The Science of Birds - Wrens (Family: Troglodytidae)

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Today’s episode—which is Episode 58—is all about birds in the family Troglodytidae. These are the wrens.Wrens are small, perky songbirds, most of which are some shade of brown. All the species in this family of birds are found in the New World—In North, Central, and South America. All of them, that is, except for one species found in the Old World.In this episode, we'll cover many aspects of wren biology: their behavior, voices, diversity, evolution, conservation, and breeding.~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds websiteSupport 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. Today's episode, which is episode 58, is all about birds in the family troglodytidae. These are small, perky songbirds, most of which are some shade of brown. All the species in this family of birds are found in the new world, in North, Central, and South America. All of them, that is, except for one species found in the old world.

We'll get into all of that in a few minutes. But first, I want to clarify which W-R-E-Ns we're talking about. You see, the word W-R-E-N has gotten thrown around all over the place. It's been applied to a bunch of birds in diverse lineages all across the planet, birds that are only distantly related to each other. For example, we've got ant-rens, fairy wrens, grass wrens, fern-rens, scrub-rens, field-reens. Wrens, Heath Wrens, Nat Wrens, New Zealand Wrens, Wablers, Wren Babblers, Ren Spine Tales, and Wren Thrushes.

I'm surprised ornithologists haven't also come up with names like rubbish wrens, laser wrens, bubblegum wrens, Wren Eagles, and Ren Penguins. We're not dealing with any of that nonsense today. Today, we are interested in the Wrens. Sure, most of these species qualify as quote-unquote little brown birds, but they've got a lot of personality, and there's much to say about their biology. So let's get to know them, shall we? I'll start with the key traits of Wrens, their size and shape, their colors,

their general demeanors, and their voices. Wrens generally have stocky, egg-shaped bodies. Sometimes they can look plump and spherical, orb-shaped. That's when we affectionately categorize them as borbs. The wings of Wrens are relatively short and rounded. Recall from the episode I did on how birds fly that oval-shaped wings like these, what we call elliptical wings are good for fast take-off, short bursts of speed, and high maneuverability. Although a few wren species have tails of medium length, most wren species have relatively short tails.

In fact, some have absurdly, adorably short tails. This is true for the five wood wren species of the genus Henachorina, for example. But Wrens seem to be proud of their stubby little tails, which they often hold in a cocked-up position. To me, that's one of their distinguishing features. Not that other birds don't cock their tails up, and not that Wrens do this all the time. It's just that when I picture a wren in my mind, it has its tail held up at a right angle to its back. Wren bills are slender, relatively long and curved slightly downward. In terms of overall body size,

Wrens are mostly small, ranging from the size of a ping-pong ball to the size of a baseball. But then we have the giant Wren, Kampylarinkus Chia pensus. With a name like Giant Wren, you know this critter is a force to be reckoned with. Like, does this bird randomly show up

to smash tall buildings like Godzilla, causing people to flee in terror from its risk? wrath? Oh no, not again. It's the giant wren. Everybody run! No, as exciting as that might sound, the giant ren is only a giant when compared to other wrens, which are, of course, quite small.

This is like me being the smartest guy in the room, when everybody else in the room is a a total bonehead. Not too impressive. The giant wren is the largest member of the family troglodytidae, coming in at about 8 to 9 inches or 20 to 23 centimeters long, from beak to tail. At the other extreme, there are several wren species competing for the title of smallest member of the family. It seems to be a tie between the Pacific, Winter, and Eurasian ren. These little buggers are all in the ballpark of 3 to 4.3 inches or 8 to 11 centimeters long. The diminutive sizes of these wrens, the Pacific, winter, and Eurasian, make them among the smallest of all songbirds on their respective continents of North America and Europe. Now, how about the plumage colors of troglotid rends?

As I mentioned, these guys are mostly brown or rufousy. Is that a word, Rufacy? My spell checker says no, but I say yes. Across this family, we find birds with varying proportions of white, black, and gray mixed in with all that brown. None of them seem to use pigments other than melanin. If you already listened to my episode on bird feather colors, you might remember remember that melanin pigments can generate lots of earth tones in feathers, like what we see in wrens. From what I can tell, wrens don't use carotenoid pigments, and they certainly don't

have any structural colors like blue or iridescence. But some species are still pretty jazzy looking. Plenty of them have intricate patterns of black bars on their wings and tail, and many have spots on their undersides. One of the plumage features shared. by almost all wrens is a distinct supercilium. What is that? Well, you've got one. Supercilium is Latin for the eyebrow region, or just the eyebrow itself. Most wrens have an eyebrow stripe of white or relatively pale feathers. Some familiar species in North America with a bold supercilium include Bewick's Wren, Cactus Wren, and Carolina Wren. Most popular species, populations of Eurasian wren also have a nice little eyebrow stripe.

There's even one species called the superciliated wren, canterchilis superciliaris that lives in western Ecuador and Peru. One has to wonder if the superciliated wren and other wrens with a feathery eyebrow stripe have a generally supercilious attitude. In other words, an attitude of being scornful and superior. superior to other birds, but also superior to us. These little birds give me that impression sometimes. Male and female wrens are very similar, if not identical.

So we would call them sexually monomorphic. I'll put photos of some of the species I talk about today in the show notes for this episode. You can find those on the Science of Birds website. Let's move on to talk a bit about the general, demeanor and behaviors of Wrens. Besides being supercilious and thinking they're better than us, most Wrens are bold, curious, and energetic. The latter features make Wrens charming and much loved by people everywhere.

For example, Wrens often respond fiercely to pishing. If you don't know, Pishing is a thing birders do to attract birds. You make some sounds that mimic bird calls. and with luck the birds come flitting over to see what all the fuss is about. So if I'm out birding in a scrubby woodland, I might make some sounds like this. And that might attract the attention of Buick's Wren. It might come over and respond with some calls of its own, maybe something like this.

Like I said, bold and curious. During the non-breeding season, most wren species in temperate regions are either solitary or they hang out in pairs. Some tropical species, however, form small groups of up to 20 individuals. Examples include the white-headed wren, Yucatan ren, and Inca Wren. My understanding is that birds in these groups tend to be related. Each is an extended family, like a little clan. Okay, now let's consider the voices of wrens, their calls and their songs. Rens can really belt it out, despite their small size.

Their songs are generally loud and often complex. Some wrens have songs that are sort of rough sounding and not very musical. The cactus wren of North America is a great example here. That was the song of the cactus wren. The calls of many wren species are similarly harsh and mechanical sounding. Remember that calls are the simpler, shorter sounds used by birds to express alarm, to stay in touch with each other while foraging, and so on. I played this earlier, but here again,

is one of the calls of Bewick's Wren. Returning to songs, males of many wren species have large repertoires. The marsh wren, for example, can have up to 150 short songs in his repertoire. Each song is about one to two seconds long. The male marsh wren cycles through his many songs with brief pauses between each. Here's a marsh wren singing in British Columbia, Canada. In the temperate forests of Europe, you're likely to hear the song of the Eurasian Wren, Troglodotetes, Troglodotis.

Here's its song. Over here in Western North America, we have a similar tiny bird called the Pacific Wren, Troglodotis Pacificus. It has an incredibly complex, high-speed sun. song. I've got these little guys in my backyard and I love to hear them singing. Another favorite of mine is the descending whistle of the canyon wren. Here's one singing in the mountains of southern Arizona. Now I'll play you some of the more musical, more melodious Wren songs.

First up is a Carolina Wren, Thriothorus Lunovicianus from Eastern North America. That was a Carolina Rhin. That was a Carolina Rhin. And this one is a Peruvian Wren, Sinasurthia Peruana. And then we have the aptly named musician Wren, Cypherinus Arada. This bird lives across the northern Amazon basin in South America. Both males and females sing. This recording isn't of the high.

quality, but I think you'll be able to appreciate the musician Wren's beautiful song. Many other Wren species have females that sing. This is especially true for tropical species. A female Wren uses songs and calls to help her mate defend their territory. But another important and amazing vocal feature of Wrens is duetting. In many tropical species, males and females sing at the same time, performing duets that, in some cases, are totally amazing. The females of some duetting species add just a few simple, short notes to the male's more complex song.

But females of some other species match the song of their partner, note for note, in near-perfect synchrony. Still other species engage in antiphonal duets. Antifinal is spelled A-N-T-I-P-H-O-N-A-L. An antifinal duet is where the male and female rapidly alternate their songs. Sometimes this is happening so fast that to the human ear, it sounds like just one bird is singing. Here is a great example of an antiphonal duet being performed by a pair of Inca wrens in Peru. Kind of hard to tell that it was two birds singing there, wasn't it? The degree of coordination between these birds is mind-blowing. Maybe I'll do an entire episode on duetting in birds at some point.

because it's not just troglodytid wrens that do this. Other wrens species perform polyphenol duets. This is where the male and female songs overlap rather than alternate. I don't have any great recordings of polyphenol duets to play for you, unfortunately. But what I do have is an example of synchronized chorusing between two groups of plain-tailed wrens, fugopetius urophrus so this isn't a duet it's an antiphonal chorus where at least four birds are singing alternately this is crazy stuff you guys okay here we go here's a chorus of two groups of plain-tailed wrens in ecuador The family troglodytidae gets its name from the Greek word troglotatites.

It means cave dweller, or more specifically it means one who creeps into whole. holes. In English, we have the fun word troglodyte. You can use it to insult people. So the next time someone is walking too slow in front of you on the sidewalk, just shake your fist and yell, out of the way, you slack-jawed troglodyte. That'll put any slow-walking jerk in their place. You're basically calling them an ignorant, brutish caveman. Anyway, to say that wrens creep into holes seems fitting, since these little birds often probe into holes and crevices while on the hunt for insects. Also, many species nest in tree holes or rock crevices. The family troglodytidae belongs to the avian order passeriformis. Birds in this order are what we call

perching birds, or just passerines. Even though there are all those other birds with the word wren in their names, you know, the grass wrens, aunt wrens, fairy wrens, renbblers, and all of those guys, none of those birds is a close relative of our troglotated wrens. The birds that are truly the closest relatives of wrens are the gnatcatchers, tree creepers, nut hatches, and the wall creeper. Nat catchers, a family of birds restricted to the Americas, are the closest relatives of wrens. But together, these five families make up a distinct branch of the avian tree of life. This lineage is actually what taxonomists call a superfamily, and its name is sertheoidia. The word starts with a sea, sertheoidia. Through evolution, the birds in the

superfamily serthioidia started to go their separate ways an estimated 20 million years ago. And where all that started was in the old world. First, to diverge were the nuthatches and the Wallcreeper families. Then Rens and Natcatchers split to form their respective families. A lot of this information comes from a 2017 study in the journal American Museum Novitiates. Researchers in this study used genetic data from several genes to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the superfamily sertheoidia. The results of this study suggest that the common ancestor shared by Wrens and

gnatcatchers probably colonized the new world sometime between 16 and 11 million years ago during the mid-Myocene epoch. That ancestral bird may have crossed over from northern Asia into North America, by way of what is now Alaska. Then, over the millions of years that followed, Rens became distinct from gnatcatchers. And it seems different Wren lineages repeatedly colonized South America from the north.

Looking at just the Wren family, we find that today there are two major divisions within it. One branch includes eight species of what ornithologists call geophilus birds. That's G-E-O-P-H-I-L-U-S. Geophilus, as in ground-loving. This group of wrens includes a couple familiar species in North America, the rock wren and the canyon wren. So we've got those eight ground-loving geophilus wrens as one group.

All other wrens make up the second major division. All together, there are between 86 and 94 wrens species in the family. The numbers vary. depending on which bird checklist you're looking at. I stick with the Clements checklist, which is the one used by eBird. That list has 86 Wren species. The species are divided into about 20 genera.

The most diverse of these are A, the genus Truglodotetes with 12 species, and B, Kampylorincus, with 13 species. As I mentioned earlier, the Wren family, is found almost exclusively in the new world. That sort of makes sense if the Wren family actually evolved here in the Americas, as research has suggested. We have 51 species in North America and about 80 in Latin America. Obviously, there's some overlap in species between those two regions.

For example, the house wren, troglotetes, Eden, lives all across North, Central, and South America, as well as in the Caribbean. In fact, the distribution of the house wren covers more degrees of latitude than any other passerine bird in the entire new world. I imagine the burning question in your mind now is, but Ivan, what about longitude? Which wren species occupies the widest longitudinal range?

That is a great question. It actually brings us to that one lonely wren species, in the old world. In Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, you'll find the Eurasian Wren. Good old troglotities troglotities. This little brown boarb lives from Iceland in the west all the way to Kamchatka in the far east. Of course there are like 21 subspecies and maybe some of those will get promoted to full species someday. But for now, the Eurasian Wren gets the trophy for species with the widest longitudinal range. It also gets the trophy for being the most abundant breeding bird in the United Kingdom.

There are over 8 million breeding pairs in the UK. And since there's only this one wren species there, they just call this bird the wren. Now, what about migration in wrens? Well, since we were just talking about the Eurasian Wren, let's talk about its movements. Across that enormous range, many populations are simply residents. They stay in the same place all year. But the more northerly populations are strongly migratory, traveling long distances to the south in winter.

And yet other populations move shorter distances, or they just move to lower elevations in winter rather than flying south. This sort of combination of migratory behaviors occurs in some North American wrens too. Migration in the Pacific Wren, for example, varies from population to population, from resident to partially migratory to fully migratory. The marsh wren, sedge wren, and winter wren are all strongly migratory. Same goes for the northernmost populations of house wren. but species living further south in warmer habitats are mostly residents.

And speaking of habitats, let's speak some more about those. You can find one species of wren or another in just about every habitat across the new world. These cheery little buggers live in rainforests, deserts, wetlands, woodlands, and suburban gardens. A few species, like the house wren, seem to do well in a variety of habitats. But many other wrens have pretty narrow habitat requirements. Let me give you a few examples of species that are picky when it comes to habitat. The sedge wren, Sistothorus Stalaris, is a North American species. Both when breeding and in the non-breeding season,

sedge wrens live in wet meadows, fields, and at the margins. of ponds or marshes. As the species' name suggests, these birds prefer tall stands of thick sedges and grasses. They aren't that interested in wetlands dominated by cat tails. The latter is preferred by the marsh wren. Then we have the canyon wren, also found in North America. It lives year-round in dry, rocky habitats like deep canyons and where there are cliffs.

The canyon wren loves to creep into holes among boulders and on talus slopes. If the sedge-ren lives among sedges and the canyon wren lives in canyons, then surely the bay wren, canterchilus, nigra-capillus, must live along the coast. In bays, right? Nope! The bay in bay-ren refers to the bird's color, not to its habitat. You hear this word applied to horses, and horses Bay is a sort of chestnut brown or reddish-brown color. The Bay Wren is a good-looking bird with a reddish-brown back, a white underside with black barring, and a mostly black head.

The Nigra Capilis part of the bird's scientific name means black capped. Anyway, the Bay Rens habitat is dense brush near streams, rivers, or lagoons in the tropical forests of Central America and Northern South America. The type of plants that Bay Rens most like to hop around in are those of the genus Heliconia. So I'd say that's a pretty specific habitat preference. Heliconia thickets near watercourses in tropical forests. What is the conservation status of Wrens? The majority of species seem to be doing okay, as far as we can tell.

However, some of them are in trouble. As always, I use the species status from the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. On the IUCN's red list of threatened species, there are 13 wrens. Five species are in the near-threatened category at the global level. Four species are in the vulnerable category. Two are endangered and two are critically endangered. The Zapata Wren and Apollinar's Wren are the two endangered species.

Zapata wrens live in only one swamp on the island of Cuba in the character. Arabian. Apollinar's Wren has a similarly tiny geographic distribution in the Andes Mountains of Columbia. Then we have the two critically endangered species, the Santa Marta Wren and Nisephyros Rhen. Like Apollinar's Wren, these two species have restricted ranges in the mountains of Columbia. All of the endangered and critically endangered wrens have population sizes estimated to be about 200 mature birds or less. It wouldn't take much for any one of these species to be lost forever. Threats to these species and other wrens include, first and foremost, habitat destruction.

Depending on the species, habitat loss might be because of logging, fire, livestock, grazing, farming, or climate change. Often it's some combination of these. Then there's the threat of non-native predators. like domestic cats. The Zapata Wren in Cuba, for example, may be threatened by invasive mongooses and rats. Rens are energetic little songbirds. To maintain their sassy attitudes and frisky ways,

they need to fuel themselves with food. The primary source of calories for wrens is insects and other small invertebrates, like spiders and snails. More rarely, a wren will eat seeds or berries, but these birds much prefer their invertebrate prey. That slender, down-curved bill is perfectly shaped for gleaning insects from twigs and leaves. Rens also pluck bugs off the ground.

Rens tend to forage in the lower layers of vegetation, down in the shrubby understory, rather than way up in the forest canopy. That said, at least a couple species specialize in canopy living. These are the gray mantled wren and tooth-billed wren, which both live in South America and belong to the genus Odontarchaelus. Some other wren species are specialized in their foraging too. For example, the canyon wren that I've mentioned more than once has some interesting adaptations.

It has a long, thin bill like a pair of of tweezers. It also has a weird skull that's relatively flat, like it was squished a little bit between the top and bottom. This combo of slender bill and flathead allows a canyon wren to reach deep into crevices between rocks. That's the special niche of this species. It hops around in shadowy cliff crannies and interstices between boulders, probing deep into narrow cracks to find tasty spiders and insects. Some wrens have a slightly broader diet. For example, remember that terrifying beast, the giant wren?

Well, this species has a small range along the coast of Chiapas, Mexico. Apparently, people there have seen giant wrens sneaking into chicken coops to bust open the eggs and slurp up the yolks. Maybe you've heard of the creature of folklore known as the Chupacabra. Its name means goat sucker in Spanish, because it supposedly kills goats and sucks their blood and stuff. Well, move over Chupacabra, because there's a new monster in town, and its name is Chupauevo, the dreaded egg sucker of Chiapas. I'm not making this up. One local name for the giant Wren in Mexico is Chupauevo, for real.

but I couldn't find much in the way of hard evidence that giant wrens eat eggs. It seems plausible, but it sounds to me like we need to take a camera crew down to Chiapas to uncover the truth about the Chupo Weevil. The last thing I want to say about the diet and foraging of wrens is that some species in the tropics are what ornithologists call ant followers. These are birds that follow swarms of army ants moving. through the jungle. These aggressive ants send all sorts of invertebrates scurrying for their lives. In other words, the ants flush the invertebrates. Ant following birds take advantage of the

situation and snatch up those fleeing insects, spiders, centipedes, and whatnot. The birds don't usually eat the ants themselves, but they do steal the ants lunch. So the birds act sort of like parasites on the ants. Wrens represent just one bird family with ant-following species. At least seven other families include some ant-followers. Ant-following is a fascinating topic, so I'll make sure to dedicate an entire podcast episode to it at some point. Now it's time to talk about reproduction in Wrens.

Most of these birds have a monogamous breeding system with bi-parental care. In other words, one male pairs with one female and the two of them share the hard work of raising a bunch of rambunctious baby wrens. Some species like the marsh wren are polygynous. A male in a polygynous breeding system mates with more than one female in his territory. And he probably won't do much to help feed his chicks. A number of tropical wren species are cooperative breeders. Cooperative breeding in these birds usually involves a pair of dominant breeders who get assistance raising their chicks from two to ten or more helpers.

The helpers are usually young birds related to the dominant pair. Cooperative breeding is a common trait among wrens in the genus campylorincus, including but not limited to the bicolored wren, Stripe-backed Wren, and Bucard's Wren. After courtship, a pair of wrens build their nest. The male may construct the foundation, while the female puts on the finishing touches, like the lining. The nest is on a territory that the two defend fiercely from competitors.

Resident species will often defend the same territory all year long. That is to say, even when they aren't nesting. But during the breeding season, a monogamous pair of wrens work together to build their nest. Some wrens make their nests in rock crevices, tree holes, or other pre-existing cavities. You know, like good little cave dwellers, little troglodytes. Inside their cozy cavity, these birds build cup nests. Wren species that build nests out in the open, however, make a structure that's spherical, globular. It's fully enclosed with a side hole for an entrance.

And here's a clever strategy used by many species. They place their nest either among the spines of a cactus or another prickly plant, or they locate their nest right next to a hive of aggressive ants or wasps. Some tropical acacia trees have both nasty spines and a resident colony of protective ants that will try to kill you if you so much as look at their tree. So a pair of wrens that stick their nest in an acacia like this will have double protection. For example, this is exactly the approach used by the Rufus Nape Rhen of Mexico in Central America.

When a crafty Capuchin monkey comes over to peek at a Rufus naped Wren nest, hoping to score some eggs, well, it sucks to be you, monkey, because now your grubby little paws are getting stung all to heck by hundreds of furious ants. In many wren species, males build the foundations of many nests prior to courting females. This is the case for the marsh wren and house wren, for example. Some male wrens make as many as 20 nests in a single season. When a female prospect enters his territory, the male leads her from nest to nest, making frantic

courtship postures all the while. Eventually, she chooses one nest and the pair work on finishing the construction. Ornithologists have different ideas about why wrens and other birds go through the trouble of making these seemingly superfluous nests. It might be to confuse predators, or a male's ability to make multiple nests might itself be attractive to females. When it comes to nests, wrens have the power to both create and, destroy. House wrens are notorious for their nest wrecking behavior. This species nests in pre-existing cavities. There can be a lot of competition for such cavities among wrens and other birds like tree swallows, bluebirds, and chickadees. It's not unusual for a house wren to commit a

home invasion by barging into a nest it wants to take over. The wren pecks holes in the eggs or kills the nestlings. It tears out the soft lining of the nest. Sometimes house wrens even kill adult birds. This could be the nest of another house wren or of another species. Some other wren species, such as marsh wrens, will do this same sort of thing. But the house wren seems to be one of the worst offenders. Maybe we should call it the house wrecking wren. There was this paper published back in 1925, titled Additional Evidence Against the House Wren. The author, Althea Sherman, called the House Ren a, quote, deadly menace. She writes, quote,

Additional evidence of the viciousness of this species tends to show that it is its diabolical disposition alone that prompts it to destructive acts. End quote. Althea Sherman wrote multiple articles. condemning house wrens, which she also called criminals, frightful devils, and demons. Now maybe it's true that house wrens have diabolical dispositions and are indeed pure evil. We can't say for sure. But we're in the business of science here, aren't we?

From an unemotional scientific perspective, we can hypothesize about why wrens would destroy nests of their own kind or of other bird species. Rens can't excavate their own nest hole in a tree. And again, cavities like this are a limited resource. Competition for them can be fierce. So a reasonable hypothesis is that Rens are just doing what they need to do in order to raise a family and pass on their genes. Indeed, research suggests this to be the case.

Nest wrecking may seem brutal, and maybe it is, but It gets the job done. And in evolution, that's all that matters. But enough about that. Once a pair of wrens has their nest completed, it's time to lay some eggs. Female wrens, in general, lay between two and nine eggs. These are usually whitish and may have some speckling. Mom incubates her eggs for two or three weeks.

Then the eggs hatch and out pop some helpless altricial wren chicks. In monogamous species, both parents feed their babies. The youngsters fledge after another two or three weeks. Then they keep being fed by their parents for a little while longer. In northern species, this period lasts a couple weeks. But in tropical, non-migratory wrens, the parents will often keep feeding their young for months. Like all songbirds, wrens have to learn their vocalizations. They might learn this from their father, but often the tutors are actually other adult males

in the general neighborhood. Ornithologists don't have data on song learning for most Wren but in the example of Buick's Wren, young males head off on their own when they're about a month old. At this time, a young male hasn't perfected his song yet, and his song doesn't match his father's song. Within a few weeks, our youngster will establish his own territory, where he'll spend a lot of time practicing his song. He learns by listening to the adult male Buick's Wrens in the area. Eventually, he sings a tune very similar, if not identical, to the other males around him. We don't have lifespan data for most Wren species, but some have been documented living up to eight or nine years.

Rens of the family troglodytidae may not be the most colorful birds, but they definitely have a lot going for them. If nothing else, they're full of personality. But after listening to this episode, I hope you'll agree the biology of Rens is super interesting. Some sing incredibly complex songs, including duets and duets. and synchronized choruses. Rens have adapted to a huge range of habitats. Some species use ants as watchdogs for their nests.

Some are cooperative breeders. Some like to suck on chicken eggs, apparently, and some wrens destroy nests like it's their job. Maybe sometime soon you'll have a chance to go find some wrens. In any case, I really hope you enjoyed learning more about these little brown cave glowers. thanks so much for listening and for your interest in birds the world needs more people like you i've received lots of wonderful emails from my listeners and many positive reviews it seems like

what i'm doing here with this podcast is helpful to you and my hope is that will result in more love for birds and more help they certainly need it i get help from my support orders on Patreon. Their contributions help to cover the costs of running this podcast and to make this a sustainable job for me. Thanks to all my patrons and a special thanks to the latest additions to my Patreon community, Catherine Hanna Weiss, Lauren Schaller, Michelle Pont Bryant, and Matthew Ross. Thank you guys so much. As always, if you are interested in supporting my work, you can check out my Patreon page over at Patreon.com slash

science of birds. And if you have something you'd like to share with me, please go ahead and shoot me an email. Maybe you have a comment about the podcast, or you want to tell me your favorite way of insulting slow walking people on the sidewalk. Whatever the case, my address is Ivan at scienceofbirds.com.

You can check out the show notes for this episode, which is number 58, on the science of birds website, scienceofbirds.com. This is Ivan Philipson. Thanks again, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Peace.