- 15 hours ago
Professional Birder Christian Cooper joins WIRED to answer your questions about birding and birdwatching.
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00:00What does a raven sound like?
00:01A bad human imitation is kind of like a
00:04That's a bad imitation.
00:05Pretend I never said that.
00:07No bird will understand that.
00:08They'll think, what's wrong with you?
00:11That's a raven!
00:12I hope you heard that.
00:13Hi, I'm Christian Cooper.
00:15I'm a birder, editor, and author
00:18of Better Living Through Birding.
00:19I'm here to answer your questions from the internet.
00:22This is birding support.
00:28Renneman Soles asks,
00:30Do birds have regional accents?
00:33Absolutely.
00:34They have their particular dialects
00:36depending on where they are.
00:37Many of the apps that you find
00:40that have bird songs on them
00:42give you several different examples
00:43from several different places
00:45so that you can compare
00:47and find one that's closer
00:49to maybe the accent you're hearing.
00:50I remember the first time
00:52I went birding down south
00:53in like the Carolinas
00:55and a cardinal was singing
00:56and I didn't recognize it
00:57because its dialect was completely different
00:59from the cardinals
01:01I was used to hearing in New York.
01:03Mostly you'll notice that difference
01:05in songs.
01:06Basically a bird saying,
01:08Hi, I'm Bob.
01:09I'm a yellow warbler
01:11and I am the best looking
01:12yellow warbler ever.
01:14This is my territory.
01:15If you're a female,
01:16come check me out, baby.
01:17And if you're another male,
01:18get the heck off my lawn.
01:20It's long.
01:21It gives you a lot of information.
01:22The call is typically short and sharp.
01:24It's like,
01:25Hey, Ori.
01:26Hey, hey, danger, danger.
01:28You will notice the accents in songs.
01:31Calls are too short.
01:32Next is from Lady Rainicorn.
01:34Perhaps a dumb question.
01:35Lady Rainicorn,
01:36there are no dumb questions.
01:38But how do you actually find the birds?
01:40What you want to do, first of all,
01:42is you've got to achieve a sort of zen state.
01:45And what I mean by that is
01:46your head is going through all the different things
01:48that you're thinking about in the morning or whenever.
01:51Those have to get silenced.
01:53You're no longer paying attention to your inner monologue.
01:56You're totally engaged with the outdoors.
01:58And what you're looking for and listening for,
02:01because you're using both your eyes and your ears,
02:03you're looking for any sort of sharp,
02:05sudden motion in the greenery,
02:07which is separate from like a leaf being moved by the wind.
02:10And you'll learn to tell the difference
02:12with a little practice.
02:13So you're looking for that sharp,
02:14sudden motion of a bird moving through the foliage.
02:17Also, you're looking for shapes,
02:18because there are some birds, like owls,
02:20who during the daytime are not going to move.
02:22So you're looking for a kind of a lump-like shape.
02:25And then the other thing,
02:26you want to be listening for sounds
02:28that draw your attention in a certain direction.
02:30And the great thing about using sound
02:32is it's multi-directional.
02:33Your eyes can only look in one direction at any given time,
02:36but your ears are scanning all around.
02:39So you'll hear something here and you're like,
02:40oh, there's a bird up here.
02:42Oh, there's a bird up here.
02:43That helps you find the birds.
02:44Let's go see if we can spot this Buick's wren.
02:47And if we can't, maybe we can see something else.
02:52So what happened just now was I heard a little high-pitched chirp,
02:57and that got my attention.
02:58And then when I heard that,
02:59I started scanning in the general location
03:01of where the sound came from.
03:03And I saw quick little darting motions through the foliage.
03:08And so that was my target.
03:10You find the bird with your naked eye,
03:12you keep your eye on the bird,
03:15and you bring your binoculars to your eyes.
03:18If you do this,
03:21not going to work.
03:22You're not going to see the bird.
03:23Practice with a stationary object,
03:24like a sign or like that chimney there.
03:27I got the chimney with my naked eye,
03:28and now I'm bringing the binoculars to my eyes.
03:31Now what I saw when I got this bird in the binoculars
03:33was a thin-pointed bill, a small bird, smaller than a sparrow,
03:38and basically drab grayish-green all over,
03:41maybe with a couple of more yellowish areas on the underside.
03:45And maybe the hint of a line through the eye.
03:50And all of that, particularly the fact that I'm here in the West,
03:54tells me that that was an orange-crowned warbler.
03:56What we often do to help people find the bird we're talking about
04:00is we treat the tree like a clock.
04:02And so I'll say,
04:03there's an orange-crowned warbler at 9 o'clock
04:06at the very edge of the tree.
04:09It's largely intuitive, largely common sense,
04:11and it's just a lot of fun,
04:13especially when you make all these sort of discoveries on your own.
04:16At KTRHYYH asks,
04:19birds live in a musical, actually,
04:22because WTF is a mating dance.
04:25I think that is a great way of looking at it.
04:27What is it?
04:28It's a way to show off that you are super hot and all that.
04:33One of the best ones I saw came on me totally by surprise.
04:37I was in Trinidad, and I was walking through a forest,
04:40and I came to a little clearing,
04:41and I got all excited because I saw this little bird.
04:44Basically, it looked like someone had took a penguin and shrunk it down.
04:46It was a white-bearded mannequin.
04:48And all of a sudden, it popped like popcorn.
04:51It was like it teleported from here to there.
04:53And I didn't even see it.
04:54It just went,
04:54pop, pop.
04:55And then I noticed there was a whole bunch of white-bearded mannequins,
04:58and they were all doing it.
04:59Pop, pop, pop, teleporting little penguins.
05:01Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
05:04I just stood there stunned.
05:05I had stumbled onto what they call a lek, L-E-K.
05:10And a lek is an area where males go as a group to show off,
05:15to try to get a female to say,
05:17yeah, that guy's really got the popcorn thing down.
05:19It's pretty amazing what these birds will do to get them ate.
05:23LordPhoenix81 asks,
05:24Why are male birds mammals so beautiful and majestic?
05:28They do all kinds of display of art to attract females.
05:31Well, the females are just plain color.
05:34All right, I'm going in.
05:36There's a thing that the female bird typically does
05:40that the male bird does not.
05:42They brood the eggs.
05:44So the female has to sit on the nest and incubate the eggs
05:49with the warmth of her body.
05:51And when she's doing that, she is basically immobile.
05:55She is completely vulnerable to potential predators.
05:58So female birds typically are what we call cryptically colored.
06:03They're colored in plain, drab ways to help them blend in
06:07so they're not as vulnerable to predation.
06:10The male birds, on the other hand,
06:12typically do not have that problem
06:14because a lot of male birds don't brood the eggs.
06:17So they can be all kinds of bright, festive colors,
06:19which they want to be to attract a mate and show their fitness.
06:22And so that's a way for the female to judge the fitness of the male.
06:27So that's why you get in birds that what we call sexual dimorphism,
06:31a difference in the form of the bird based on the sex of the bird.
06:36Cat Pittle C asks,
06:37Do birds know exactly where they're going or are they just winging it?
06:41They know.
06:43They have a certain instinctual knowledge of where to go,
06:46but then they also have all these different ways of telling where they're going,
06:50whether it is the quantum entanglement in their eyes that lets them see the magnetic poles,
06:55navigating by landmarks like mountain chains or coastlines.
06:59They can tell the sun, the angle of the sun, north from south.
07:01So they have a lot of ways of telling where they're going.
07:04Willing Today 1059,
07:06Do you bird alone or with others?
07:08You know, the answer is both.
07:10One of the great things about birding is that if you're a solitary kind of person,
07:13it is the perfect solitary activity.
07:16You just walk around and you get to experience the solitude
07:20and commune with nature on a very deep, personal, solo level.
07:25One of my favorite things is when I stumble on a bird when I'm birding alone
07:30and I feel like nature is revealing a little bit of herself just to me in that moment.
07:36And it's glorious.
07:37And then there's the communal aspect, you know, the camaraderie,
07:41the birding with friends, that joined experience of seeing a bird together
07:45that you were not expecting and you're high-fiving and you're just in a communal state of awe.
07:52So you get a little bit of both.
07:53But it's really, it is completely up to you and what your temperament allows.
07:59PenguinSexParty asks,
08:00What's your guy's opinion about pigeons?
08:02I used to be like,
08:03Oh my God, why are you bothering me with these birds?
08:05And then I found out a little bit more.
08:07Their visual processing abilities are so great that they've done tests where the pigeons have been
08:14able to sort human artworks by school of art, like impressionist versus another school of art.
08:22So many amazing things about pigeons, including their ability to home in on heading back to a certain
08:28place. And most important of all, pigeons are in all our major cities. And so they are the bird
08:34ambassador to so many people who are just stuck in urban areas and maybe don't get to go out into
08:41a
08:41beautiful green setting like this. They are the window into the natural world, into the wild world.
08:46So I have nothing but respect for pigeons as I've learned more and more about them. And so should you.
08:51At Cameron M. Archer asks,
08:53Birding is getting your ass up before sunrise because of warblers.
08:57Well, that's not a question, but it is the correct answer. Warblers are like butterflies with personality.
09:02They're small, they're very active, and they come in an incredible range of colors and patterns.
09:08And so in the east where you have about 35 different kinds, it's like a pageant because they all come
09:13at
09:13different times of the spring migration. You can almost calculate when each group is going to arrive.
09:17And then there's a moment when there's the overlap of the early ones and the late ones.
09:21And you can have like a 25 warbler day and you are in heaven because you're just seeing so many
09:28gorgeous,
09:28beautiful birds. So yeah, it's all about the warblers. Jello cakewalk. When I hear a bird sound
09:34I have never heard before, what steps do I take to identify it? This is a great question,
09:39because this is how I learned my bird songs. If you try to learn it by, you know, playing recordings,
09:45it's like Northern Mockingbird. Eastern Bluebird. And it all becomes just a big mishmash.
09:54Whenever I hear a bird I don't recognize, I take the time to track down the bird and put my
10:02eyes on it.
10:03I have to see the bird with its mouth opening and its throat vibrating and its tail bobbing
10:09as it makes the sound, because otherwise you can think you're seeing the bird that's making the sound
10:14when really it's actually another bird in the bush. You've spent 20 minutes crawling through the shrubs,
10:19trying to see this darn bird that has been making this darn sound that has you frantic with curiosity.
10:27Hearing the song over and over and over again. And then you associate the song with that experience
10:36of crawling through the shrubs in the Hudson Valley on a Sunday with the sun beating down on you and
10:42getting your knees muddy. And the next time you hear it, your brain is going to flash right back to
10:47that
10:47moment and you're going to be, oh, that's a Northern Mockingbird singing, because you've made the
10:52association. So this question is from at AJ Holmes, hashtag ask a black birder. What do you all carry
10:59in your birding pack when you go out birding? We don't all carry the same things, but of course,
11:04we're going to bring our optics. In my case, that's a pair of binoculars. Other people will bring cameras,
11:11some will bring both. You're probably going to bring a field guide. And what a field guide does
11:15is it's a kind of a compendium of all the different birds you might find in a particular area. Most
11:22of us
11:22these days carry a field guide on our phone electronically. Similarly, we don't typically carry journals
11:29these days. What we do do is we record our sightings electronically on Cornell Lab's eBird. And that lets all
11:38that data get aggregated both for you to look at later and for Cornell Labs to crunch so they find
11:44out more about the birds. A couple other things are going to be a hat for either sun protection or
11:49to
11:49keep the rain off my head, and snacks and water. I do not bird hungry because birding hungry is no
11:55fun.
11:56So how long I bird on any given outing really depends on where I am and the kind of day
12:02it is. You know,
12:03sometimes you can be out there and you're not seeing that much, in which case you might cut it short,
12:07and then there are other times when you're just having the time of your life. In which case,
12:10I'm going to be out there for hours. I've spent up to six hours at a stretch birding Central Park
12:16alone.
12:17So it really depends on on the day and the birds. This question is from msbonney0414.
12:23Will buying more hummingbird feeders keep those little expletive deleted from fighting? Maybe.
12:29Hummingbirds are notoriously cantankerous. They are aggressive and they are in often a constant state
12:37of war as they fight for territory and for food sources. I always think that they've kind of got
12:43their engines revved up because of their high metabolism and it gives them constant road rage.
12:47So will putting up more hummingbird feeders have them not fight as much? It'll probably help.
12:53It'll especially help if you put those feeders up sort of spaced apart because then one bird can come to
12:58this
12:59feeder and another bird can come to that feeder and they're not necessarily in line of sight of each
13:03other. Bleached Tattoo asks, how do I attract more birds to my garden? There are all kinds of native
13:11plants for your area that you can plant in your garden that will bring the birds. Nectar for hummingbirds,
13:17the natural seeds it produces for other kinds of birds, seed eating birds, but also a lot of these plants
13:23host insects. And those insect hosts are crucial to birds, particularly during the breeding season,
13:29when they need good protein to feed their young. So far better than just relying on feeders is to
13:35actually grow the plants that these birds evolved with over millions of years to eat. In fact there's
13:42an organization called Homegrown National Park creating a whole network of people who are growing native
13:48plants to help support the birds and other wildlife. I do it myself on my rooftop in Manhattan. I got
13:54a
13:54bunch of pots up there and I grow plants that are native to the region to attract the birds and
13:59the
13:59bugs. Drake0074 asks, is it okay to put a baby bird back in its nest? Yes, but you could also
14:09just leave it
14:09where it is and let nature run its course. Because very often the parents are not far away and they
14:15are
14:15keeping an eye on the baby bird and they will coax it to where it needs to be. And also
14:21all birds
14:22reach that point where they're fledging, where they are learning how to fly for the first time and
14:27they're going to fall and they're going to be awkward and they're not going to get it right and it's
14:31going
14:31to take them a little bit. If it were me, I would probably just leave it where it is. So
14:35from
14:35at Jade MN Eve, we have the question, a question for hashtag birders. What's a bird you've heard plenty of
14:42times but never seen? This is the most frustrating thing for us birders is when we've heard it many
14:50times but never seen it. The one I always go back to is the gray-breasted wood wren in Costa
14:57Rica. I was
14:58in a place called Monte Verde and I heard this bird over and over and over again. Never saw the
15:04bird.
15:04Very frustrating but hopefully, eventually, with enough patience and work, you'll get to actually
15:11see whatever the bird is. Next question is from Budgetsun6186. Bird feeder, yay or nay? My answer,
15:20yay. And I say that because I started birding because I put up a bird feeder in the backyard. So
15:27I think it is a
15:28great way to get an introduction to birding. It is a great way for people who are homebound, for elderly
15:35people, to have the birds come to them. I put up hummingbird feeders all over the place and that's a
15:42great joy because those birds are so unique and so special and to have them come so close is wonderful.
15:48I've actually had hummingbirds feed from a little feeder in the palm of my hand and one time I was
15:53changing a hummingbird feeder and the male hummingbird came over and was like, no, no, I'm not done
15:58yet and there he is feeding it and I had to dutifully hold it while he fed until he was
16:03done and then I
16:03could take it in and change it. I think some people don't want the birds to associate humans with food.
16:10I don't think there's too much trouble from that because they associate the feeders with food,
16:16not necessarily the person. Also, you have to be careful with feeders. You have to clean them out.
16:22You don't want to let seeds sit there for too long and then it gets moldy and then you're just
16:27spreading disease. And if there is an outbreak of disease in your area then you definitely want
16:32to stop feeding for a while because feeders can artificially congregate birds in one spot where
16:37they normally wouldn't be and then they can spread disease amongst each other. So, you know, feed with
16:43care. This bird feeder is great. You'll be able to see everything that's happening here up close and,
16:48you know, whatever kind of feed you put in is going to alter what kind of birds come to your
16:52feeder.
16:53Cardinals love sunflower seeds. American goldfinches love thistle seeds. You put in peanuts and a lot
17:00of birds love the peanuts. You know, the woodpeckers, the blue jays, cracked corn for blackbirds.
17:05Gorilla in the ring. What are some cool unique abilities certain birds have? Hummingbirds,
17:10the only birds that can fly backwards. That incredibly fast metabolism that lets them beat their wings like
17:1760 beats per second or more. They'd starve to death if that metabolism stayed at that same rate overnight.
17:23So every night their heartbeat goes down to almost nothing. Their body temperature goes down to almost
17:29nothing. They literally enter a form of suspended animation called torpor and then the next morning
17:35they have to jumpstart their entire life system back into life. Owls have special feathers on the
17:44leading edge of their wing which breaks up the air which allows them to fly silently. A great gray owl
17:50hunts by sound in the winter listening for the sounds of rodents under the snowpack. And by that sound
17:58alone they punch down through the snow and grab the rodent with their talons. I mean just wild crazy
18:05stuff. When we breathe, we're breathing out the old air, we're breathing in the fresh air and some of
18:10it mingles in our lungs. That's not particularly efficient. Birds have a much more efficient respiratory
18:16system so that that air doesn't mingle so the fresh air stays fresh and they get a lot more bang
18:21for the
18:21buck from their breathing. They need that because of their high energy activity of flying. But the thing is
18:28that system goes all the way back to the dinosaurs and in fact birds are dinosaurs. Living breathing
18:36dinosaurs are the only ones who survived the extinction and that's probably the coolest thing
18:40about them of all. Jmax1087 asks how can you tell if a bird is a crow or a raven? If
18:47you have them
18:47side by side it's easy because a raven is huge bird. But if you don't have them side by side
18:52it's hard to
18:53judge size. So how can you tell? For one thing a raven will have a wedge-shaped tail where a
18:59crow
18:59has kind of a fan-shaped tail. Raven has a big schnoz like this really heavy beak whereas the crow's
19:06beak
19:06is going to be a lot thinner. But probably the best way to tell is by the voice. A crow
19:12will make those
19:12classic crow sounds. Short or long caws. Caw caw caw or caw caw. Raven doesn't make those sounds.
19:20Typical raven sound is a croak. Like a crow maybe with a sore throat. Kind of like a quark quark.
19:27That's a bad imitation. Pretend I never said that. No bird will understand that. They'll think
19:31what's wrong with you? That's a raven! I hope you heard that. Maybe he was fooled.
19:37Quark! Quark! Quark! Quark! Quark! Quark!
19:44Now he's like, no you're just stupid. The other way to tell, ravens will soar, crows will not.
19:52So if you see a big black bird making lazy circles in the sky for a long period of time,
20:00it's a raven. Crows at most will glide for a couple of seconds and then they're flapping again.
20:04Next question is from AskMado1995. Spotting scope or binoculars? Depends.
20:12If you are going for warblers, warblers are very small, very active birds that are constantly flitting
20:19around in the foliage. You're going to want binoculars because you're not going to be able
20:23to get them in the scope. They're not going to hold still long enough. On the other hand,
20:26if you're going for shorebirds, very often they're at a great distance and they're usually often in a
20:31rather fixed position or only moving around sort of along the shoreline in a fixed direction. Those
20:38you can get in the scope a lot more easily. So, you know, it's a combination. You know what you're
20:42most likely to see and equip yourself accordingly. Our next question is from NotoriousSasha.
20:49Can you tell what type of bird from its nest eggs? Some people can. I cannot. As far as the
20:57nests go,
20:57two things to know. First of all, a nest is not a house. A nest is the equivalent of a
21:05cradle or a
21:05crib for almost all birds. They use it for raising the young and then they're done. That's it. They
21:11don't use it after that. The second thing to know is that different birds have different nesting
21:16strategies. There are birds that are cavity nesters. They nest in holes and trees and that's who will
21:21nest in a house like this. Typical cavity nesters are things like woodpeckers. Compare that to, say,
21:26a cardinal or a robin. A cardinal's nest, I think, is generally made out of twigs.
21:31Whereas a robin's nest is made out of typically grass and mud. And then there are birds that nest
21:36just like on a scrape in the ground. And that would be some of your shore birth. And then
21:40mourning doves are notoriously bad nest makers. They'll like throw a couple of twigs down on top
21:46of an air conditioner and then think that's a nest. And half the times their nests fail because the eggs
21:51are rolling off and that's that. And yet they're prolific beyond words. There are more mourning
21:55doves across the whole north american continent. Next question is from squaremusic1695. Is it true
22:02you can attract birds playing their calls on a speaker or phone? It is true and you don't want
22:08to do it because you're disrupting the bird's natural behavior. Usually what you're playing
22:13is the song of arrival and that's going to get the other bird agitated and come forward to try to
22:19confront this opponent. Another reason is courtesy to the other birders around you. If you're in a
22:25place that's birded with a lot of people and you start playing this call, people are going to come
22:29rushing over thinking, oh I just heard a cerulean warbler singing and you gotta sheepishly go, oh
22:34sorry that was me. No, you don't want that. It's bad birder etiquette in general. And then there's just
22:40the sounds we can make with our own mouths. That disturbs me less. You know, if you've got the skill
22:45to
22:45fake the bird out and bring him in with your own voice, yeah again you don't want to do it
22:50too much
22:50but you know every once in a blue moon it's not the end of the world. Important advisor 545. Hmm.
22:57What do you write in a birding journal? The date, the time, the weather. I'll even sometimes write the
23:04phase of the moon and then of course a list of what birds I've seen in the course of the
23:10walk and I'll
23:11put numbers to approximate how many of those birds I saw. And that's a great sort of snapshot of the
23:18day. If you go back you can see exactly how many of these did I see this year on this
23:23date as opposed
23:24to say a year later, five years later. One of the things that has really come to the fore in
23:31studying
23:31birds is citizen science. The observations of just regular old amateur birders if we can aggregate them
23:39put them together and review them over time we can spot trends in what's happening to the bird
23:45population. Good example, Christmas bird count in my hometown of New York back in say 1920 it would show
23:52very different birds than a Christmas bird count in New York today. For example you would not see
23:59cardinals and now cardinals are a common bird all over New York City. By keeping lists journals like this
24:05you can keep track of that personally and if you keep those lists on an app called eBird which is
24:11totally free it's from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology all that data from all these different people
24:16goes to the lab and they crunch the numbers to be able to tell you all kinds of things about
24:21bird
24:21populations over time in different areas and that's tremendously helpful to science. That's also
24:28totally helpful on an individual level. Let's say I'm planning to take a trip to Sausalito. I can look up
24:33eBird reports for Sausalito and I can see where people saw what they saw and how many eBird is
24:39fantastic. Vespasianus 26 asks to all you big city dwellers that's me how many different birds do you
24:49actually see in your everyday life? How many different kinds of birds you see really depends on the time
24:54a year and what city you're in? If your big city happens to sit on a migration route like New
25:00York
25:00City does, your everyday life becomes a wonder during the migration times. It's like a tide washing
25:06in new stuff and it turns every morning into a treasure hunt. But even in the quiet times there
25:12were more birds than you would think. I remember just on a regular average every old day I was on
25:18top
25:19of my roof and I saw a big old red-tailed hawk sitting on the next roof over and I
25:24thought that's
25:25pretty cool and then I heard this because there was a pair of American Kestrels, our smallest falcon,
25:33and they were doing basically tag team wrestling. One would swoop down and take a run at the red-tailed
25:40hawk which is like many times the size of the kestrel and then the other one would take a turn
25:44and the
25:45red-tailed hawk as they're taking turns and then suddenly the kestrels stopped and I hear
25:53and a peregrine falcon comes dive bombing and coming after the red-tailed hawk. Meanwhile the
25:59kestrels were like no we're not getting involved in this we're sitting this one out and it just
26:03turned into this raptor warfare on the streets above New York with everyone down below me completely
26:09oblivious and I'm like bring me the popcorn because this is a show I want to see. J'avais raison
26:14asks how to ID birds when they are flying. You're looking for many of the same things as you're
26:21looking for when the bird is perched in that you're looking for field march, where the colors are, the
26:25size and shape of the bird, the patterns, any sounds it might make. For example in flight American goldfinches
26:32have a flight call that they make that kind of goes potato chip, potato chip, potato chip. Also the way
26:39they
26:39fly can often help you identify what the bird is. Swallows and swifts, they're both aerial specialists
26:45catching bugs on the wing but they have different ways of flying. Where swifts have a very stiff
26:51winged flight so it's kind of like a bat. Swallows have a very swooping flight where they're pulling
26:56the wings in with every stroke. So all these things can help you tell especially what family the bird is
27:01in and then you can get some of the plumage details to find out exactly which bird you're looking at.
27:08Lateralus420 asks will birds actually use bird houses made by people? Yes but here's the thing
27:15depending on what kind of bird house you make or put up that's going to determine whether or not birds
27:21use it and what birds use it. So take this bird house for example this is actually a pretty well
27:26constructed bird house. You'll notice it has ventilation at the top so that it doesn't turn into a
27:31sauna. It's got some drainage at the bottom so that any water that gets in can drain out. It's made
27:37so
27:37that you can open it up at the end of the season and clean the old nest out. It's got
27:42an overhang to
27:43help prevent any water from getting in. The size of the hole is going to determine what kind of bird
27:49is
27:49going to use the house. You want this hole to be only as big as necessary for the kind of
27:55bird that you
27:56want to use the nest box to go in and out because the bigger it gets the more other things
28:01can get
28:01in. Whether that's other kinds of birds that you're not looking to have use the box or predators.
28:08Now the thing you have to remember is not all birds nest in bird houses. A lot of them will
28:13build nests
28:13on twigs and branches. The only kind that will use a bird house are cavity nesters.
28:23There are etiquette rules to birding and we should all follow them. One of them is that you don't
28:28trespass on private property without getting permission. You don't point your binoculars in
28:32the direction of somebody's house or apartment. You do not go trampling off the path in a sensitive
28:38area and destroy the vegetation because you want to get a better look at the bird. Do not use playback
28:43where you play the song of a bird to try to bring it into you. And being respectful to the
28:48other
28:48birders around you. And being welcoming to other birders around you regardless of who they are,
28:54what their background is. So what is a twitcher? The twitcher is somebody who will drop everything
29:00because there's a rare bird and they have got to see it. We all twitch to greater or lesser extents.
29:05It's not a bad thing. It can be a little obsessive. And if that's all you're about with your birding,
29:14it's probably not the best way to be. Mitch3113more3 asks, best birding app? Without a doubt, Merlin.
29:23Merlin is an app put out by the Cornell Lab of Winothology. It is free. You can hold up your
29:28phone
29:30and it will listen around you. And then based on what it picks up, it will tell you exactly where
29:35birds
29:36are around you. It is not 100% accurate, but it gets better and better and better. It is, I
29:41would say,
29:41probably about 95 to 98% accurate. And it's changed the birding world. This question is from Quoro.
29:48What time of day is best for bird watching? In my opinion, the earlier the better. Because the birds
29:53are just like us. They wake up and they're hungry. They want breakfast. Birds are warm-blooded animals
29:58like us. Maintaining a certain body temperature. To do that, you need to burn calories. You need
30:04to have the energy. So you need to be eating. So they are most active first thing in the morning.
30:09Things will slow down by the middle of the day. A lot of birds will take a siesta around noontime.
30:14And there will be a second pulse of activity in the afternoon. I like to get there like right before
30:19dawn. Because sometimes there's something that we call the dawn chorus. And we don't know why,
30:26but for some reason, a whole bunch of birds will start singing all at once. Right before or at dawn.
30:32And if I'm there to hear it, it's like getting a table of contents of what birds are in the
30:37park
30:38that morning. Then I go out and find them. Pious Trickster 1089. Where can I find local bird watching
30:44groups and communities? You can always look online. The local groups pop up pretty quickly. The most
30:49obvious ones are typically the local chapters of Audubon slash Bird Alliance. Because a lot of the
30:56local Audubon chapters have changed their names now to Bird Alliance. At Bird Motor asks, Bird in
31:02question, what is the most effort you've put into seeing a species? Whether it be harsh conditions,
31:08distance, or any other things. In the height of the COVID epidemic, I hopped on a plane when nobody was
31:17traveling to go anywhere. Solely because I had the opportunity to see, finally, a harpy eagle. And so
31:25I got on a plane to Ecuador. One ruined pair of hiking boots later, I was staring up at the
31:30nest of a
31:31harpy eagle with this big-ass female sitting there looking glorious. Sup Benedict, if you had the power,
31:38what laws would you make and force to protect birds? That's too easy. Leash laws for unleashed
31:44dogs in protected areas. That's all I'll say on that subject matter. In addition, keep your cats indoors,
31:52please. Household cats are non-native predators. Our birds have not evolved to deal with them and they kill
32:02billions of birds in North America every year. So please keep your cat indoors. Another big hazard
32:09to our birds is skyscrapers. Birds don't see the glass, or if they do see the glass, they see a
32:14reflection of the green space around it and they smash into it, break their necks, and die. There
32:19was a building in Chicago that was this massive bird killer in a single day. Killed something like 2,000
32:24birds. Bird-safe glass looks the same to our eye, but the birds can see it. And so it dramatically
32:30reduces
32:31the number of collisions. Bear being bear, what birding locations are on your bucket list? Cuba,
32:37because I want to see the bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world. Madagascar,
32:41because they are chopping down those rainforests there and I want to see all the wildlife,
32:46but particularly the unique birds there, the endemics, before that's gone. And probably highest
32:50on my list is Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom that for decades was closed off to the west and now it's
32:56open.
32:56I hear it's wonderful, the people are wonderful, and they have birds. I mean the people I know who've
33:01birded Bhutan and come back have just raved about what they've seen, particularly the pheasants. So,
33:07Bhutan. That's all the time we have for today. Hopefully I've answered some of your questions,
33:12but more important is to develop new questions, more things you want to know because you've been
33:17out there and seeing and hearing things like this Buick Wren that is singing over my shoulder. Just go out,
33:23you know, grab a pair of binoculars. If you don't have binoculars, use your own two eyes
33:28and see what you can see, hear what you can hear, use your Merlin app, use whatever you got and
33:33just
33:33enjoy it. That's the whole point, is just have fun. Tune in next time folks for more bird support.
33:38Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
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