- 15 hours ago
Discover the world through birding with birder and author Christian Cooper. From Peregrine falcons in New York City to Resplendent Quetzals in Costa Rica and Emperor Penguins in Antarctica, Cooper shares his top tips for spotting the best birds around the world and how birding connects culture, history, and nature. Whether you're a beginner or seasoned birder, this global guide will change how you travel.
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00:00Hummingbird.
00:01All right, I got to stop getting distracted.
00:04I'm Christian Cooper and I'm a birder.
00:06I'm gonna give you my top tips for birding around the world
00:09and I'm gonna tell you what mistakes to avoid.
00:17New York City, a bird to see in New York City.
00:22All right, don't make fun of me.
00:24The rock pigeon, it is iconic of urban places generally
00:29but of New York in particular and it gets ignored.
00:32A fascinating bird with a whole bunch of color morphs,
00:35a remarkable story in that they are not wild technically,
00:39they are feral, they were domesticated and raised by people
00:43and even though they all got loose,
00:44they're still in all these different colors.
00:46They haven't averaged back to the standard rock pigeon
00:48blue and gray and where you see rock pigeons,
00:51especially in New York City,
00:52sometimes you will see peregrine falcons.
00:55Peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on the planet.
00:58Speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour.
01:00Their biggest breeding population in any major city
01:04is in New York City.
01:05Why? Because peregrine falcons, like the pigeons,
01:09love to breed on cliff sides.
01:10You put up all these tall skyscrapers
01:12and you end up with a whole bunch of artificial cliff sides
01:15and the pigeons love it, the peregrine falcons love it.
01:18Maybe that's the bird instead of the pigeons.
01:21Maybe it's a tie between the prey and the predator
01:23because certainly the peregrine's favorite prey is the pigeon.
01:30Alabama, brown-headed nuthatch.
01:32Little tiny birds, they make a sound that sounds like
01:35your dog has found a squeaky toy.
01:37And when you hear that, you look up into the trees
01:39and you'll find this little bird with a little pointed bill
01:42and a brown head and it is working the trees.
01:45They're adorable.
01:46What surprised me most about birding in Alabama
01:48was mostly personal.
01:50As an African-American, families trace ultimately back to the South
01:54before the Great Migration took us out of the South
01:57and spread us all over.
01:58So being in Alabama, which is where my father's family was from,
02:01was very, very interesting.
02:03To go where there is so much civil rights history while birding.
02:07For example, I was walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
02:10the bridge on which John Lewis got his beat down
02:13and a whole bunch of other people trying to march for civil rights.
02:16And then there are these cliff swallows that nest under the bridge
02:20and they're sorting out, catching bugs and flying around.
02:23And it occurred to me that almost certainly this same species,
02:27maybe the ancestors of these very birds I'm seeing,
02:31were nesting under this bridge when all of that went down on the bridge.
02:34And it just created this sort of mental connection.
02:37Just the fact that, you know, I talked about the Great Migration,
02:40perfectly connected to birds of all things.
02:42Because, you know, why did Black people leave the South?
02:44Because there was industrial economic opportunity in the North.
02:48People left so that they could raise their kids free of oppression,
02:52safer and have more opportunity.
02:54That's exactly why birds migrate from the South to the North every year in the spring.
02:58Because suddenly in the spring in the North,
03:01there are bugs where they haven't been in the winter.
03:04So there is opportunity to raise your young,
03:07where they will have a better chance at surviving.
03:10So just a lot of parallels like that,
03:11that just made Alabama for me really personally,
03:14super interesting to bird.
03:18Costa Rica.
03:19Only one answer to what the get bird is in Costa Rica.
03:22The resplendent Quetzal.
03:24It is one of the top 10 birds of the world.
03:28Why?
03:29And this is a bird about the size of a robin,
03:31maybe a little bit bigger.
03:32It has an emerald green back, bright red breast.
03:35And then in a male, in breeding plumage,
03:40you get a two foot long streamer tail behind it.
03:44So when this emerald green bird flies,
03:48that tail is going behind it,
03:51which led to the legends of Quetzalcoatl, the flying serpent.
03:55Because they saw that undulating green tail flying behind it.
03:59Birding connects you to everything.
04:01It will most immediately connect you to this other wild creature
04:04that is beautiful and interesting in its own ways.
04:07You will see behavior though, that you may think,
04:09oh, that's kind of like the things I do.
04:11You'll get a little mythology.
04:12You'll get a little geography.
04:13You'll get a little meteorology.
04:15You will get a sense of the entire planet
04:17because you're looking at birds often that are migrating
04:19from one place to another across thousands of miles.
04:22So yeah, birding is a window into the soul of the planet.
04:29Antarctica, a landscape defined entirely by ice.
04:33It is striking.
04:34It is startling.
04:35You will have your breath taken away
04:37from the moment you see your first iceberg,
04:40the size of an apartment building drifting by your boat.
04:43If you go to Antarctica just to see Antarctica,
04:45you're going to get the birds, the penguins, the albatrosses.
04:49Bird life that you can't really find anywhere else.
04:51I knew we were going to see albatrosses,
04:53but what I didn't realize is that you see them in a specific portion of the trip,
04:57the Drake Passage, because that's where the winds are.
05:00And that's what albatrosses need to stay aloft.
05:03You hit a certain part of the trip and you're seeing all kinds of amazing,
05:06huge, long winged jumbo jets with wings that just go on and on forever and ever.
05:11Of course, you get past that and you get down to the penguins,
05:14which are the stars of the show.
05:15So if there's any one bird you want to see if you visit Antarctica,
05:19it's the bird I didn't see, which is the emperor penguin.
05:23You will see penguins of all kinds, of various kinds.
05:26And I did see a lot of really great, amazing penguins,
05:29but I did not see the emperor penguin.
05:31So I guess I'll have to go back.
05:35Nepal, the one you probably really want to see.
05:38I think it's even their national bird.
05:40It's the Himalayan monal.
05:41It is a kind of pheasant.
05:43If somebody took a hummingbird with all those bright iridescent feathers
05:47and Xeroxed it up so it's 10 times bigger, that's a Himalayan monal.
05:51So when you finally see one of those birds, you're like, holy cow, it's amazing.
05:55To get them, you have to be at altitude.
05:57You're not going to get them in Kathmandu.
05:59If you're not used to the altitude, it will kick your butt.
06:02It's because I consider myself relatively fit and I go jogging and have good aerobic capacity.
06:07And so I thought, oh, this will be no problem.
06:10And then I got there and started walking.
06:13And if it was level, it was great.
06:15And the second I had to take so much as one step up, I'm gasping for air.
06:22So it is an interesting, challenging trip, but an amazing trip.
06:27The things you will see just in terms of the landscape.
06:30You know, when you hit the high Himalayas, you'll look around at these jagged peaks.
06:33You can see nowhere else, snow covered, and you'll be like, okay, yes, this is the realm of the gods,
06:39obviously.
06:43Australia.
06:43They are known for their parrots.
06:45In fact, they have so many different kinds of parrots, they stopped calling them parrots
06:49and they came up with names like cockatoo, lorikeet.
06:52They just have so many names and so many different kinds of parrots and so many different colors.
06:56So, and you can see them anywhere.
06:57I got there and I was like, okay, I got to figure out how I'm going to see sulfur crested
07:01cockatoos.
07:02Got over to Centennial Park, was there for about five minutes and
07:07this giant jumbo white 747 comes flying out of the sky.
07:11Six more of them come flying out of the sky.
07:13Sulfur crested cockatoos everywhere.
07:16Junk birds to the Australian, but they are beautiful birds.
07:19They're bright birds, bright as in intelligent birds.
07:22The other interesting thing about being in Sydney specifically was
07:24the soundscape was completely alien to me because I'm an ear birder.
07:28I rely on my ears a lot.
07:29I got there and all the sounds were completely alien.
07:34It was just like, what the heck is that?
07:36I feel like I'm on the set of Jurassic Park.
07:39All these strange sounds, where are they coming from?
07:41What bird is making that sound?
07:42And it was just, it was wonderful actually because it was exciting.
07:46It's like, wow, this is alien.
07:47This is different.
07:51Ecuador.
07:52The thing about the tropics is that you get an explosion of diversity of species.
07:56The get bird for me in Ecuador, I actually took a trip specifically to get this bird,
08:02is the harpy eagle.
08:03It is arguably the biggest eagle in the world.
08:06People see a picture of a harpy eagle and they think it's a person in a bird costume.
08:10And it's actually this eagle.
08:12They snatch monkeys and sloths from the tops of the jungle trees.
08:17And that's their diet.
08:18I had never seen one.
08:19I had known about it since I was a kid and it occupied this outsized place in my imagination.
08:25A friend phones me to say, hey, a guide I know knows where there is an active
08:30harpy eagle's nest that's accessible.
08:33Now, if there's an active nest, that means the birds are guaranteed to be there.
08:38And if the nest is accessible, it means you can actually get relatively close to the nest
08:42to be able to see the birds.
08:43I got down to Ecuador, hiked through the swamp, ankle deep into the ground, ruined a $200 pair
08:50of hiking boots and got the bird.
08:53There, this huge, enormous female, because in raptors, in birds of prey, females are a third
09:00bigger than the males.
09:01So here is this enormous female harpy eagle guarding her nest.
09:06I have a video of her sitting there and she's like, shall I stretch to show you my magnificence?
09:11Okay.
09:13And this wing just folds out.
09:16Magnificent bird.
09:17Just magnificent.
09:21Trinidad and Tobago.
09:22There's a wonderful place that's been around for decades and decades called the Asa Wright
09:26Nature Center.
09:27And that just makes it easy to bird Trinidad.
09:30You go there and they have a veranda where they put out these feeders with fruit and hummingbird feeders.
09:36And then you sit there and you drink your rum punch and the birds come to you.
09:42And you'd spend the whole afternoon, if you want, wiling it away as toucans drop in,
09:47hummingbirds drop in, as teenagers drop in.
09:49And that's the other thing I have to tell you about tropical American birding.
09:52Most people don't realize hummingbirds are only found in North America, Central America,
09:56South America, and the Caribbean.
09:57So only in the Western Hemisphere.
09:59They are one of the unique groups of birds, the only birds that can fly backwards.
10:03The incredible wingbeat rate.
10:05Pugnacious little things.
10:06They have not gotten the memo yet that they're not Tyrannosaurus rex anymore.
10:12And then they come in so many different forms.
10:16So many forms that, again, they had to invent new names for them.
10:18Puffleg.
10:19Satyr.
10:20The Blacktail Train Bearer in Ecuador.
10:22And then the Tanagers.
10:24Imagine Jackson Pollock had a fit and just started splashing his paint everywhere.
10:29Tanagers in every conceivable color and pattern, dazzling throughout the Americas.
10:34So those are the two groups you want.
10:36Tanagers and hummingbirds.
10:41Tanzania.
10:41It's funny, most people go for the mammals and maybe they see a few birds.
10:45I was going for the birds and yeah, I'll take the mammals too.
10:49At one point, I was on the edge of the Serengeti and I caught something out of the corner of
10:52my eye.
10:53And I'm like, oh, I guess a kid is playing with a ribbon.
10:56And I look over.
10:57It wasn't a kid playing with a ribbon.
10:59It was an African paradise flycatcher, which is a small bird that eats bugs out of the air,
11:05but almost like a miniaturized Ketzel from South America.
11:09It's got this long streamer tail.
11:11So every time it flew into the air to catch a bug, that streamer tail was flipping through the forest.
11:18And I just thought this is where legends of fairies come from, obviously, because it's right here.
11:24I'm seeing it.
11:27Galapagos is wild.
11:29And here's the thing.
11:30You have to keep a distance between you and the animal.
11:34You can't approach them, but they can approach you.
11:38And so I remember more than once, you know, I was at a beach and a seal was like,
11:44what's that person?
11:45And it comes coming up to me like it's a little dog with a puppy with a snout.
11:49And it doesn't sniff you like a dog does.
11:51Instead, it brushes you with its whiskers.
11:53That's how it checks you out.
11:55So it's brushing me with the whiskers.
11:56And I'm like, this is too cool.
11:58Another time I was in the water, you know, we were taking a break from our tour.
12:01Pelicans are diving around me, brown pelicans.
12:04And one of them lands in the water and swims right up to me like this.
12:09So we are nose to beak like this.
12:12And these two bug eyes are looking at me on either side.
12:14I actually had to calm myself down because I was freaking out a little bit.
12:17But I was like, okay, I must look as funny to you as you do to me.
12:21So it was just a wonderful experience to have animals that just don't care about you.
12:28They have no fear.
12:31Mexico.
12:32There are several endemics in Mexico.
12:34But one of them is the rufous-bellied chachalaca.
12:37It's like a turkey-like bird.
12:40Chachalacas in general and the rufous-bellied is unique to Mexico.
12:44So that's one you definitely want to try and seek out if you're in the right part of Mexico.
12:47I think what will surprise a lot of people about Mexico is they will make the assumption
12:51that because it is right up against the United States and there's so much history together
12:56that everyone there speaks English.
12:59Not so.
13:00In fact, there are parts of Mexico where you will go in the highlands of Chiapas or something
13:05like that where they barely speak Spanish.
13:07And in fact, the indigenous language is what's predominant.
13:11Particularly because to get to some of these birds, you're going to be going to some remote places.
13:15It's a great idea to hire a local guide, particularly if you don't have language proficiency.
13:21It'll smooth a lot of things over.
13:25Canada.
13:26New Brunswick.
13:27So in New Brunswick, it's probably the razorbill.
13:31Well, you know, it's a tie between the razorbill and the Atlantic puffin.
13:34Because yeah, puffins.
13:35They're puffins.
13:36They've got the clown bill.
13:37But razorbills are super cool too in a different way.
13:40They look like cool dudes.
13:41They look like they've got these shades pulled down with this little line through them.
13:45They're often nesting on the same rocky places.
13:47So you can get both at the same time.
13:49You can get the cool dudes and the clowns.
13:51If you're going for things like puffins and razorbills,
13:53you want to go during the breeding season, which is summertime.
13:56Summer's the time to be in Canada.
13:58The rest of the time, even Canadians go elsewhere.
14:01Hawaii is a unique bird case.
14:05It is the extinction capital of the planet.
14:09No place else has lost as many species as Hawaii has.
14:13They have lost three quarters of their native birds.
14:16And it's a cultural loss because these birds are often woven into their stories,
14:22into the native Hawaiian culture.
14:23Despite impossible odds, they are determined to save the native birds they still have left.
14:29They are being creative about it.
14:31They are being smart about it.
14:32And most above all, they are being determined about it.
14:36That was the real honor in visiting Hawaii.
14:39To see their efforts to save these birds no matter what.
14:44The thing that's really kicking the native birds' butt right now is avian malaria.
14:48And that is carried by mosquitoes that never used to be in the Hawaiian Islands.
14:52So the only place where you still find the native birds is at altitude,
14:55where it's so cold that mosquitoes can't get up there.
14:57Climate change means it's getting warmer and warmer,
15:00and the mosquitoes can get higher and higher every year.
15:02And there's only so much real estate left at the top.
15:05Now, if you go as a regular old tourist, you're going to go to the resort beaches,
15:10and you're going to say, there's tons of birds.
15:12There's birds everywhere.
15:14All introduced.
15:15None of them are native.
15:16Hardly, very few of them are native to the Hawaiian Islands.
15:19They were introduced because the native birds were gone.
15:21So when you see birds in Hawaii, generally you are seeing birds that are not native to the Hawaiian Islands.
15:30A place I've never birded, never been to, and I would like to bird right now is Minnesota.
15:36And the reason is because I have never seen common loons on their breeding grounds.
15:43Minnesota is the land of a thousand lakes.
15:45They've got all these northern lakes where all these common loons breed.
15:48Not only that, I have become aware of what an incredible people Minnesotans are,
15:54and how they are determined to stand up for each other and protect each other.
15:58So hopefully I've convinced you to make birding a part of your travels,
16:02and to pack a pair of binoculars no matter where you're going.
16:05And hopefully I'll see you out there in the field.
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