Okay, But... Birds

What do feathers, toothless beaks, and a 66-million-year-old asteroid have in common? Paleontologist Dr. Daniel Field, University of Cambridge, joins Scott to unpack how birds evolved from dinosaurs, and why defining "bird" is trickier than you think.
In this episode you'll hear about:
Why Archaeopteryx had half the features of a modern bird and lacked the other half, and what that tells us about 150 million years of evolution
The "Wonderchicken," a tiny fossil from the border of Belgium and the Netherlands that rewrote what we know about birds surviving the asteroid impact
How micro CT scanning lets scientists digitally peer inside rocks to study fossils at micron scale without ever touching them

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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:
Great Spotted Kiwi, William V. Ward, ML810
Southern Cassowary, Linda Macaulay, ML57219
Elegant Trogon, David L. Ross, Jr., ML199536
Green Heron,, Bob McGuire, ML229117

Asteriornis imagery and video courtesy of Dr. Daniel Field, University of Cambridge.

Some birds skip having their own families and spend years helping raise their siblings instead. It sounds like altruism, but it's probably more complicated than that. In this episode, host Dr. Scott Taylor is joined by Dr. Nancy Chen, UCLA, to unpack the notion that it takes a village to raise a child chick.
In this episode, you'll hear about:
Why some birds spend years as unpaid helpers before starting families of their own
What the Florida Scrub-Jay's 50-year study at Archbold Biological Station revealed about cooperative breeding
Whether helping your siblings is really altruism or just evolution doing it’s thing

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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:
Florida Scrub-Jay audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML229211
American Crow video contributed by Jay McGowan, ML472843
Superb Fairywren audio contributed by Vicki Powys, ML233810
Superb Starling audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML14855
Red-necked Phalarope audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235440
Northern Jacana audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML140224

Winter isn’t just “cold” for a bird, it’s a nightly survival math problem: generate enough heat, lose as little as possible, and don’t get eaten while you’re fueling up. In this episode, host Dr. Scott Taylor is joined by Dr. Maria Stager, UMass Amherst, to break down the clever physiology and weird little behaviors that let birds ride out freezing temps, from icy duck feet to “feather puffball” mode to energy-saving torpor.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
How birds keep their feet from freezing
How feathers and shivering muscles act like a built-in winter jacket
How birds manage energy overnight, including fat, roosting, and torpor

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:
Dark-eyed Junco audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94361
Purple Martin audio contributed by Arthur A. Allen, ML8086
Willow Ptarmigan audio contributed by Leonard J. Peyton, ML50031
Common Poorwill audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML191125
Snowy Owl audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML138288
Ruffed Grouse audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML216783
Mallard audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML136504
Tree Swallow audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML233306
Black-capped Chickadee audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML202239
Redpoll (Common) audio contributed by William V. Ward, ML12745

E11: Okay, but why is a bird’s world more colorful?
Bird vision isn’t just “better than ours,” It’s operating in a different color space, including ultraviolet. In Host Dr. Scott Taylor is joined by Dr. Allison Shultz, Associate Curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, to break down what birds can actually see, how scientists measure color in the real world, and why feather color is one of evolution’s most powerful (and misunderstood) tools.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
How birds see a whole extra dimension of color (including UV) and why we can’t truly experience “bird vision” without the biology to match
How feathers make color through pigments and nano-structures
How studying bird color is changing fast, from spectrophotometers to UV-capable cameras, plus why female coloration and “dirty birds” are reshaping what we think we know

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:
Northern Cardinal audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML249823
House Finch audio contributed by William R. Fish, ML12932
Guinea Turaco audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML140992
Northern Jacana audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML140224
Common Eider audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235534
Mountain Bluebird audio contributed by Dave Herr, ML47592
Palm Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML88937
Greater Bird-of-Paradise video contributed by Tim Laman, ML465370
King Bird-of-Paradise video contributed by Tim Laman, ML455252
Paradise Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML127399

Additional media used with permission under Creative Commons:
Plum-throated Cotinga (Cotinga maynana) in Peru image contributed by Harsha Jayaramaiah, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Lovely Cotinga (Cotinga amabilis) image contributed by desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Seasons used to feel predictable. Winter showed up, spring arrived on cue, and birds could run their annual schedules like clockwork. But now the timing is weird: early heat, late snow, shifting green-up, and food peaks that don’t always line up. In this episode, host Dr. Scott Taylor is joined by Dr. Morgan Tingley, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, to unpack what “keeping up” with climate change actually means for birds, how scientists measure it, and what gives birds a fighting chance on a rapidly warming planet.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
How birds “keep up” by shifting their ranges to cooler places, and the clearest real-world examples of birds already moving north
Why the story is more complicated than “north and uphill,” including microclimates, precipitation shifts, and the messy reality of predicting habitat changes
The full bird toolkit for coping with climate change: movement, timing (phenology), and even shrinking body size over generations, plus what we can do right now that actually helps 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:
Northern Cardinal audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML249823
Carolina Wren audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML191224
Red-bellied Woodpecker audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML306064
Orange-crowned Warbler audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML206459
Orange-crowned Warbler video contributed by Timothy Barksdale, ML402530
House Finch audio contributed by William R. Fish, ML12932