Okay, But... Birds

E26. We borrowed a phrase from human dating and tried to pin it on birds. Turns out they never needed the rulebook. Dr. Wenfei Tong, biologist and author of Bird Love, joins Scott to unpack what bird partnerships actually look like once you stop projecting our scripts onto them, from females who run the territory to males who guard their paternity in deeply weird ways.
In this episode you'll hear about:
Why the drabbest little brown bird in the garden has one of the wildest sex lives in the animal kingdom
How a female calls the shots when she holds the better real estate, and what the males do about it
The cloacal pecking payoff you have to hear to believe

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Laysan Albatross audio contributed by Ted Miller, ML117679
Black-capped Chickadee audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML202239
Spotted Sandpiper audio contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML516963
Northern Jacana audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML140224
Red-necked Phalarope audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235440
Black Coucal audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML3084
Papuan Eclectus audio contributed by Thane Pratt, ML169808
Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML249827
Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94215
Red-capped Manakin audio contributed by David L. Ross Jr., ML57360
Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
Greater Flamingo audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML2443
Dunnock audio contributed by Niels Krabbe, ML249162

E25. The blue-footed booby has become an internet personality: cartoon feet, a goofy strut, a name that practically begs to be a punchline. But Scott sat down with Dr. Carlos Zavalaga, Universidad Científica del Sur, and one of the people who first taught him how to study seabirds in Peru, and the "fool" reputation falls apart fast. Get a booby in the air or underwater and you're watching one of the most specialized hunters in the bird family tree.
In this episode you'll hear about:
How six-plus booby species carve up the same ocean without starving each other out
What 20 years of GPS loggers, depth tags, and bags of fresh fish revealed about who eats what
Why El Niño, avian flu, and overfishing keep stacking the deck against these birds

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
Red-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85911
Brown Booby audio contributed by Gerritt Vyn, ML136211
Masked Booby audio contributed by Chandler Robbins, ML32604
Nazca Booby audio contributed by Oliver H. Hewitt, ML31543
Peruvian Booby audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML29399

E24. Flight is the thing we associate most with birds, so what does it mean when a lineage gives it up? Dr. Scott Edwards, Harvard, joins Scott to unpack how flightlessness evolves, why it keeps happening across the bird family tree, and what the genome reveals about how a bird loses the ability to fly.
In this episode you'll hear about:
How losing flight reshapes a bird's body, from feathers to forelimbs to that one famously enormous egg
Why the answer wasn't where geneticists expected to find it
What an extinct giant and a tiny tropical relative can tell us about where moa actually came from

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Falkland Steamer-Duck audio contributed by Maurice A. E. Rumboll, ML4114
Great Tinamou audio contributed by David L. Ross, Jr., ML57320

E23. Across sub-Saharan Africa, wild birds and people work together to find honey. No taming, no breeding, no domestication… just a partnership thousands of years in the making. Behavioral ecologist Dr. Jessica van der Wal, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, joins Scott to unpack what's actually happening when a honey hunter calls and a greater honeyguide answers.
In this episode you'll hear about:
What each side gets out of one of the only known mutualisms between humans and a wild animal, and why this bird in particular evolved to seek us out
The remarkable signal the honeyguide uses to communicate with people, and what playback experiments revealed when researchers tested it across very different communities
What happens to a partnership built over generations when one side starts buying honey at the store

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:
Greater Honeyguide audio contributed by Jennifer F. M. Horne, ML55972

Additional media courtesy of Dr. Claire Spottiswoode and Dr. Jessica van der Wal

E23. Across sub-Saharan Africa, wild birds and people work together to find honey. No taming, no breeding, no domestication…  just a partnership thousands of years in the making. Behavioral ecologist Dr. Jessica van der Wal, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, joins Scott to unpack what's actually happening when a honey hunter calls and a greater honeyguide answers.

In this episode you'll hear about:

What each side gets out of one of the only known mutualisms between humans and a wild animal, and why this bird in particular evolved to seek us out

The remarkable signal the honeyguide uses to communicate with people, and what playback experiments revealed when researchers tested it across very different communities

What happens to a partnership built over generations when one side starts buying honey at the store

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

Greater Honeyguide audio contributed by Jennifer F. M. Horne, ML55972

Additional media courtesy of Dr. Claire Spottiswoode and Dr. Jessica van der Wal.