This is Episode 82. It's all about the ways that scientists track the movements of individual birds.The focus of today’s episode is not so much about the behaviors of birds, but about the technologies used by researchers to study bird behavior—the methods used to reveal the movements of birds.And our focus will be on the tracking of individual birds. There are other methods scientists use to record the mass movements of birds, like using radar to track flocks of migrants. But today we’re looking at techniques that can reveal the unique paths taken by an individual bird—a sandpiper, a hawk, albatross, pheasant, penguin, or whoever. Links of Interest Motus   ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Haikubox is an awesome little device that’s powered by artificial intelligence. It listens to the songs and calls of your backyard birds and identifies species automatically in real time... All day and all night.Learn more at haikubox.comSupport the show

This is Episode 81. It’s all about birds in the family Nectariniidae. These are the sunbirds and the spiderhunters.If you live in or have gone birding in places like Africa, India, Southeast Asia, or Indonesia, you’re probably familiar with sunbirds. Consider yourself lucky.But if you have no idea what a sunbird or a spiderhunter is, or if you have only a vague idea, I’m excited to introduce you to this group of wonderful birds today.Links of InterestThese sunbirds keep singin' their song [VIDEO]  ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Haikubox is an awesome little device that’s powered by artificial intelligence. It listens to the songs and calls of your backyard birds and identifies species automatically in real time... All day and all night.Learn more at haikubox.comSupport the show

This is Episode 80. It's all about flightless birds, and about the evolutionary processes that lead to flightlessness.Flightlessness in birds is, in my opinion, a fascinating scientific topic. And so here we are with this episode.Alive on the planet today, there are about 60 bird species that can’t fly. That’s only about 0.54 percent of the world’s approximately 11,000 species.It turns out there were way more flightless bird species out there before humans started exploring and colonizing every corner of the Earth. It wasn’t just the Dodo that was killed off by people.In today’s episode, we’ll look at the wonderful diversity of flightless bird species—in both the present and the past. We’ll also talk about conservation and—perhaps the most interesting thing—the evolutionary process that leads to flightlessness. How does this weird thing happen in nature? What causes a bird species to give up its greatest superpower?  ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Haikubox is an awesome little device that’s powered by artificial intelligence. It listens to the songs and calls of your backyard birds and identifies species automatically in real time... All day and all night.Learn more at haikubox.comSupport the show

This is Episode 79. It's all about the Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).This is one of North America’s most common raptors. We find these birds from sea to shining sea across the continent.The Redtail is a generalist predator. It can eat many kinds of prey and thrive in a broad range of habitats. Besides seeing these birds along the highway, you’re likely to spot a Red-tailed Hawk circling in the sky over a field, soaring or flapping slowly.In this episode, I cover the key traits of the Red-tailed Hawk, it's diet, and its breeding behaviors. Links of InterestRed-tailed Hawk ProjectRed-tailed Hawk “kiting” [VIDEO]Red-tailed Hawk and Great Horned Owl fight over a nest [VIDEO]Pale Male, the Famous Central Park Hawk, Is Dead at 32. Maybe.  ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Haikubox is an awesome little device that’s powered by artificial intelligence. It listens to the songs and calls of your backyard birds and identifies species automatically in real time... All day and all night.Learn more at haikubox.comSupport the show

This is Episode 78 and today we’re doing an overview of parental care in birds. How do birds raise their babies?Parent birds feeding their chicks in a nest is an iconic image. It’s a symbol of the spring and summer seasons and of the annual rejuvenation of nature.To the casual observer, birds generally come across as caring, attentive parents. Similar to the way mammals demonstrate good parenting behavior. We humans approve of this sort of thing. It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.I mean, the behavior of birds and mammals is way better than what amphibians and reptiles do, right? Those cold-blooded critters just crank out a bunch of babies and then leave them to fend for themselves. No parental care to speak of. Despicable!But to be fair, birds aren’t always the paragons of parental love that we might think they are. They sometimes do pretty messed up things when it comes to raising their offspring.And this highlights the fact that humans like to project our own cultural values onto animals. If, for example, we see a pair of adult geese dutifully tending to their adorable, fuzzy chicks, we might think, “Aww… What a cute little family. They all love each other.”And when we hear about a female Blue-footed Booby that did nothing and just sat there indifferently while the older of her two chicks murdered its younger sibling… Well, in that case, we’d probably think that booby is a bad mommy. She should be locked up in bird prison, if there were such a thing.I’ll admit I’m often guilty of this sort of thinking. I like to think that birds love their babies. I’m a total sucker for heartwarming scenes of parental care in birds.But I also know it’s not really fair for us to judge birds based on human ideas of right and wrong. Birds are just being birds. They do whatever it takes to survive and reproduce in a challenging and mostly unpredictable world.Haikubox is an awesome little device that’s powered by artificial intelligence. It listens to the songs and calls of your backyard birds and identifies species automatically in real time... All day and all night.Learn more at haikubox.comSupport the show