert. If there's a weird enough bird. The black sheep of the family.

Yeah, exactly. Like me. The weird cousin. So the idea is, you know, you've got the avian tree of life with all these branches. And some branches have many, many leaves, right? Let's say, you know, the songbird branch, the heron branch, you know, whatever, the eagle. and hawk branch. Many, many species are on that branch. Well, some branches have like one leaf and that branch is sticking way out to the side and for some reason it's got one leaf on it and that is

a weird bird almost certainly. That one's just hanging on for dear life. Like please. I'm the last one, please. Yeah. And so the interesting question though is, you know, there are some birds like that that don't look all that weird to us, right? You just go, oh yeah, it's like a little brown bird, whatever, not a big deal. But if you understand the biology of the bird, you understand the genetics, the evolutionary history, you realize, oh, no, that's something very special. So today I'm going to try to present you with three bird species that tick all of those boxes, or at least most of them, right? That was kind of what I was going for. These are like the heavy hitters. They have to be like really on their game. Yeah. They can't be slacking. Yeah, they're bringing the weird like hardcore.

Like if, you know, if somebody doesn't think these birds are weird, then they're weird. There's multiple angles of weird to it. Like there's layers. Oh, yeah. So many layers. Yeah, exactly. Probably more than we'll ever know. I'm excited. I would love to hear. I don't know if you had like a like numbers in mind for them, like a three to one or anything like that. If you did, we would start with, I would imagine one and strong. So we would start with number three. Do you have a number three weirdest bird? Okay. So and then when you say three, that's the we're going to get increasingly more weird or less. I would like to increase. Okay. That's what I was thinking. I would like to like slowly nudge the weirds like dial up. Crank up the weird. Okay. We'll get to 11 at the end. All right. Yeah. So, yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. All right. Well, let's start off with the cagoo. That's spelled K-A-G-U. You know it's going to be weird when I've never heard of this creature in my life. All right. That's fantastic. And Ellen, you know, I did look through your previous podcast episodes, double-checking that you haven't talked about these birds. I don't think you've talked about any of these three birds. So I was very excited when I saw that you had not talked about the kagu because This is a classically weird bird, so... Yeah, not only have we not done an episode on it. I'm being so serious right now. I've never heard of it.

Well, you're not alone. You're not alone. In the world of birds and birding, there are maybe about 40 different birds out there in the world that belong to what we would call a monotypic family, right? So family in the taxonomic sense. So this bird is one of them. It's in its own family that doesn't have any close relatives. Lonely.

Yeah, very lonely. that sense. It's a single leaf on a branch. And for birders, people who get into this sort of thing, those are exciting birds to see, right? Because when you see that bird, you're seeing a unique representation, an evolutionary lineage that is unlike anything else, right? Other than the fact that it's a bird, it's super different and weird. And so that's exciting. For people who maybe aren't steeped in taxonomy nerdhood, could we give people some like a frame of reference for how unique, like, a family is, like, at what level would, like, a family be? Yes, that's a great question. So, you know, you have kingdom, phylum, class, family, or order,

excuse me, order, family. Many of us know that sequence, right, of this sort of hierarchical way of looking at the world's diversity. A family is a nice sort of way of thinking about living things, I think, because usually the species within a family share recognizable characteristics, things that we go, oh, yeah, that's a blah. Okay, so for example, classic example would be Canadi, which is the family of dogs, right? The wolves, foxes, dogs, all that. That's Canadi. You know a member of that family when you see one, right? It's unmistakable. Same thing with cats, feelidae. It's giving canine. Yeah, it's just, it's got, it's given canine vibes, right? So it's like that's, and that's the thing. Now, if you go up to the next level of order, it's so

inclusive that things in that order are not necessarily recognizable as things in that order. So when we're talking about this cagoo, it's in this family rhino-ketidi or rhino-ketidi. And again, it's the only member in that family. So it's not something you're going to mistake with anything else. There are no close relatives. But for example, Peruladi would be the family of the North American wood warblers, right? And you probably could recognize one of those if you are at all familiar with North American birds.

So you can say, oh, yeah, that's probably in that family of North American warblers. Yeah, it, like, has like a category. You have a bucket you can put it in your brain. Yes, exactly, exactly. And they're about, for birds, there are about 250 families. And so it works for my brain. And that's why in my podcast, often I do an episode at the family level because it's, it's meaningful. You know, again, if you go up to higher levels, it's a little less meaningful.

And, you know, there are 11,000 plus bird species. And so that's a little too far the other direction, a little overwhelming. but if you think about families, you can kind of talk about their general features and things, and it all makes sense, hopefully. I pulled up, you know, just some pictures of the cagoo. And there are so many features that look like they go on different birds. Yes.

And, like, it almost has, like, a chicken shape, but, like, weirdly long feet. And then almost has, like, the head of, like, not quite a pigeon. Maybe something like a swamp hen. Uh-huh. Like, a lot of, like, I'm like, I recognize all of these feet. independently but not together. Yeah, and that's the thing, right? You can't quite put it in a box because it is a box of one. And if you've never seen one, it's the only one in there. So exactly. So this is a slightly larger than a chicken. It's a mostly gray bird with long reddish orange legs

and kind of a thick long reddish orange bill. And it's got this amazing crest on its head. That's one of the outstanding features, right? And it can raise and lower those crest feathers. It kind of looks like long hair or like a mullet hanging out the back when it's relaxed, but if it wants to express itself, that crest comes way up and is super dramatic and really cool. I wish we could do that. Yeah, wouldn't, yeah. I mean, I guess we kind of can, right? Like our, like, when your hair raises because you're like scared or something like that.

But like, I want that on the top of the head. Right, right. But then everybody would know you're scared when you're scared and that maybe wouldn't be. Oh, that's true. You can't, you can't be like, I'm not, I'm not even scared. I'm not scared, bro. You go up to give a public speech or something and everybody's like, oh, man, she's terrified. I'm not going to believe a word she says.

So the cagoo, the other thing about their physical features is that they have this wing display to communicate to other cagos because they're very social or I think as a threat display, they spread their wings and they have these really bold black and white bars on the feathers that are really beautiful. And, you know, all of these birds today I have actually seen in the wild and we'll talk where this bird is found in a moment, but I regret that when I saw it, and it was really cool, I didn't get to see this particular wing display. So anyway, but it is really neat. I know that that is like disappointing aesthetically, but also I feel like that speaks to

like you being a good bird watcher. You know what I mean? Like you didn't stress the bird out. Exactly. Like you were a polite and courteous guest to the bird. Yeah, totally. I would much rather the bird not be afraid or feel the need to give me a threat display and me, I set out on that. That's totally fine. So, but the thing, really interesting thing about this wing display is it is one of the things that links this bird in this family to its closest relative. It doesn't have any close relatives, but its closest relative is a bird called the sunbidern. And the sunbidern is a South American bird. And we haven't talked about where the cagu is,

and I'll tell you now, it is only found on the island of New Caledonia, or in the country of New Caledonia, which is a kind of this cigar-shaped island off the east coast of Australia and west of Fiji. Not particularly close to South America. Not particularly close, right? So those two birds are each other's closest relatives. So that tells you something about how long they've been separated. They've probably been separated for 50 plus million years, maybe something like that for a very,

very long time. Oh, like because they would have been together when the continents had not separated yet. Possibly. Yeah, and of course, birds can fly. complicates things. But I should mention we forgot to say that the cagoo is flightless. Grounded. So that's really cool. It's grounded. Now it flew to New Caledonia at some point, but then eventually lost the ability to fly. This happens, of course, in many islands around the world, birds arrive with the ability to fly. And then because there are no terrestrial

predators like mammals on many of these isolated islands, it's okay for birds to lose the ability to fly and to spend their energy elsewhere, like in reproduction or growth. So the cagu is flightless. But back to the sunbittern, because of that wing display, the sunbittern is super famous for its wing display. It spreads its wings and it has this amazing, richly colored, wild pattern in its wings that is just like, you know, photographers go nuts for. So that's kind of one of the things that links these two birds. I did pull up a picture. It really looks like it has eyespots like a moth. Exactly.

It reminds me a lot of like those moths with big eye spots on their wings. Yeah, and this, of course, if it's a threat display, that's going to work really well. You know, something's coming at it, shows you the wings with the big eyes and like, oh, slow down there, buddy, something, something ain't right here. You mentioned, like, the cagu living on an island without any, like, large terrestrial predators. I'm wondering if maybe like that, those eye spots just weren't as helpful because if they don't have any, like, large predator, who are they scaring off with that, right? Good point, yeah. And I think with the cagoo that most of that display may be more for communication with other cagos, right? So it's less about threat. You know, I mean, I think that they also do threaten each other.

And there are maybe some avian predators that they might show that for. So I think there's some crossover there. But yeah, who knows. It's for the boys. Yeah, it's for the boys. You know, check this out. Look at what I got. It's for the guys.

For the homies. For the homies. Yeah. And they do run around in little groups. They like kind of little clans of a monogamous pair, male and female. And then they'll often have some of their older children running around with them. And yeah, just super charismatic birds. go to New Caledonia, this bird is represented all over the place. It's like, you know,

on their money, and I was in the main city there, and it was like the bank, the logo for the bank was a cagoo. It's just like everywhere. It's their national bird. You know that thing about like, you become like an icon if you have like a recognizable silhouette, right? Like, you know, like they say like you're a fashion icon or you're like a style icon if you have a recognizable silhouette. Yes. This is unmistakable because of like, the long crest and the like distinct sort of shape like that that's a style icon absolutely there's nothing that quite looks like a cagoo and especially if you're new caledonia all you need is the silhouette and you know exactly what you're talking about they're so cute and the little the wispy little like gray feathers

because they have the you know slate gray sort of like whitish gray feathers which is like at first you think that's going to be like drab and boring but then the pop of bright red from the beak and the legs and even like the little red eyes they have this like very tasteful pop of color Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's a really nice looking bird. You know, the whole ensemble is very charming, very cool. It's working. Yeah, it's working. Now, unfortunately, this bird is endangered, you know, as so often is the case for flightless birds on islands where people are, cats and dogs, we talked about a little earlier,

the Canadi and the Filidae, those guys are giving these guys a hard time because, you know, they're nesting on the ground, living on the ground. And so there's conservation measures, of course, but there's, you know, not that many of these guys left, so we'll have to hope that this particular weirdo persist. long into the future. Let your weirdness persist long into the future. Yeah, the world needs weirdness. We need you, Kagu.

We need you now more than ever. Yeah. Well, you know, and we're joking, but the thing is with these monotypic families, right? Again, this is one species in a family. If you lose the Kagu, you lose this genetic uniqueness forever that is represented by that bird. It's really something special. So all living things are special, but, you know, something like this, it is almost

more of a tragedy if you were to lose a bird that has such a distinctive genetic characteristic. Yeah. And I know people have been talking in the news recently a lot about like the idea of de-extinction technology, which we've talked about a few times. But that almost always relies on getting a closely related species and kind of like breeding backwards. But if this is the only member of its family, there's nothing. Like there's nothing they could even start with. That's a really good point. Yeah, not knowing fully like all the technology behind that, that is my understanding as well. So, for example, if the cagoo were to go extinct and you still had the sunbittern, you know, is the sunbidderin close enough that that could work? Or would there just be too many genes that

wouldn't match up, you know, that it would get rejected, right? Because I guess they're putting the DNA of the extinct animal into an egg or a cell from a living animal like they're trying to do with the dodo, for example. Yeah, I was also thinking of the dodo when you mentioned that this is like a flightless, you know, bird from an island. I was, I was seeing some similarities with the dodo also. Yeah. I mean, again, it's a common theme that has happened independently again and again and again when these birds arrive on a basically, you know, free for all island with maybe not that many other birds, no mammals, like, and they can evolve into whatever niche. And it's something about becoming flightless is a theme. Yeah. So the dodo is the classic example of

that. And let's not let the Kagu go the way of the dodo. No, exactly. Let's, learn from our past mistakes. I know because we could be talking about the dodo today. If we had a weird bird, that would be, you know, probably number one, but we can't because... Poor one out. I know. Pour one out for the dodo. Yeah, exactly. Gone but never forgotten. Exactly. Never forgotten. Here we are talking about it. So we still honor it. Ivan, what's your number two weird bird? Okay, number two weird bird. All right. So let's see if you've ever heard of this one. Okay, let's hear it. The sheath bill. Sheath bill. I'm not heard of that one either. Cool, cool, cool, cool. So, There are actually two species.

We're going to talk about the snowy sheath bill, but there are only two in the family, right? So now, so we went from a family of one. Now we have a family of just two species. So still pretty special branch of the avian tree of life. This family is Kyanidae, with a C.H. Kyanidae. And the snowy sheath bill is, I got to see this bird for the first time in Patagonia recently, and I was super stoked. Oh, so you had to be like way, like, way down south.

Way down there. Yeah, because sheath bill. are birds that breed in the Antarctic basically they they're either on sub-Antarctic islands or on Antarctica proper this is actually the only bird family that is endemic to that area that only breeds in that area so that's really special and these birds are they're white right so you've got snowy sheath bill is the main species we're talking about they're white and they're kind of they're maybe a little smaller than a chicken kind of a

stout chunky looking bird almost pigeon shaped as well kind of a thick bill and they do have this keratinous sheath that kind of extends from the base of the bill towards the tip and goes out a few inches, doesn't cover the entire bill. So it's made of keratin, that's what I mean by keratin. Because the whole sheath of the bill, the whole outer part of the bill is made of keratin, which is the stuff, of course, of hair and fingernails, right? Similar. Is the bill, like, enclosed?

Can it open? Yeah, so the sheath itself is fixed on the upper bill, the upper mandible. Okay, I thought it went all the way around. No. So, so well, so every bird has a ramphothika, which is the outer layer of the bill that surrounds the bones, and that is made of keratin's course of that. So every bill or beak has that. This one has like this sort of extra cool looking feature, little hood ornament, I guess, sticking out over the nostrils. It kind of extends just to about the nostrils. So that's kind of weird. That's where the bird gets its name. And then it has bare skin around the sort of cheeks and the eye. And in the case of the snowy sheath bill, that That skin is pink, and it's got a lot of these weird little wardy structures called caruncles. So, you know, if you can- Oh, I love a caruncle. Yeah, you got to love a caruncle, right? Kind of like a turkey, you know, so, you know, if you get a good look at one of these birds close up at the face, you're like, yep, that is the classic, you know, a face only a mother could love.

Definitely not a beautiful bird by most people's standards. And that beak is often covered by some stuff, some muck, because one of the things about this bird that makes it weird is. what and how it eats right so think about where does it live okay so you're in antarctica you are essentially a land bird that's that's another unique thing about this bird is that every other bird in antarctica has webbed feet and can swim really well this bird does not it seems like swimming is like all there is to do in antarctica exactly right there's like they don't have a lot of like playgrounds and malls it doesn't seem like it's not a walkable continent what else you're gonna do You could just like go sledding down a snowy slope or you can swim in the water.

That's it. So the thing is Antarctica in the water, there's lots to eat. There's, you know, all this fish and krill and squid and, you know, so there's lots of marine life in Antarctica. And of course, that's what the penguins are doing. They're eating everything in the ocean. Well, these guys, these sheath bills are eating things on land. And so they've got a, you know, kind of muck on their face. And so they are making use of what stuff there is to eat.

And can you guess what that might be? Well, using what I know about Antarctica, which is big, cold rock, the only things I know of that ever make it onto the land are things like, I don't know, seals and like penguins. But this is a small bird, so I'm not really sure how it's going to get from point A to point B here. Yeah, well, you're definitely on the right track. Okay. So if you're thinking about resources in Antarctica, there are basically no plants. There are some lichens and things. But yes, exactly.

So these birds hang out in marine mammal colonies, so like seals, and they also hang out in penguin colonies, right? And oftentimes those two groups of animals are fairly close to each other on land. So these birds are walking around, these sheathbills, among the penguins, among the seals, and they are eating everything. Everything they can get their filthy little beaks on, they're eating it, yeah. Not the little trash collectors. Yeah, they are little trash guys, right? Okay, so they're not really predators, so they're not necessarily hunting things, although they will opportunistically eat carrion, so they're happy to eat meat if there are some, you know, dead sea lion pups. They eat seal afterbirth, which is pretty exciting.

So, you know, if you're an animal in Antarctica, that is a big pile of nutrition, right? Honestly, like, you know, I'm not here to yuck their yum. Yeah, I mean, again, they think we're weird. They think, you know, eating Cheerios is weird, right? sounds like they see us like getting rid of like our placentas and afterbirth they're like you're leaving food on the table like this is like um are you going to eat that yeah like it's perfectly good it's not yeah i don't see the problem totally man so you know you beggars can't be choosers in antarctica so uh and they take it one step further they're going to eat seal poop penguin poop they're

just going to eat whatever they can get their beaks on another thing is they act as kleptoparasites so they're going to steal food as well so for example mama penguin comes back to feed her chicks and she's going to regurgitate a big mass of pink krill. And here comes the sheath bill to intercept it and, you know, yoink, get that before the baby penguin goes. Diabolical. Yeah. And, you know, these sheath bills are having to dodge the aggressive behaviors of the penguins because the penguins know what's up. Yeah. And one of the pictures I had pulled up of it, it was like a snowy sheath bill walking through a penguin colony. And these two penguins, they look like chin strap penguins. and they're like side-eyeing the sheath bill as it was walking by

and my interpretation of the picture at first was just that this is such a sort of for lack of a better term this is kind of an ugly looking bird because they have that bald wrinkly face and the nose is kind of scrungly and like it's just kind of general I feel like if this was 10 minutes ago and I had never heard of this bird before and I was just like in Antarctica looking around and I saw this thing I would think that bird has a horrible disease like something terrible has happened to this normal bird. Yeah, what has happened to this poor thing? Yeah. So now that I understand what their relationship is, now I see the penguin is not being judgmental. The penguin is like,

step away from my food, please. Yeah, I'm still eating. Yeah, exactly. I'm not finished here. Yeah, you know, again, it's, I'm a sucker for a beautiful bird, a nice looking bird as much as anybody, but I also really like these, these strange weird birds that basically most people would look at and go, oh, yeah, that's, I don't even want to look at that thing. know. I was thinking that, you know, once you mentioned that they eat carrion, the fleshy face starts to make a lot more sense to me. Yep. Because I'm seeing the similarity with vultures. Yeah, a lot of birds that, you know, stick their faces in slimy stuff that do lack feathers on the face. So that could be a big part of what's going on because you think, well,

you're in Antarctica. Why would you want to have bare skin anywhere, right? It seems like... Yeah, it's really cold. So I think you're right, probably, that that may have a little something to do that. And it is miraculous, though, that these birds, for as... dirty as their lifestyle is that they tend to be really crisp and white on most of their body. You know, you'd think they'd be all gunked up, but somehow they keep themselves pretty clean, which is amazing. That's true. These pictures, they are like pristine. It's why I never wear white shirts because I have kids and, you know, every little stain is going to show. Exactly. But they must be really putting in the work in cleaning themselves. Yeah, somehow. They are really, they're like paper white.

Yeah. They're quite nice. And, you know, like I said, I saw this for the first time when I was in Patagonia. I got really excited. We were on a boat and we were looking at this seal colony. And there were some other birds. There were a lot of cormorants and things. And it wasn't just birders. It was just kind of general people. This is in the Beagle channel in Argentina and Chile. And I saw the sheathbill. And again, it's a bird I'd never seen, but I'd wanted to because not only is it just this weird bird. It's also, this is the first time I'm seeing a bird in that family. And so I'm freaking out. I'm like, you know, just like screaming sheath bill, you know, and nobody cares. Like, Nobody cares.

You know, maybe, I mean, I was, I was leading a birding trip. So some of my fellow birders were into it. But even them, yeah, it was, it, I had to be like, do you understand why this is so cool? That's a sheath bill. It's like, yeah. They're like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm sure, man. Whatever.

Yeah. I wonder if, like, to them, it's like a pigeon or a crow. Because, like, it seems like the behavior is so crow like, right? Of, like, just grab whatever you can get your little silly little beak on. I mean, and it kind of brings us back to, you know, what makes something weird. I mean, you know, if you look at this bird, especially from kind of a distance, you go, oh, it's just, it's like a kind of a cross between a gull and a crow and a pigeon. You know, it's just a bird bird.

You know, it's not a big deal, whatever. They want to see the penguins and the, you know, the showy stuff, the albatrosses, whatever. But yeah, when you know more about how the bird lives, and again, it's genetic distinctiveness, then you go, oh, okay, I get it now. So, you know, it isn't always about what they look like on the surface. So even though when you get a close up look, these guys are pretty wacky. They are wacky, but if you're into, like, the weirdos, like, if you really like a vulture, if you really like a kind of a strange one, this is a good one.

Because they, they almost, the profile is reminding me a little bit of a puffin. Like with the big, the big thick beak. Chunky body. But then with like the turkey, the turkey-ish face. Turkey puffin, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think there's a lot of charisma to that, though. Yeah. Like, there's charisma in being, like, unique and a little bit quirky.

Absolutely. I mean, that's the thing. It's like once you start, you know, get to know these birds, they're really cool. I mean, yeah, and I feel like we're doing our part today. We're like the marketing team or the public relations for these weird birds that either, you know, A, people have never heard of and B, B, even if they did or saw a picture, they might not think much of it. But, you know, hopefully people come away going, oh, yeah, there's this really cool bird I heard about called a sheath bill down in Antarctica. And did you know, blah, blah, blah, you know. Are they doing like the work of vultures? Because I don't know if vultures or like condors or anything get that far south. So are they like doing that work? They are. So they are scavengers. There are no vultures in Antarctica. There are scuas.

So there are some and there are also petrels, these giant petrels. So there are some other birds also play that role of coming in and feeding on carrion. Those birds tend to be a little bit more predatory. They will kill, you know, young birds or small birds. So yes, this bird plays a significant ecological role in that it is recycling nutrients that otherwise would just be left out on the ice. So, like, if you like a penguin colony and you like the seals and all those other charismatic animals, like, if it weren't for the sheath bills, their whole colonies would just be covered in poop and rotting flesh. Yeah. So they're actually setting the stage, like, that you wouldn't have that picturesque view without the sheath bills running.

around cleaning all the cleaning up all the tracks right absolutely and and i've never been down there i understand that the colonies are still pretty stinky but but there'd be stinkier without the help of the sheath bills absolutely and that's you know another thing it's a great thing to remind us of ellen because there are these sort of unsung heroes of ecosystems like that that you know we think oh they they eat poop and they you know dead stuff gross but yeah somebody's got it and especially an environment like that there's really you know not as much decomposition going on you don't have probably as much bacterial activity and all that because it is so cold. And so, yeah, these guys are doing this great ecosystem service. The world needs weirdos. The world needs

weirdos. I think that's going to be one of the take-home messages here. The world needs twisted freaks. The weirder, the better. Well, the weird or the better indeed. Let's talk about the weirdest one of all. Who's your number one weirdest thing? Okay. So this is, you know, that's a big question. And I feel pretty strongly about this. I feel like this is a defensible choice. And that is the oil bird. I have heard of this. This one, I have heard of this one, but I don't know very much about them. I've only heard of them in passing, so I'm very excited to learn more about them. Okay, very cool.

So, you know, there are other weird birds out there, but this one definitely ticks the boxes and is very strange. So let me just describe it first. So what we've got is we've got this kind of elongated cinnamon brown bird with some white spots in the wings. If you can picture a night jar, a night hawk, even a potu or frog mouth, those are other birds that are somewhat related to the oil bird, right? So they're in this kind of nocturnal bird group. They're kind of squat. Yeah, they, yeah, they are squat. They lay kind of flat. They're elongated, but they perch, yeah, kind of in this horizontal flat squat position. Like a, like a cat, like they're like stretching a little bit forward.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. They do kind of have a cat-like appearance all around, I would say, because they actually have these rictal bristles, these feathers that are very hair-like that stick out around the bill. The bill's kind of short and stubby. They have big eyes. So kind of has a very cat-like appearance, I would say, for a bird. They're so cute, by the way. I pulled up a picture.

So cute. Like, I feel like this is maybe the cutest one you've talked about today. Yeah. They're adorable. I think this is fair to say. Yeah, this is a cute bird. You know, if people like owls, which a lot of people do it, there's a bit of an owl-like characteristic to it as well.

It's not closely related to owls at all. but because it's nocturnal it has those big dark eyes and that that kind of hooked bill very cool so this bird is in its own family so again we have a monotypic family stay at tornithidae is the name of the family it's the only bird in that family and not only that it's even more distinct because it's the only bird in its order so if you go up another taxonomic level stea tornithiformis is the order and it's the only one in that so it's like it's if we're talking about a branch on avian tree of life that branch is way way out there really really distinct that would be like if we were like the only primate yeah exactly something like that right and that there weren't yeah even anything

close to us yeah exactly so if there were like no lemurs no monkeys nothing like that if we were like the only primate in the world exactly that would be like i mean we're working on that but yeah sure oh geez oh just kidding you anyway so so that's kind of what it looks like it's got these long wings in a long tail it lives in south america so it is living in northern south America from the island of Trinidad through Venezuela and down all the way down into Bolivia and it lives in forests and it's almost like where do I begin with this bird right so we've we've talked about what it looks like where it lives the evolutionary distinctiveness of it so now we talk about its behavior and its ecology

and this is where things get really weird so it is a nocturnal bird but its singular distinction is that, let me get this right, it's the world's only flying nocturnal fruit eating bird, okay? Flying nocturnal fruit eating. Yes. So, you know, there are other, there's like the, like the cockapoe in New Zealand is a nocturnal fruiting bird, but it doesn't fly, right? So this one, oh, it has to check all three. All the boxes, yeah. So it's, so it's, you know, it's kind of a weird distinction, but that's what it is. It flies, it eats fruit, but it comes out at night. So, you know, so many basically all other flying nocturnal birds are eating insects they're eating birds or mammals or something you know they're they're not eating fruit nobody's doing it like the oil bird

you're an innovator disrupting the space totally man just doing it the doing it their way and what they do is they head out at night and they find fruit they can actually smell it so this is an example of a bird that does have a good sense of smell many birds do it we used to think that birds couldn't smell very well but many of them can so they find fruiting trees and these are quite often they're looking for palm fruits or things like wild avocados these fruits that are really rich

in fat and protein and they can actually kind of hover briefly with their long wings and this bird is it's roughly chicken size a little more slender though and they can hover to pluck fruit while flying so they don't land and eat fruit the way something like a toucan would

they're actually plucking fruit while flying which is pretty wild like a humming bird a little bit yeah Like, I mean, again, it's just, they can only do it very briefly because they wait. Yeah, I was going to say, they seem a little too heavy for that. But they can do it. And so they're plucking these fruits. That alone is all pretty unique, but we're not done yet.

I'm braced. Yeah, I know. So they eat the fruit. But then what they do is they go back and they roost and nest in caves. So these birds, they go into a cave, way back into the darkness. And often that means these birds are spending all 24 hours of the day in darkness, right? They're out flying around at night. They go deep into a cave, and that's where they spend the entire day.

So they're living in darkness pretty much all the time. So there's a couple adaptations they have for dealing with that. As someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, I feel like sometimes I can go a few 24-hour stints without seeing the sun as well. Hey, girl, I live in the Pacific Northwest too, and I hear you. It's like the sun goes away. It feels like for like eight months. Yeah, it's rough. So I get it.

I need some oil bird adaptations. So the bird's eyes, first of all, are special. So these kind of big, beautiful, dark eyes. And this is amazing. The retinas of this bird are packed with rod cells, right? These are photoreceptor cells. We have them. Did you know anything about the differences in rods and cones?

Have you heard about that? I've heard about it. I can't get it to stick in my brain. No worries. Okay. So this is true of our eyes as well as other vertebrates, right? We have rods and cones. And they're just different types of cells in our retina in the back of our eye.

pick up light. Cones are really good for color vision. Rods are really good for black and white vision and for detecting movement and especially in low light situations. So the oil bird has more rods packed into its eyes than any other, not just bird, but any other vertebrate, right? Any other mammal, reptile, anything. So they have really densely packed rods. I think it's something like a million per millimeter or square millimeter or something like that. And what that means is that the Eyes are incredibly sensitive to light, and these birds can see really well in the dark, which is why they're able to pluck fruit from a tree in darkness. Oh, because like the fruit's not moving.

So, and if it's at night, you're not going to be able to see the color of it very well either. Right, exactly. And they're not even using color. Yeah, they're just using this black and white vision. Now, they are using their sense of smell to an extent, but that can't, I'm sure they're not zeroing in on it at the last moment. They're using their vision for that, right? So, and that's also what's helpful, of course, for getting through the cave safely, right? These really sensitive eyes, but then they get, they can get far back enough in a cave where it's

completely dark, and here's their next adaptation for living in the dark. This is really cool, okay? They can echolocate. This is a bat. You snuck a bat in here. You know? You snuck a bat in. I mean, yeah, ta-da, it's a bat.

It was a bat the whole time. It was a bat the whole time. Well, you know, people have called it the bat bird or whatever. There's so many similarities, and it really is interesting. It's like a bird went off on its own evolutionary journey towards something like a bad lifestyle, right? It's living in caves. It's coming out at night. It can, you know, see in the dark and it echolocates.

Now, you know, with bats, when they're echolocating, we typically can't hear the sounds they make because they're too high in frequency. You can actually hear the clicking of oil birds. It's low enough in frequency that the human ear can pick it up. So you go into these caves and these birds are colonial nesters. So not just one of them will be in a cave. Often there'll be, you know, 10, 20, sometimes thousands of them in a cave, nesting on the cave walls and they're clicking and they're chasing each other around. And it's just such a wacky bird.

I feel like if I was in a cave and I heard all of that happening, I heard the clicking, I heard the, you know, something moving around up in the cave. And if I turned on my light and I saw a bunch of birds up there, I would think I was being pranked. Yeah, you're like, what, yeah. I'd be like, what, that, you don't go here. You don't do that. Yeah, it would be really weird.

Yeah, and of course they've got, you know, their eyes are reflecting the light. So you'd see these glowing eyes and yeah, it would just be pretty wild. A jump scare. Total jump scare, yeah, right? So, yeah, so that's what's really cool. Now, Ellen, where do you think the name of this bird comes from? Oh, oil bird. Oh, is there maybe oil in caves?

I don't know totally where oil comes from. Yeah, I know, right? Well, I think it, yeah, it's a good question. I think it comes from the ground. and I think caves are maybe also in the ground. So maybe there's oil in the caves. Yeah, well, it's a good guess. I mean, oil, I guess, you know, I'm not an oil expert, but it comes from various sources.

But in terms of animal sources, right? So you've heard of, remember how like there was the whaling industry back in the day and people were hunting whales, a lot of it was for oil, right? Or like preen oil, right? Yeah, yeah, animals produce oil. Yeah, okay. I don't know why I didn't need. Yeah, we've got some on our fat and things.

So it's just, you know, it's in us too. But the thing is with the oil burden is kind of a sad way. It's got his name, honestly. So this is kind of a bummer. But when Europeans first heard about this bird and discovered it for at least Western science, they realized that the native people in South America would collect the chicks of oil birds. They go into a cave, scoop up some chicks, kill them, and they would render them down for oil because the chicks are so fat.

The chicks can weigh more than 50 percent heavier than the adults. They're just little balls, little butterballs, basically. Oh yeah it's the the like baby fat from them that they just like rendered down they rendered it down to you know to use it for like lamp oil and stuff you know like people did a couple hundred years ago right that would be a valuable resource now again it's a really totally bummer way to get it but these birds the parents are bringing back these really fat and protein rich fruits to the chicks in the cave feeding them fattening them up and so yeah they get really really heavy and so that's that's where the name comes from. and the scientific name honors that as well. It's stay at tornus, which means fat bird. And that's the family name, stay a tornithity. I like it when taxonomists like roast birds in their, like, in their names for them.

They'll have like a really mean and rude name. Yeah, totally. I know. How about, we'll call this one fat bird. Fat bird, yeah. But do it in Latin so that they can't like tell that we're kind of stunting on them a little bit. Yeah, it sounds nice. Stay atornis.

Yeah. But it's actually, yeah, you fat bird. But they're so cute. Yeah, they are. So it works. They look really, really adorable. So I like the shape that they are. Yeah, yeah.

And again, kind of a unique silhouette, you know, that kind of elongated shape, kind of a, if, you know, if someone were to look at a few pictures of these, you'd be like, oh, yeah, I totally got what this thing is shaped like. Yeah. No, they're really, really charismatic and great. And I got to see them finally for the first time in Trinidad. And, you know, of course, we had. to go into a cave. It's a known colony and I had to or didn't have to, but I waited through the water

in my one pair of shoes and it was super great, amazing to see these birds up on the cliffside there in the cave. But then I was in Trinidad in this tropical environment and I had no way to dry my shoes for like three days and oh my God. Now you got trench foot. They stank. It was so bad. It was so bad. But every time I just had to remind myself, this is the price I had to pay to see the oil bird. It's okay. A low price. It's a low price. Yeah, fair enough. A small price. A small to pay for seeing a very cool bird and like for the getting to like add them to your polka decks of like animals i've seen yeah like that your polka decks yeah it's i mean it's birders that's what birders in essence are doing right there basically it's a collect them all kind of thing

and if you you know find a bird like this that's in its own family and it's got all these weird characteristics and it's actually difficult to find right because you're not going to see them when they're out flying around at night probably so you you need to know where these cave colonies are and you often need local guidance to get there and they're not easy to access. You got to get your shoes wet sometimes, all that kind of stuff. When you're in the cave with all these birds and everything, is that spooky? I feel like it would be spooky. I would be spooked, but I'm easily spooked. You know, it wasn't in that particular case because it wasn't a very deep cave. There was even, you know, some light kind of ambient light coming in. We had, you know, we were using flashlights.

There were other people there and stuff. Yeah, it was cool. I mean, um, were the birds bothered by you at all? I mean, they were looking at us. They didn't seem to be overly concerned. This was in a place where they probably are somewhat habituated. It's near a kind of famous birding lodge that people stay at, and it's on the property. And so I think people are visiting pretty regularly. So my understanding is there was about 200 of them that come and go with that colony.

So, yeah, they seemed all right. They didn't seem overly agitated. They're probably like, look at these weirdos. Look at these weird, weird animal. A big primate with no hair. And look at that one. He's walking in the water with his shoes. What is he doing?

That guy's going to smell in a couple days. What is he thinking? he's going to get mad blisters this is going to be crazy another thing that i that struck me was you know they they make these nests on these pretty steep walls and the nests are constructed mostly of bird poop which is always awesome it's this kind of bowl-shaped thing it smelled awesome in there you know yeah you know super awesome uh and there's a there's a lot of uh fruit so it's just like piles of fruit of either just the seeds or the husks or whatever so it's just like this pile of bird poop and fruit and all this stuff and it's like yeah awesome this is yeah

a unique situation i wonder if they do the thing that some other animals that like eat fruit do where sometimes they let the fruit get just a little overripe and they get just a little bit they get a little crazy with it like i wonder if they do that that's a really good question yeah because they're bringing it back to the nest and you know if if some of it doesn't get eaten right away it might ferment a little bit yeah that's true for example you may have heard with um wings. There's some birds, you know, that are frugivorous, that eat fruits, and they sometimes get a belly full of fruit that's been fermenting and they get a little drunk. So, yeah, maybe the oil birds, you know, they'll figure it out and go into business. You think they ever, like, set

some aside and be like, oh, no, I accidentally forgot to eat that one. Yeah. Well, we can't let it go to waste. Oh, no, it's fermented. Better read it now. Yeah, like, I feel funny. Yeah. What a charming little critter. I hope I get to see one because they're very cute. Of the three that you have named today, the cago was very cute. The sheath bill was a little bit of a hard sell. It's cute for the right person. But this one I think is probably the most universally recognizable is cute.

Yeah, I think so. I think this is fair enough. This one, you know, if you show this to a kid, they'd probably be into it. Yeah. It's a charismatic bird for sure. It's bat software on bird hardware. I love that. totally totally this bird does not know what it's doing but hey you know whatever works right

well iven for for people who have had a lot of fun learning from you today where can people go next to learn more from you and follow along with the work that you do yeah well thanks ellen it's been super fun i could talk about this stuff all day is super fun so yeah so the science of birds that's my podcast and um you can find that in any of the podcast apps of course on Spotify apple podcasts all of that And yeah, it's, you know, again, just me. And I write a script for every episode and it's lighthearted. And, yeah, we get geeky about birds. So that's probably the best place to find me.

Scienceofbirds.com is the website. The posts that you write for your website have come up on our podcast a couple of times because I have referenced some of your writing. The one that I was looking at earlier, I was looking back through some old notes. And it was on the pelican. Oh, yeah. On the brown pelican. And, like, you had written something about, like, being able to, like, bend their beak, like, in your hands.

And that was something that I remember having on that episode. Yeah, very cool. Yeah. I need to do more of this. But I've taken – because I have a script for each episode, I will rework that into an article and put it on the website. So that's so cool. Yeah, I love that you found that. You know, I mean, that's the thing about what you do and what I'm doing, you know, obviously we're laughing and having a good time.

But hopefully, we're getting some great information out there to people to learn about animals and appreciate nature and all that stuff. And it just feels really good when, you know, you hear that somebody is appreciating or finding the things you're putting out there. Yeah. And I mean, especially like I feel like the birds you told me about today. I mean, two out of three of them I'd literally never heard of in my life. And I've heard about a lot of animals.

Yeah, it turns out. Yeah. So just when you think, it's humbling, right? It's like, just when you think, you're like, yeah, I probably know about most animals. And then you're like, oh, nope, I've never seen this one in my life. Isn't that wild? like, you know, I mean, you live on this planet long enough. You think you've seen them all. And the same thing for me. I mean, I live, breathe, and eat and drink birds. And yet, I am

continually amazed at these birds. I'll, you know, I'll go to some country or just be flipping through a book and be like, what is this bird? Oh, my God. Look at that thing. It's so beautiful or weird. You know, and I'm just like, I've never heard of that too. So even with me, that happens. And then, you know, not to mention mammals and reptiles and insects and all that stuff. Oh, gosh. As soon as you get into bugs, all bets are off. I don't know who any of. these fools are. It's like if we were to do a three weirdest insects, I mean, where would, like, where would you, how could you even approach that question, right? You could do like the three weirdest like ants. Yeah, you'd have to, yeah. Yeah, you'd have to break it down.

Ivan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your knowledge. Thanks for telling us about some real weird birds. Thanks for being on team weird bird and hopefully getting some listeners rallied for team weird bird today. It has been so much. much fun. Thank you so much. It was nice to talk to you as always and we'll talk to you next time. All right. Thank you, Ellen. Yeah, this was super awesome, really fun. Again, I could talk about this all day and so it's such a pleasure and really great just laughing with you and thinking about these awesome birds. So thank you. Thanks, Ivan. Bye. All right. Bye-bye. So there you go. That was me and Ellen talking about weird birds and that I found it to be a really

fun conversation and I hope you did too. So I'll be here in China for another, I don't know, week and a half or two weeks or something. And then I'm actually going to go to Mongolia for the better part of a week to do some scouting for a future trip. And then I'm going to go to Japan for a while and do scouting there. So I've got this big trip in Asia, kind of like the one I did about six months ago. And it's all very exciting. So I will be podcasting from the field here for another couple months. So stay tuned for more episodes where I talk about my birding adventures here in Asia as well as other fun things, and then I'll be home later in the summer and get back to the sort of normal programming. But before I go, I want to thank my patrons, all of my patrons, for

making this podcast possible, for the amazing support I get from you. It's an awesome thing, my Patreon community. And I want to thank my newest patrons, Anne, Jerry Brown, Mary Kay, Michael Esposito, Janet, Kara Parsons, Scott Harris, Val, and Marie. Hepernan. Thank you all so much for the support. You're amazing. And with that, I need to get myself packed up and get out of this hotel and go look at some pandas and some birds and get on the road. Thanks for listening so much and I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.