10-04: This Month in Birding - January 2026

Spot polar bears and scan for puffins in Norway. Sip wine and watch the photo dancers whirl to Portugal's traditional music after observing great bustards in the rolling fields. Tread lightly on a camping trip through Kenya's savannas and forests. Discover New Zealand's mini endemics or marvel at Australia's prehistoric cassowaries while learning about Aboriginal history and dream time. With All for Birding, travel is larger than lifers. Allforbirding.com Hello and welcome to the American Birding Podcast from the American Birding Association. I am your host, Nate Swick. We've reached the end of the first month of 2026. I hope you're all hanging in there. And with it comes another edition of This Month in Birding, our monthly roundtable discussion about birds and birding. And I hope it finds you in a place where you can enjoy some pleasant birding chatter, perhaps as a distraction for all the stuff. That's the thing about birding that is so important, I think. A lot of hobbies encourage disconnection. And that's not a slight. Who among us doesn't enjoy a little brain-off vegging from time to time? I certainly do. But birding is different. It's hyper-connectivity. It's engaging in the present, but in a way that feels positive instead of overwhelming. It's a cooling balm on the burn of the news cycle in a world atomized by social media. it encourages refocus not defocus i'm not entirely sure it's a real word but i think you know what i'm saying there's a there's a big beautiful world out there and it's something to stand for when it feels like despair is close plus it gets you out and into the practice of observing and connecting and maybe those things are are more important than ever these days i'm not gonna pretend like our little bird conversations here are world changing. They're certainly not. But if it gives you a few moments of joy and genuine connection with us, with your birding community, with your greater community, then maybe you can be adjacent to world changing. And that's pretty good for now. Anyway, the show this week welcomes Molly Brown from the Life List podcast, Jordan Rudder from the ABC and the ABA's own Frank Izaguiri. We talk penguin predation, bird survey bias, and take a look at our homes for weird bird stuff. All that after this week's rare birds. This is your rare bird focus for the end of January, 2026. Last week on our rarity episode, we talked both about long-staying individuals and potential best vagrants in the ABA area last year. Those conversations collide in a way that, I don't know, maybe should have been expected, I guess, when a waved albatross was seen from a research cruise in San Luis Obispo County waters in California this week. The consensus seems to be that this is likely the same waved albatross that was seen off Bodega Bay last October. photos have been taken and compared. Pretty incredible that this bird might have been hanging around the central California coast for months and that it might be seen again, especially several hundred miles to the south. The bird was seen among a large concentration of marine mammals and seabirds. Who knows if it will be seen again, but I suppose the possibility can't completely be ruled out. Heading even further west, a young brown pelican was photographed on Punaluu Beach on the southern point of the Big Island of Hawaii. This represents a first modern record of this species on the Hawaiian islands. The presence of historical sightings is unclear. This is probably a more extraordinary record than it appears at first glance for all their easily observable ocean-going potential. Brown pelicans usually stay pretty close to the shore. There are very few records beyond the continental shelf on both sides of the continent, though on the east coast there are several records in Bermuda. The bird looks to be just about annual there. It does suggest at least some affinity for longer voyages. Those are the rarity highlights for the period. For the full list of rarities from around the ABA area, check out the ABA Rare Bird Alert on Fridays at aba.org. slash RBA. You can also follow along with all of the rare bird news in our ABA rare bird alert group on Facebook and on ABA community. Happy new year. Happy year of the horned lark. It's the last week of the first month of 2026. And that means this month in birding, a round table discussion with some great folks from the birding world here to discuss some exciting recent science and news having to do with birds and birding. We'll get right to it. Let's introduce this first panel of the year. She is a bird in nature guide, one of the hosts of the excellent Life List podcast, hailing now from wild, wonderful West Virginia. Welcome back, Molly Brown. Hi, Molly. Thank you very much, Nate. Happy New Year. Yeah, happy New Year to you. It's great to see you again. And, um, next one of my colleagues at the ABA, once an editor of birding magazine, now the person charged with managing the ABA's social media empire and likely the world's foremost authority on birding in the star Trek universe. Hello again, Frank Izagiri. How you doing Frank? Good. We can talk about that if you want. Uh, if we could kind of find a way to shoehorn that in. Apparently there's a, there's a character in the new Star Trek that is a, a birder. And, uh, for me that, you know, poses a lot of questions about birding in the universe at large. Like, did they become, they're a Klingon. Did they become a birder on Klingon? Are there birds on Klingon? Did they, anyway, a lot of questions for someone to ask. So it's for Frank to get to the bottom of. Anyway, moving on. She's everyone's friend from the American Bird Conservancy and still the holder of the most frequent guest on the American Birding Podcast in its entire history, though I admit that I have not counted since the last time she was on, so I'm not sure Ted Floyd might be coming for you. Anyway, it's Jordan Rudder. Hello, Jordan. Hello, and hi, listeners. I love when you guys say hi to me in the field. It's so wonderful to always connect. Thank you. Did you just go see that Blue Tail and people knew who you were? I did. It was amazing. Well, first of all, Blue Tail was redemption for me because I went to New Jersey and missed it, but also it was just so amazing to see this incredibly rare bird close to home and then have people actually connect because of the podcast. So again, birders are awesome and birds are amazing. I'm glad people are listening. That's all I, that's what I care about. Anyway, what a delight to have you all here this month. I want to start by questioning a birding practice that I think we have all participated in a number of times. And one that I ended up defending more than I expected to in a minor online argument with a complete stranger this past week. So I'm bringing you into my personal issues here. I appreciate you for coming with me. It's almost like a mini take it or leave it episode for you. So the question is, is pishing, you know, pish, pish, pish to try and attract birds. Is it an ethical birding practice? and I bring it up because I defended it as such or at least you know I'm mostly benign birding practice but the argument that was made to me in opposition was not so poor that I could dismiss it completely out of hand that argument being that pishing stresses birds unnecessarily and we shouldn't do it so before I give my thoughts or at least go a little deeper on my thoughts I kind of know them I want to throw it to you I guess we can start by asking do you pish Do you pish frequently? Do you think about the birds and how the birds are responding to your pishing while you're doing it? I'm curious about your pishing practices. So I think I've even shared previously on the podcast that I physically cannot whistle. Like something about me, I can't whistle, but I can pish. And so I think as like, especially a young kid, I always kind of leaned into like connecting audibly, I guess you would say with the birds via pishing. Right. And of course, like as a lifelong birder, I grew up with pishing. That was just one of the tactics and everything. So I do pish even today. I'm always and always advocate, of course, that you always take the bird's best interest into account. Right. So if you can definitely tell you're stressing the bird out if everyone in a huge mob is pishing for say the blue tail that's not acceptable right it's all relative and case specific um but i think it's really interesting because this actually really connects to the use of playback which i think is just another i mean just in terms of a general yeah um audio thing and i know playback is super controversial, but again, really highlights kind of the, what's the goal? What's the like aspect on the bird again, impacts and what are you trying to do? And then I think ultimately we really need more research. Talking to my husband, Gabriel, who led the breeding bird atlas for Maryland, DC, you know, ultimately there came across this controversy without the enough, without enough information to really come down on if it truly is stressful for birds or if that's us anthropomorphizing. And of course, you always want to be cautious and take the most conservative approach for the bird's well-being. But it is interesting that this is such a big unknown ultimately for birding and bird research that it's something that should totally be invested in moving forward so we can really get to the bottom of impacts and how to best approach the birds. I agree with that. yeah I do too I also pish not as much as some I would say and I also find that it can often just be a lot more effective if I'm by myself versus you know with a group of people or all the other factors that are outside of that but one argument that I think is a really strong one that is potentially against pishing but just kind of makes it specific to the context is say if you're comparing pishing to playback, playback is targeting one species and there's one species that's going to respond to it versus pishing, which is like broadcasting something that's going to disrupt any bird that cares to listen to it. And I think that's a really good point. And when you're doing either, you can think about that because you're disrupting a larger number of birds with pishing or getting their attention anyway. Yeah, that's a good point and not one that I had considered, but you're exactly right. Now, when I, I guess when I'm pitching, I almost think that I am talking to the, you know, we're, we're pitching essentially for the birds that are most likely to respond to it. That chickadees and tent mice, they're always out there looking for, looking for a fight, I guess, in some, to some extent. And they, they respond a lot of times really well. Wrens, kinglets, net catchers also. But yeah, you're right. A lot of birds know that language and will respond to that language. Whereas in playback, even as loud as it possibly can be, is going to be mostly ignored by all but maybe one individual bird in some cases. It's an interesting point about playback because what I was thinking to say is that I generally think of pishing as if you're trying to pish out one particular bird, playback will really agitate the bird more so than the pishing. the pishing but it's true that pishing is going to affect it could possibly affect more actual birds in number so i hadn't thought about that tension that's kind of interesting i mean pishing is not it's not impact free i mean it does it it does you know change the bird's behavior that's the point right the way yeah that's what we want yeah it does draw them out you know it could potentially expose them to predation or waste energy. I mean, I think the way a lot of birders try to navigate this is it won't necessarily. No, I mean, there's a certain like elegance to just saying, well, this could be disruptive to the bird and therefore I'm not going to do it at all. But what I think a lot of birders try to do is avoid pishing around a nesting bird or an endangered species or in temperatures that are very cold or very hot when energy is more precious. Or in really heavily birded spots where the same bird might get pished many times per day. So those are some things to think about if you want to take an approach where you're not totally putting, pushing off, but want to be mindful about how to do it. Yeah. I think you'd make a good point, Frank, that, you know, just about everything we do when we're birding can potentially be a stressor on the birds that we're trying to watch. You know, walking in the field and birds are responding to me by fleeing or hiding, even though I'm not a threat, they don't necessarily know that I'm a threat. That affects birds. Looking at them through binoculars, which to birds are like two giant eyes, which could potentially be stressing, could have an impact. Certainly bird feeding, which brings birds together and puts them in some cases in conflict with one another, can be a stressor on birds. I don't think that there's anything that we can do that doesn't stress birds while we're watching them. The best we can do is just try and minimize our impact as much as we can. And if that is not pishing or pishing lightly, or I think in the case of what you said, Jordan, being really aware of how the birds are responding. Um, I think that that's, that's what we need to do now. I've also, you know, walked through the woods enough and seen chickadees and titmats yelling at absolutely nothing in particular frequently enough to know that maybe it is not the big stressor that they might be like, uh, they they'll yell at like a frog. They'll yell at, uh, um, an owl that's roosting. Yeah. The owls, I guess, theoretically a threat, but an owl during the day is probably not much of a threat. A resting snake, a large moth, they'll yell at just about anything. We are using that behavior to our advantage in a way that maybe isn't the way it was, I don't know, evolutionarily intended, but they do want to come at you sometimes. They're feisty. It's super selective cases. And again, I think it's really important that we just all understand there's so much nuance and case specificity at play here but one of the best things to for consideration in that philosophical conversation i think of especially playback um is my mind really goes to all of the discovered for western science or rediscovered birds especially thinking of like peter casner with the condom remarket ant pitta and um abc's Lost Birds program has had a lot of rediscoveries recently because of the use of that targeted playback. And then being able to learn and aid, you know, knowledge and conservation efforts is something that I think, again, we just need so much more information and research on this topic to really understand the pros and cons and that ROI and, you know, where is the line of too much or not enough. I know there has been some scientific papers or scientific studies on playback and, you know, the, the results are mixed, right? It can be a stressor sometimes, sometimes it's even advantageous. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I don't know how to take that. Certainly there are situations that I think we can recognize that are worse than others. And we should probably, you know, you know, the, the, the guidelines for playback, as we all know, not, not for a breeding bird, not for an endangered bird. Don't blast it out into the, into the woods. You know, I don't, fishing, I guess. Maybe you want to do a little bit of fishing, but, um, you know, don't, don't overdo it, I suppose. Um, and with, you know, bird calls in the hands of, you know, everyone with a phone now, that's, it's more important than ever to get those kinds of guidelines, those, those, um, suggestions out there. But yeah, ultimately I don't, I don't think there's been anything on fishing as far as I know. I couldn't find anything. do you ever uh find yourself in a public place fishing and then realize that that's something that not everyone knows what you're doing and you're just like making that sound out into the yes like i've been on a trail and unaware of people like coming up behind you like day hikers or dog walkers or whatever that so no it does not it does not it does not yeah well another thought about pishing is that from my understanding in the tropics and the neotropics it doesn't really work yeah sometimes a potential solution is to expatriate to the tropics or push them out push push everything out yeah helps when you have a couple migrants from up here sometimes you can pull in your Eastern Warblers and then that Yeah there you go It is a little bit of a different ballgame though because if you getting any interest it probably from a mixed feeding flock versus you know the chickadees and the tip mice and things that we've been talking about. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't always work too. That's the other side of it is that, you know, even the, even the chickadees and tip mice can tell the difference and sometimes they don't even bother. Uh, you know, I've found that it is most effective in the fall when you've got those first year birds coming down and they, they don't really know the difference. So they can't tell the difference and sometimes you can get like a young young warbler to come in and investigate but um even when you can't get a tip mouse to do it so go figure a lot of i mean i think that that opens up a huge case of uh potentially anthropomorphizing too because like even for that do they not know are they just more curious in general like is it a you know those kinds of things and um even like just stress is such a complex thing to think about that's exactly right birds versus humans but yeah birds live stressful lives just kind of generally are you contributing to it in a way that is abnormal i don't i don't know and how does i i guess there are there's evidence on how stress can affect birds some types of stress and we kind of use that too but in the same way as like our birds feeling cold the same way as us clearly not from what evidence seems to support and what we can see outside yeah yeah it's something to revisit who knows yeah yeah i suppose and i guess i i knew that there wasn't going to be any sort of hard and fast you know answer to this but i think the discussion is worth having um i think it's it's i think by and large my my sense is that pishing is mostly benign um and i and i still sort of feel that way but even i know that there are times and places that it's not appropriate and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna do it so go figure yep yeah i was glad that you put this one on the short list of stories to consider it was something i'd actually already been looking into um so this story um there are a couple of news articles that have come out in the New York Times and a few other outlets based on a paper. This New York Times article is called Penguins Become Prey for the Pumas of Patagonia. Great alliteration. Great alliteration. Yep. I didn't mess it up. So the story is, this is an Argentinian Patagonia. And what first sparked this study that I think began in 2019 it's just been for a few years and very recent, was that researchers who monitor this Magellanic penguin colony that's in one of the national parks had noticed that a family of pumas had moved in, a mother and a few cubs, and they were just decimating this colony, killing, they thought, thousands over a couple years. Pumas being like a lot of large cats, ones that will kill a lot more than they'll actually consume. So they started wondering, I think first off, they removed those pumas, started wondering about the bigger impacts that they might be having. And they put tracking collars on pumas in the region, monitored them until 2023, and found some pretty interesting data. Basically, that the pumas move in seasonally to these penguin colonies and have started feeding on them. So I think there's all sorts of stuff to unpack here. the belief is that historically this has not been a food source for plumas. That was my first question. Yeah, so in the vast majority of cases, strictly mammals. And I guess that there's evidence that thousands of years that their diets were more diverse. But for the past few hundred years, since humans have really increased the populations down there, it's been for sheep farmers originally. And with that came the removal of pumas and a lot of other terrestrial predators. It was mostly done through poison, looks like, in 1800s, early 1900s. So they were completely extirpated from the area. Then Magellanic penguins and maybe a couple other penguin species started moving in and colonizing on land, which hadn't happened for thousands of years. So penguins are adapted to avoid their predators that they typically encounter in the water, not so much on land. So as the, particularly in the national parks, there's been efforts to reintroduce pumas and sheep farming has been on the decline. This has been a new phenomenon where pumas are gathering here and in some cases surviving almost entirely off of penguins at this point. So a few more things that I thought were really fascinating on the puma side. It is the highest recorded density of pumas by a factor of at least two from any other study that's been conducted. And also behaviorally, pumas are typically very territorial and have wide independent ranges. But there are signs that they don't act competitively in this area. And I saw a lot of multiple researchers were comparing this to like brown bears feeding and salmon, where there's such ample food source that they're actually behaving differently and coexisting with each other in really close spaces without any competition for the food. So there we go. Yeah, I don't know. Is this a huge problem for the Magellanic penguins? I mean, it doesn't seem like it if their colonies on the coast are such that the birds are feeling that, I don't know, the need, the impulse to move inland, which itself is somewhat unusual. Yeah. where they're coming in conflict with these with these pumas this feels like a a conflict that is reasonably i mean there is a human aspect of it um a human caused aspect of it but it seems like it's a reasonable reasonably natural interaction between these two organisms that i i'm shocked to hear that it has not happened in the however many years that people have been paying attention to both penguins and pumas in the area. Yep. I think that the expansion of pumas has just been so successful. I think it's really fascinating that this is happening in national parks, which is where people are being really hands-on with conservation practices and these kinds of things too. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I guess some of these colonies are in the hundreds of thousands of penguins and that overall Magellanic penguins are increasing in population. so no it's not having a major impact on overall numbers from everything we're seeing here yeah so i uh i reached out to a few people that um lead birding groups down there to see if anybody had seen it because i thought that would be a fascinating take and it doesn't sound like it's in places where people are really gathering to watch this but i thought man it's one thing if you're watching bears pick salmon out and toss them aside but what if you're what if you're watching thousands of penguins and then they're just getting slightly different view right so i guess that's not happening yet i i would be really excited to see both magellanic penguins and pumas so like i'm not exactly sure where i would come down on this one in terms of penguins i'll say it i feel bad this is a bird podcast pumas and penguins i never i never would have thought of that never would have thought of it. Yeah. I wanted to get your take on that. It's good to know somewhere on the penguin side because I did some more digging on the impacts that penguins have had in their expansion. Data shows that Magellanic penguins are now taking out more fish than the fisheries in that part of Patagonia because they've increased so much. And I think that there's a biggest population there too. I guess that there have been just major collapse in anchovy populations and that penguins are actually being cited as the biggest driver in that so then you have this question cormorant story where people are uh people are going after the cormorants even though they're not really the the threats i mean dropping anchovies is probably like uh it's probably like a human thing but penguins aren't helping that's what it sort of sounds like yeah yeah i guess that's that's what i'm biased with Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I think like, I guess that's why I was thinking about the national parks being this kind of like petri dish of conservation programs too, because you start with this few hundred years issue where top predators have been removed and that causes this whole rippling effect. And then you've got this kind of middle of the food chain that's disrupting things at the lower end. And you have people who are monitoring and researching and conserving penguins and you have the same that are doing in the waters. and then you have the same that are doing that with mammals and carnivores. And there's the possibility for human interaction to affect any one of those. If, you know, the park wants to put in measures or whoever's making those calls too. So I thought it was a pretty interesting ride and kind of thought exercise for just how rewilding will never actually put nature back in place the way it was before human involvement and nature is resilient and factors are going to change and animals and wildlife are going to adapt. And it's just constantly moving, no matter what we do. It's always going to continue being a moving balancing act. So in addition to this New York Times article, there's some really great links to, I don't know who put this. Did you put this there, Molly? The Smithsonian? The Smithsonian, yeah. Yeah. Some of the photos, especially in the second link, and I will include these in the show notes, the article, Pumas are snacking on penguins in Argentina and the abundant birds are changing the prowling cat's behavior. Some of the photos in that article are absolutely wild of like a pair of penguins outside a nesting burrow and like four mountain lions hanging around outside of it. Just crazy. And I guess, you know, if you let this sort of run its course in a natural way, you know, absent of human interaction, you know, maybe the penguins realize this isn't the right place. This is not there'd be beasts in those hills. And this is not the right place to to have a nesting colony. And then you move somewhere else. But it's it's wild to see that happening in real time. Yeah. Which is probably something that happened over time. Gradually. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, totally. They're changing their food source and their behaviors and their interactions with other pumas and they're moving in and out. So that was kind of part of the point too. And some of these things where, you know, the colonies are really seasonal. They're congregating for a season and then they're dispersing again. Just incredibly resourceful. Reminds me of like nature documentaries where like different prides of lions will meet at like a waterhole, like a seasonal big waterhole that comes in and takes advantage of the abundance. Yeah. I also think that's really cool to think about top predators. Now this is happening in South America and ways that we can compare that to bears in Asia and North America or lions and different things in Africa. I mean, that's, I think that's really fascinating too. Almost a convergent evolution, but behavioral. For sure. Cool stuff. Anyone else got anyone comments? Relevant factoid about pumas. I think, I believe, you could be wrong, but pumas are the wild land mammal that has the longest, the largest range in the Western Hemisphere. Yeah. So they go from the Canadian Rockies all the way down there to Southern. All the way to Patagonia, yeah. South America, yeah. And are found throughout a lot of places in between. Yeah. That is pretty wild. it's definitely not the same setup, but this paper also made me think about, um, Arielle Fournier's, uh, and her research group that, uh, several years ago had that paper about all of the migratory birds that were getting eaten by sharks in the Gulf. Oh yeah. Yeah. And just thinking through, um, again, these really, you know, overlooked, taken for granted, you know, cross taxa, right? So birds, mammals, sharks and everything like those interactions are just mind boggling and like so fascinating and thinking through, you know, how stressful bird lives are. So definitely don't pish in a penguin colony. I wouldn't pish because the pumas might think it's a bird. I don't need that interaction. um and i and i can't help it but you know for all of your beloved personal mini pumas let's keep those inside then um so just thinking through like you know thinking thinking through these wild natural dynamics and those changes over time between between wild pumas and and the penguins compared to domestic cats and uh you know closer to home birds is just something that i think you know, my mind goes to those birds are already having such a tough time. Let's do what we can to help them. So pumas stay outside. Domestic cats stay inside. If only our neighborhood birds were as charismatic as penguins, we might be able to convince people to keep their cats inside. Happy Feet would have been a very different movie if pumas had been in there. Let me say. This is quite a sequel. Quite a sequel. my article was about juncos in southern california there was a study published about how okay so dark-eyed juncos have been apparently in ucla's campus for a few decades have kind of established themselves on the campus. And there had been documented that the juncos there had shorter, they had evolved shorter, stubbier beaks relative to juncos that were in wilder settings due to urban foods that they had access to. And then the study, so that was set up already, that was known. But when UCLA shut down during the pandemic, during the lockdowns, juncos born on campus developed beaks that were shaped that were longer again like their counterparts that were not like in more natural wild settings so they reversed the urban trend and then when campus activity resumed supposedly the urban the shorter stubbier urban beak returned. So this was, I mean, this was hard for me to believe because the lockdowns didn't last that long, but I mean, apparently that's what the study claims. Uh, and so it's, it was rapid changes in beak length. That was, was really notable about it. And also that it was, it was the first documented change that was like a physical change linked to the pandemic there were other changes in wildlife behavior that had been documented yeah just changes in you know expansion of territory and things like that and but this was like a physical change so that was the study this is kind of astonishing yeah how many junco generations would it be two or two broods right so that would have been it so now I guess can they go back and band juncos on the campus and determine which years those juncos were hatched in by the size of their bills I wonder and also too kind of shocking that the mechanism for bill size is so i don't know plastic like it changes so so quickly yeah it goes to show how something like i don't know honey creepers of hawaii with their incredible you know bill diversity uh you know also you know the galapagos finches is kind of a natural place to go to here um how that could happen relatively quickly in geologic time. Yeah. I mean, say it with me, folks, but birds are amazing. I mean the fact that there this combination of both fragility almost like it seems like you know just changing the smallest thing in the environment can impact birds in such a big way so quickly means that we really need to be so conscientious and aware of all of these anthropomorphic impacts and everything But also like how incredible that birds have these traits, the ability to adapt so quickly that we can't even wrap our minds around it right now is just incredible. Like it just that that true potential of, again, knowledge and so much more to learn is is incredible. And my mind really goes to like, is that connected to I'm going to I'm now blinking on the name because I'm grasping for it. but there's that beak disease, I guess you would say, where the beaks overgrow. It's very, I think there's a researcher in Alaska that's doing it for years and years with like chickadees where it's almost a, it comes across as a deformity because they, you know what I'm saying? There was an article in Birding Magazine some years ago that had photos and stuff of the Alaska birds. Yep. But just in terms of, you know, how does all of that work? And like, you know, is it how the bird metabolizes different food that's impacting it as they grow? Is it genetic? Is it environmental? There's also that relatively recent article about the hummingbirds that their beaks are adapting because of feeders. So like, what's going on here? Tell me more. I learned about the anise hummingbird study, which is also California based, but throughout their range, looking at their bill length changing and adapting to feeders. And that blew my mind. But I have a question on this study and then a follow-up question. Were these confirmed to be breeding on campus? Do you know? As you're searching that, I'll follow. I pulled up the actual paper, which has a link. yeah and um yeah they said they hatched before at a los angeles college campus so i do believe that these birds were nesting on the campus yeah and they were compared to birds that were so-called wildland yeah gotcha because i was wondering if it's potentially that sparrows with it's shorter beaks, right, on campus? With shorter beaks are just moving in and are staying around. And the ones with longer beaks are going off campus to find food than the ones with shorter beaks are staying because they're able to use this food. Yeah. Or others are coming in. So rather than it being, you know, like a change in generations, is it just a selection of who's staying to feed on campus? Yeah, it's like crossroads. That is something that you have to get past the paywall, I think. yeah maybe but as you were saying that that occurred to me it's like well why wouldn't you know it's like the birds that are able to eat from my feet are here are the ones that are sticking here and if they can't they're eating somewhere else so how is that not what's happening on campus and i'm guessing there's an answer to that i'm reading the um yeah yeah there is i'm reading the paper and i'll probably cut some of this out as i as i read but um yeah they talk about a comparison with starlings in South Africa that used more food waste at a university campus and that affected the birds so-called body condition. These are questions and then they say future work should determine how that varies with broader foraging fitness and genetics and juncos. But it does feel like this was just sort of a basic observation and then, you know, trying to answer of that question as to what they're seeing. So yeah, I, I don't know. So they're banded, they're misnetted, measured and banded birds. So they're not birds that are taken out of say nests in the area and then measured. So it, it, your, your, your theory could be, your hypothesis might be, uh, have some legs, uh, Molly. So maybe, maybe the ones that are better adapted are the ones that are choosing to breed on campus. Like it's just like a small physical location and is there is there die off are they you know like i guess that's my thought with um you know natural selection too is that means that the ones that aren't fit aren't surviving or are they just moving yeah or they're leaving yeah yeah the leaving seems like a more plausible explanation because they would go somewhere where they would you know more easily access food yeah and maybe that's what's causing the selecting mechanism i don't know it's still notable that that the bills are changing there right it's just evolution feels like a harder word to use yeah or the the yeah it does sound like the takeaway here is that the the birds that were on campus were birds that had shorter bills and the birds that were off campus were birds that were had longer bills and during the period where there were no humans on campus there were more birds with longer bills whether or not they were bred they were hatched there i don't know but they were present and that's sort of the that's the that's what's happening here yeah i don't know cool stuff yeah i'm not meaning to take away from that either because it clearly shows the humans are having an impact on these buildings so yeah that's a good takeaway for sure there was an interesting thing in one of maybe it was the new york times article i looked at a press release and they definitely used the word evolve, which really surprised me for the reasons you guys have discussed. I do think that's interesting. I mean, very plausible alternate explanation. But anyway, what I was going to say is the New York Times used a word that I had never seen before. Maybe it's circulated widely, which was anthropos. Anthropos, yeah, that's what they call it in the paper. so they must have gotten it from the paper. Which means the pandemic was a valuable time for scientists to study animals with significantly reduced human interaction as was what the Anthropause was. That was part of what made the study interesting. Agreed. There was some really cool stuff about the coming out of the Anthropos about birds song and stuff like that and how that changed briefly during the period when there were fewer people around and fewer, fewer noises around. And so, yeah, I mean, we're sort of at the point where we're going to start seeing those things because it's been five years since six years since the, since the pandemic. And so all the, all the data gets crunched, all the numbers get crunched in that period. So hopefully we'll see some more. Yeah, true. We'll see when those penguins start figuring out how to defend themselves from Okay, settle in folks, because we're going to talk about something that might make you reflect, might be a little close to home and not so birdie. We're going to talk about our own biases. Ooh, all right. I'm biased. I'll admit it. I chose a Canadian paper because Canada represent, of course. and it's not that heavy. It's actually really cool to talk about science communication and human dimensions in this way. As I was prepping for this, I was talking to my own Canadian about it and we were thinking through how important it is to actually think about things that might be overlooked. And one of those is methods. And so that's where the sausage gets made. The tofurkey sausage gets made. That's really important for everything that gets put into practice by conservationists, by other managers and practitioners. And so the paper I'm reporting on is talking about modeling. It's very mathy, lots of statistics, but also really important in that bigger picture. So shout out to Willenberg, Ills, and Hatch of Environment and Climate Change Canada. Their paper, Bias and Density Estimates from Avian Point Count Surveys, Prospects for Post-Hoc Corrections Using Calibration Data, was published in the AOS Ornithological Applications Journal. But we're going to break it down. I got you listeners, don't worry. So I'm going to start things off again, acknowledging my own bias and share a little story that Gabriel said would resonate with you all. So let's think about a point count. And especially if you've ever been part of a breeding and bird survey or maybe you've even done field work, point counts are really, really important, right? So you're stationary in a certain location with a set distance that you are going to be observing and recording the birds for a set time. And so when I was in high school, I worked at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. And those were my first jobs, my first bird jobs. And I was doing point counts. And I was working with all of these, you know, much older folks and everything. and so I was really self-conscious and learning everything and so when we would go out to our different locations I would actually try to hide from them and quick estimate how far 50 meters was for a point count so that when the point count started I had a better way to understand how far away it is because I can't whistle and I can't estimate distance for anything and so I really wanted to understand, you know, I just had so much like imposter syndrome and I wanted to do a good job and everything. And I was a horseshoe crab surveyor in Delaware. So I had learned how many steps it took for 20 meters. So again, you can imagine like high school Jordan going around the DC area to these places, like trying to quick rush and like count my steps and then, you know, do these point counts and everything. Um, so I I'm with you people. Okay. I'm not, no one's perfect. Um, but again, point counts are really valuable, um, methods for all of these really big, important studies, right? Again, breeding bird surveys, point counts, um, various research does. It's really important for us to understand what, what birds, how many birds and where these birds are on the landscape. And that then again helps inform population understanding, population estimates. It helps us understand abundance. It helps us understand density of these birds. It helps us understand relative abundance so that we can really standardize things and compare how many observed birds you had this year to the previous year. It helps us understand how many birds are a percentage of that entire ecosystem um and so on I I'm happy to go on but I know I know our listeners understand right um but the thing is that even when you're birding or when you're doing a standardized point count we have our biases some of us just know certain birds better than others some of us are like myself I am a bird watcher not a bird listener I much prefer to see and I'm much better at visual ID than I am at audio. There's also just biases of maybe one ear is better than the other. Maybe you hear different pitches. And so this paper, going back to the paper, really is focusing on distance sampling and that bias. And so they are truly saying, scientifically speaking that it is easier to be more accurate visually than it is acoustically so again birding by eye versus ear and that as birds get farther and farther away from you personally your detection goes out the wazoo um and that's i i say it's extreme but at one point they even were talking about there's like a 60% unreliability factor because your mind plays tricks on you. And so you might think that, you know, 20 meters away, there are five cardinals, but that might not be true. They also talk about creating a quote gold standard data set, which is where you just take it upon yourself to, again, accept your own biases and imperfections. It's not a bad thing. It's okay. But I know, but understanding kind of what are your shortcomings, what are your skill sets, and then how can that be statistically, mathematically corrected in these models, especially again for formal fieldwork. If you're a birder, I mean, hey, have a great time creating that. Cool, fun fact for yourself. But again, this gold standard data set really is for those field projects. And then technology. And that's also where my mind went as I was reading the paper, was thinking through technology is advancing so much right now. It feels like at least, you know, we're having this boom right now, especially with AI. And it seems like ARUs, the autonomous recording units, which are these audio audio recorders put out on the landscape, are just really taking off in terms of a tool and resource for for research in general, but especially ornithology. how can that help um help be more accurate help correct for these biases where is all of that going so again it's a really fascinating human dimensions aspect compared to a lot of like the bird forward stories we've talked about just because of how connected it is so that's what I've got. You're biased. We need to be self-aware. Uh, first off my BBS data is immaculate. I don't know what you're talking about. Second of all, I feel sorry for all those other guys doing the BBS that get it wrong. Um, also yeah, the estimated distance. I mean, how many times have you been in a situation where you hear a bird that feels like it's like practically right on top of you And then you're trying to find it and it hops around and faces the other direction. And now it sounds like it's 150, 200 meters into the woods. That stuff is hard to determine. That stuff is hard. It's hard. They're sneaky and they teleport. They're sneaky. And, you know, I mean. It's teleportation, not the bird spinning around on its branch. No. So I think, you know, putting again this into a relevant and like applicable perspective for folks, you know, we want to know these things. We want to know what birds, how many are there and where they are. Because, you know, sometimes you're trying to conserve just a couple of acres, especially for endemics. And you don't want to get that wrong. you know obviously we always try to go bigger and be more expansive because of you know being a literal umbrella but sometimes it's not possible so thinking through those decisions and understanding you know again how does it all connect is just really really crucial and and no one's perfect Like that's just inherent. So understanding again, that, that drive to get more data and, and get those results is just so, I don't know. It just, to me, this made me really want to get out and just be like, look, we're getting the data. We're making things happen. yeah I mean no matter how much any of us are striving for perfection this is always going to be an issue right and there are also just infinite ways to be biased as well because like say on a like an isolated study if you're measuring something and you're measuring 25 meters at 20 meters if you're consistently doing that then like for the purpose of your study, everything's consistent. It's the aggregate data that has the issues and when you're putting those things together. And then I'm thinking about BBS routes too. And it's like, okay, if I like, if I hear, you know, half of whatever's out there and it's exactly 50%, that's okay. And it's like equal across all species. And I'm doing that consistently. year after year versus like, I always miss a downy woodpecker. So then it's like one species that's being isolated too. I once for part of my route the driver kept separate checklists at every point while I did my points for a count and we compared after which was terrifying And I would say we're like similar abilities for birding. So it was an interesting comparison. The biggest difference that I had on that is I'm writing my dots on the little form as I go because that's how I do my routes. I don't know how y'all do your routes, but I do the dots and I'm like noting as I go. I have a notebook and I transcribe. Yeah. So I'm like, I'm not looking up as much. I'm doing more by ear because a portion of my three minutes is spent writing versus he was just looking around and he was getting different like visual birds of something that would hop by that I would miss. And then I was getting more herd birds than he was because I think I was concentrating on that more. So that was really fascinating. Yeah. And again, terrifying to look at your, your missed birds like that too. But it was really interesting to see that. I don't know if you do this too. When you're on a BBS and you hear something and it doesn't quite clock and you're like really, really focusing on it. Like, what could that be? What did I know? I know. And then you miss like everything else that is singing at the same time while you're focusing so, so hard on that one bird and trying to, trying to make your brain jog what it is. That happens to me at least a couple of times every time I'm out there. Absolutely. I feel bad about it. And what about the mimics? How many people have been duped by a northern mockingbird? I have a mockingbird on a couple of sites that share quite the variety. And it's something to hear. Yeah. Brainingbird service are a great way to think about all of that. Yeah. It's a great way to humble yourself. Yeah. But everybody go volunteer. Go volunteer. Yeah, absolutely. It's okay. We need you. Yeah. All right. We'll move on to the question of the month. And this is an article that Ted Floyd, our friend Ted Floyd shared to the ABA Slack. And I wanted to throw it on the question of the month. It is a it is a a tick tocker at corndog calamari made an observation that based on visiting various friends, houses and homes of people that she dated. She says that it is particularly noticeable that white people in particular always have birds somewhere in their house. decorative birds is a, is a sequin. And apparently it went quite viral on social media as everyone went into their houses and tried to find all the decorative birds that they have. Um, apparently it is, it is common and I, I have not paid attention to it because I just assumed that it's normal that everybody has lots of bird stuff in their house. So I wanted to ask you, what is your bird thing that, I don't know, that, that makes you, that makes it puts you into this, into this observation that makes you part of this observation. This might be an unfair thing to ask because I know that as we are all birders, that we no doubt have many, many, many bird things in our homes. So much so that my wife actually said when I was picking out another piece of art for the walls of our house, another bird picture. And I have to bring that up to her every time that she says we need more art in our house. I can get you lots of art, but it's all bird art. So what kind of bird things do you have in your home is what I'm asking. It's so funny that put a bird on it used to be trending just because I was like, I was thinking about this and I was like, if there's been a bird on it, I've probably have something or at least know about it. But it's actually really hilarious too, because two of my brother-in-laws visited us. a while ago and, and I'm a lifelong birder. Gabriel is a long time birder. I mean, our wedding had bird stuff and everything and they, they visited and they walk in our house and they, they look around, like they literally walk over the threshold, look around and they're like, you guys are really into birds huh yeah no no no uh no joke um uh but like i mean our dinner plates have birds on them all of our art is as birds um you know obviously oh my duvet cover has birds on it we've got all the you know as we've become snobs right and i'm sure the three of you too because like you got to have good bird clothing you can't just have like any bird clothing yeah um and again you you name it we've seen it bird lamps like all of the stuff um but i was thinking about like what are my top top two right so my sentimental one is um our dog is named eider and And Eider is actually a really hard bird to come across like stuff for. And so we have a commissioned Christina Ball artwork that has all four species of Eider. So that's like our most treasured like artwork, I would say. I also have a Christina Ball original piece of art. Yeah. Christina is fantastic. You want to support her? Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Hey, everyone should go drawing 10,000 birds. I have no problem. this is an unpaid advertisement christina ball um and then the more like funny thing the thing that's like very curated um is our mug and a coaster collection um so i am the bird name chick i am funny and can have fun okay don't listeners i've heard otherwise um so our mugs are all of the quote inappropriate bird names and so we have you know again with associated coasters we have the shags and the tits and the boobies and the peckers and the hooters and they're really funny because um when we've had guests over we don't say anything and we're just like here's your morning coffee and then all of a sudden they start laughing and yes so anyway now you all know a little bit more about if you ever visit um we have a good we have a sense of humor and that's the thing right like if you're not laughing about birds then something's wrong i mean hey enjoy birds how you want to i'm all about that but we're here for fun and uh yeah so there you go my artwork and my my mugs and coasters yeah i suppose i should clarify like that's good coasters are great like bird artwork we've all got bird artwork do you have i guess do you have anything that's not bird artwork my socks brag about your my other thing bird artwork too i'll also give i'll give honorable mention my curated sock collection is also i'm something very proud of that's definitely a good one um we so i i like to think that i have a fairly curated collection of bird things but my mother-in-law also gets me a not so curated collection of them. Yes. And a number of those things are throughout my house because they have to be. Yes, the birth stuff you can't get rid of. So that's a different collection of shirts and whatnot but there's some really cool things too. she actually got me like an ornament that's kind of like like a handmade clay thing but i use it as my spoon rest that's got a like nondescript little bird on it and that's just sitting on the stove top at any given time yeah maybe the question should have been like what's one of the worst things that you've ever seen the weirdest yeah because again that's i mean i've got some on the nose stuff too yeah yeah no no i'm taking over this question because molly i want to hear about it because um that's the thing once people once non-bird people find out you're a bird person that's like all they can do and it's very very sweet again shout out like you're being generous and getting gifts and everything like respect and appreciation but um so again i think i must have been like gosh 12 or something and my grandparents one year for christmas got me it still gives me nightmares to this day they got me this this figurine that was the creepiest paper mache looking with like wire legs and and toes and everything and everything I I you know polite you you it's Christmas morning you're like thank you and everything and you go to bed at night at their house and this figurines on the dresser and it turns out it has glow-in-the-dark eyes and it freaked me out so much that's the sort of thing you want to know i couldn't even like give it i couldn't even like donate it to the thrift store or anything because i was like no one deserves to see this so again i i i am biased and i accept my snobbery about bird stuff how about you frank and with an extra question uh have people gotten you bird stuff for your daughter she has okay she's four uh just for in case people are curious well she's four and three quarters she would want me to say yep yep um so she for a while was really into bird bingo we have a bird bingo game and she loves bird bingos and she actually knows a lot of birds from around the world like splendid fairy wren if you ask her what her favorite bird is she might say splendid fairy wren or lilac breasted roller or something like that from bird bingo and i can't try to remember who got her that if it was us or i mean maybe she saw it at the natural history museum and asked for it so that's the bird thing that somebody got her but other than that i wouldn't really say so and as others have mentioned i do receive bird themed gifts so for me personally i don't really i don't really buy bird decorations or anything because i just i just have enough already stream of it uh the thing and and and the what my favorite is if that was the original question is certainly things that i've received uh from people that i've worked with to or that I did work with to make the magazine. My friend Bob Bell sent me a framed photo that he took of a golden-winged warbler, and that is a very cherished piece. And that was hard for him to send from Canada to the US. And so that was really that, you know, things like that. My parents-in-law framed the first three issues I edited of, it was an issue of Bird of the Year. Is Christine actually coincidentally she had the three different covers of the burrowing owl and they framed them for me that was a really nice gift so those are like my most cherished bird things around the house and you know like others have said some some tchotchkes there's like the steady stream of the tchotchkes the bird tchotchkes and some are more liked than others yeah the other thing i wanted to say about that trend is i did see that trend play out on on social media and you know just as an observation the people that i because what what the way people use that stuff on tiktok sometimes is that they strip the audio from and they and they overlay the audio on their own video that they record and people were doing that for their own homes. But the ones I saw were not, it was about white people having lots of bird stuff. And the ones I saw were people engaging with it. They were not white birders. And they were like, everyone has a lot of bird stuff, turns out. So I don't know how accurate that claim is. That was just what I observed, which was a cool thing to see. I'd be so curious to know what are the most popular bird species or families on stuff. I could guess. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. Because like, again, definitely loon. And swallows. Swallows. Yeah, but then you have the lesser known of like, oh, owls are so popular. But like, again, like I'm always searching for eider stuff just because of that connection. But I did, okay, so Gabriel and I are silly and we watch Antiques Roadshow on Netflix sometimes because, you know, disassociation whatever on a recent episode we watched a woman had a tropic bird dress and like oh it was yeah and it was so obvious and everything and i was like i want to wear that dress where's this dress from like where do you go to antique roadshow to find out yeah oh i know because i was like where do you get tropic bird stuff but that'd be interesting too of like taking the original question of like bird stuff in your home and then like what's the breakdown of what's on there. Yeah, a lot of ducks, a lot of peacocks. Yeah, chickens. I bet chickens are really... Chickens are on there. Yeah. Yeah, we have coasters with birds on them that we got in Costa Rica. And probably the most unusual one is that we have framed our ketubah, for people who don't know, is it like a Jewish marriage license? And it has hummingbirds on it. So it's another piece of bird art in our, um, in our home, uh, to go up to all the other bird stuff we have on the walls. It's unlimited supply of, uh, bird related art that I have access to. And I'm happy to cover the walls just to, you know, make the house look nice. But, uh, you know, some people don't always like, uh, like only birds all the time, all birds all the time, not naming names, but do they listen? That's the important part. Yeah. No, no not at all here we go this is my mother-in-law yeah thank god that's as good a time as any to wrap this up thank you so much Molly, Jordan and Frank for another great hour of discussion about birds and bird science and birding and all sorts of stuff that we managed to to touch on throughout this throughout this conversation I want to thank you for giving your time we'll have links to everything that we have talked about in the show notes please check those out if you want any you know take a deeper look at any of the stuff that we looked at. Thanks. Thanks again. And happy new year. Happy year of the horned lark. And I hope to see all three of you down the road. Thanks, guys. Thanks, everybody. The American Birding Podcast is brought to you by the American Birding Association. The ABA is, of course, a membership organization. And the best way to support it is to become a member. ABA members get a 10% discount to our online store, which features 2026 bird of the year Horned Lark merch, along with a lot of new ABA logo wear. Definitely a good time to check that stuff out. You, of course, also get access to our fabulous magazines, all of our online resources, plus great discounts to friends at Zeiss, OM System, Beauty Books, and others. You can learn more about all the benefits of membership in addition to helping support all of our free resources like this podcast, like What's This Bird Live, at aba.org slash join. Special shout-outs this week to Steve Bilemowitz of McLean, Virginia, Lena Daggs of Salt Lake City, Utah, Pam Lotteryman of Arlington, Texas, Amber Langley of Talkeetna, Alaska, Heather Delaney of Terre Haute, Indiana, Chris Eidice and family of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Melissa Bossardet of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Mitchell Craw and the Craw family of Saranac Lake, New York. Maria Aleno Montero of Silver Spring, Maryland. 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He is in fact, your pitcher, man. You can find us online at aba.org on social media. Most everywhere is American birding association on blue sky. We are at aba birds questions, comments can come to podcast at aba.org. I'm Nate Swick. Thanks for listening bird like Tom and we'll be back next week. Thank you.