Turning The Binoculars On Birders

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Flora Lichtman. Lace up those comfortable sneakers.

Get out your bug spray and your binoculars because we are going birder watching. That’s right. We talk a lot about birds on this show, but we are turning the binoculars onto the people who watch them. We’re swooping into the culture of birding.

What is it about getting up at sunrise, going into the woods, and waiting for a tiny feathered little muffin to fly past that thrills so many people? Here to bring us into the surprisingly high drama world of bird festivals, avian stakeouts, and spotting your nemesis bird is Rosemary Mosco, a science writer, Illustrator, birder, and author of the brand new book The Birding Dictionary. Welcome back to the show.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Hi. I’m so excited to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How deep are you in the birding world?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: I would say you could probably see, like, the top of my forehead sticking out of the swamp that is the birding world. I am–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Deep.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: I am pretty darn deep.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What was your spark bird, and please define what that is.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: A spark bird is a bird that gets you into birding. Like, you might have already noticed a few birds and gotten kind of excited, but a spark bird is the bird that turns it into an obsession. And it’s hard for me to say exactly what mine was because I was birding since I was pretty little.

But I have a really strong memory of looking out my backyard in Ottawa, where I grew up, and seeing some people call them pérolas. Some call them pérolas, a fun birding quirk. These beautiful little warblers flitting in my backyard, and I went, whoa, those exist?

I was like a little kid. It blew my mind. And so I think those were my sparks.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, so you wrote this book about bird words, kind of like a glossary of birder terminology. And it gets into the nitty gritty of bird behavior and birding culture. You’ve been birding for a long time. What’s the most surprising thing you learned writing this book?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: I was surprised by how much I had absorbed, honestly, because I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to write this book. There’s always a moment of imposter syndrome and, oh, do I really enough terms to fill an entire book? And when my editor suggested this, I sat down and just started writing terms, and I think I had like 200 in the blink of an eye. And I thought, oh my goodness, we really do have our own terminology, and I have fully absorbed it, and there’s just so much. And you don’t even notice you’re using words like stakeout or butterbutter, and then you are.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What’s a butterbutt?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: A butterbutt is a word for a yellow-rumped warbler, these really cute little common songbirds that fly around and are really, really lovely to see, just little warblers. Some of them stick around all year in the United States. And what I think is funny about them is that you may hear the word butterbutt and chuckle.

And then after a while, you’re using it completely seriously and earnestly, and you’re like, there’s five butterbutts in that tree. And what’s funny about them, too, is that they have yellow armpits too. So I think we should also be calling them butterpits.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Butterpits!

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Because I think–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Absolutely.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: –that’s even funnier.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, this is a term of endearment I’d like to see go viral. Like, instead of babe, how about hey, butterbutt?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, what happens at a birding festival? Have you gone? Take me there.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: I just got back from one. I go to them all the time. I just got back from The Biggest Week in American Birding.

That’s what it’s called and also describes it. It’s in northern Ohio. Just like hundreds to thousands of birders descend on this pretty empty part of northern Ohio on Lake Erie.

And just, we’re swarming there. We’re everywhere. And I’ve been to music festivals, too. I’m actually a big metal fan, and they’re quite different.

Birding festivals are pretty calm. Everybody gets up really early. They get excited about birds.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re different from a metal festival?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, not as much screaming and slamming into each other. It’s more, you know– you take out the earplugs because you’re trying to hear.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Are there cultural norms or practices at a birding festival? Like, if I went, what would be the biggest faux pas that I could do?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: You know, I am someone who earnestly believes that everybody is a birder, no matter how deep into the culture they are. And this is a soapbox that I will scream from–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Get on.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, I feel like there is no other culture that’s quite like birding. I will go to birdwatching festivals, and I will see people with binoculars and bird guides, and they have all the apps on their phone, and they’re really keen, and they’ve seen 10 birds they’re excited about, and they’re wearing a bird themed T-shirt. And then I asked them, are you a birder?

And they’re like, oh, I’m not really a birder. I’m sort of a birder. You know, I believe that anyone who just looks out their window and sees a bird and likes it is a birder. So I personally think it’s a faux pas to be judgmental at people at birdwatching festivals.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We asked our listeners to tell us their most thrilling birding moments, and we got so many great stories, and I want to share one with you.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yes, please.

KARINA NEWSOME: Hello. This is Karina Newsome. I’m based in Atlanta, Georgia, and I saw Science Friday’s post about high drama birding tails. Mine is that on Valentine’s Day of 2015, I was on the hunt for finding a pileated woodpecker.

I just learned how to bird, just taken ornithology. But the pileated woodpecker was so hard for me to find in northeast Ohio when I went to school. On Valentine’s Day, I had tuned in to an AM radio station in northeast Ohio that literally only gave bird alerts, and I found out that it was in the middle of a forest about an hour away from me.

And it was a torrential snowstorm. You couldn’t see 6 feet in front of you. Me, my partner at the time, and his mom, we drove all the way out to this forest, hiked for a good distance into the forest, snow up to our knees. And then all of a sudden, we heard the laughing call of the pileated woodpecker. I literally fell on my knees into the snow and cried on that snowy Valentine’s Day, and I will never forget it.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Oh, that is exciting. For folks who don’t know, Corina Newsome is a superstar of birding. Absolutely brilliant birder, brilliant communicator. I love her so much. I have not yet met her.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That story gave me chills.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s another point when you know you’re a birder is when you see something and you cry, or you see something and you do something really ridiculous. I had this experience where I had not seen a Bohemian waxwing, and I was very excited to finally see one.

I had heard there was a report of a whole flock of Bohemian waxwings. And so I drove like an hour, and I got to the spot, and I heard them, and I approached. And they were all in this tree, and I hurried up and I stood open mouthed under this tree, just like, mind blown, just taking it in, mouth very wide open.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’m worried. I’m scared, I’m scared, [INAUDIBLE].

ROSEMARY MOSCO: –a lot of berries. And I learned, don’t stand under a flock of waxwings that are resting after eating a lot of berries.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh my God.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah. Still–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Are you OK?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: I seem to be OK. I haven’t grown any feathers yet.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What’s a nemesis bird?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: A nemesis bird is a bird that you really want to see that eludes you. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a super rare bird.

It’s kind of more of a nemesis if it’s a really common bird that you just– you’ll show up at the spot, and it’s not there. You cannot find this thing to save your life. And then when you finally find one, you drop to your knees and cry, and you feel so much better.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you have one currently? Have you had one in the past?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Yeah, for a while, mine was this gorgeous duck called the king eider, which will occasionally show up on the east coast. And I finally got one, and I was very excited. And then my next nemesis bird was this little chickadee bird called the spruce grouse.

And I went up to Northern Vermont to try to see one, and I got to the spot, and I start walking down the road. And the thing that grouse will do is they’ll hunch and sit and wait until you’re like a few feet away, and then they’ll explode into the sky and fly away as fast as possible. And this thing flew away when I was still far enough that I couldn’t tell what species it was, and it flew away.

And I still if that was a spruce grouse. I still haven’t seen them. I don’t believe that they exist at this point. They’re made up.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We have another listener call I want to share with you, this time about the dangers of bird watching.

RANDI MINETOR: Hi, I’m Randi Minetor from Rochester, New York. I am an author of hiking guides and birding guides. My husband and I made a terrible error several years ago when we started up a trail in Big Bend National Park, looking for the Colima warbler.

You may know the Colima is only seen right along the Texas-Mexico border. So if you want to count it for your North American life list, you need to go up into the Chisos Mountains, go up a trail that has about a 1,400 foot elevation change, and you need to do this in May, when it’s 110 degrees. So this is what we did, looking for the Colima warbler and hoping to photograph it.

So my husband was carrying an 18 pounds lens, and we had a gallon of water each and all of that. We thought we were doing everything right. It seemed we did everything wrong.

By the time we got to where the bird was supposed to be, we were out of water. We were severely dehydrated, and we were so disoriented that even when we saw the bird, I swore up and down it wasn’t the bird. So we didn’t photograph it. It was the most ridiculous day of my birding life.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What do you think of that one?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Oh, that’s terrifying. Please bring enough water. Oh, that’s so scary.

Yeah, you know, any time you’re hiking, it can sound so mild if you say you’re birding. Like, oh, I’m going to go look at a bird.

But you’re out in the elements. It can be really intense. I distinctly remember when I was a little kid going to kind of a nearby green space in Ottawa, and I saw this flock of American goldfinches.

Not necessarily the most uncommon bird, but there were a ton of them in this one tree. And I was very excited, and so I went off trail and kind of moved through the brush towards them. And I got so stuck in this rose bush greenbriar situation that I was physically restrained by this tree.

And I was like, well, now I live here, and my parents are going to find me. So you have to be careful when you’re going out into the elements. And the birds are not going to come for you, but what will come for you is the heat and the cold and all that. So, yeah, take care of yourself, people.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What do you think is the thing that non-birders most misunderstand about birding?

ROSEMARY MOSCO: You know, I think that one of the things that they don’t understand is that even the little, little, little birds can be so spectacularly beautiful. I don’t think I totally got that really early on when I was a little kid.

Cameras were not as good. And so I went to Florida and I saw these big egrets and these big pelicans, and I thought, now, this is birding. And then–

FLORA LICHTMAN: The flashy birds.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: The flashy birds. But as I got older and I got– you don’t even need a fancy pair of binoculars. Just a little cheap pair of binoculars.

You can find these tiny, tiny, tiny things. And then you look at them, and, oh, gosh. It’s hard to describe. Just the colors and the patterns and the shapes are so incredible. So I think there’s something special about focusing on this tiny spot in the world and just immersing yourself in those colors and textures and patterns that’s really special and that we could all we could all enjoy.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I think that’s the perfect spot to land or perch. Oh, even better. Rosemary Moscow is the author and Illustrator of The Birding Dictionary, and she’s based in Massachusetts.

ROSEMARY MOSCO: Thank you so much.

FLORA LICHTMAN: From birder misconceptions to bird misconceptions, there’s this pervasive view in the bird world that male birds are the ones to watch. They’ve got the showy feathers, the interesting displays, while female birds, their lane is blending into the background, being docile.

Sound familiar? Well, as usual, actual data is complicating that narrative. Here to tell us more is Dr. Sarah Lipschutz, a behavioral ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Sarah, welcome to the show.

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Thanks so much for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Sarah, do you think female birds have gotten the short end of the twig?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Absolutely. So, and not just female birds. I mean, female animals make up roughly 50% of populations, but they’ve historically been neglected in biological research.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We’ve heard this story before.

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Absolutely, even in humans. The National Institutes of Health guidelines didn’t require inclusion of women and minorities in clinical research nearly 25 years ago.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So tell me about your new research on some female birds that are ruffling feathers with their aggression.

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: So we were really interested in what makes an individual aggressive. Why does that vary between females and males and across species? And our study examined a repeated behavioral target of natural selection in birds. We focused on this nest strategy called obligate cavity nesting, which is when in order to reproduce, a bird has to nest in a natural or abandoned tree cavity.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The hole in a tree.

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Exactly, yeah. These birds will also breed in nest boxes, which makes them relatively easy for scientists to study. And we thought that competition for those limited nest sites might generate higher territorial aggression and especially in females because they require this nest site in order to lay their eggs and raise their offspring. And so we measured aggression in 10 different species across 300 individuals in both females and males, and we tested the hypothesis that nesting in this cavity is associated with increased physical aggression. And that is exactly what we saw.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What species fall into this category of obligate cavity dwellers? Would I know any of them?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Yeah, these are common backyard birds. And so it might be surprising to that female bluebirds, female eastern bluebirds, are particularly aggressive. And female tree swallows were some of the most aggressive in our group, along with female prothonotary warblers.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What does higher aggression look like in a female bird?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Well, birds have a lot of different strategies to be aggressive. And so we had to think carefully about what is a kind of aggressive behavior that might be more universal across species. And we came around to physical aggression. So we put these decoys out at birds’ territories, and then we measured how much they physically attacked.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The decoys? What were the decoys made of?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: So we needed to make the territory holders think that another bird was intruding on their territory. And so we actually stuffed birds. It was kind of like a taxidermy except it involved more hot glue.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wait, you took– you took bird bodies, and you made taxidermied birds?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: We did. We used 3D printers and hot glue and beads for eyes. So, part of this study was also to look at gene expression in the brain. And so every time that we collected a bird for the research, we also made use of its skin and stuffed it so that we could make these zombie decoys.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Just another day in the life of being a scientist.

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, here’s the thing I want to know. Are these birds actually more aggressive than their non-cavity dwelling counterparts, or are female birds just generally more aggressive than we give them credit for?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: I think it’s both. I think we’ve understudied female aggression for a long time kind of based on some cultural or historical expectations of how females should behave broadly across animals. But then also, we really were curious to know whether there were certain species that we expected to be more aggressive when they fight over that resource. And so we did find that eastern bluebirds are more aggressive than their close relative female robins. Those robins can build a nest anywhere, whereas those female bluebirds have to fight over that limited nest site.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, so you said the female birds were really aggressive to these decoys. Give me an example. What did they do?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: What they did was a number of different kinds of behaviors. And so this included things like grabbing on with their claws, pecking with their beak, and even plucking out feathers.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What about those fake eyes? How did they fare?

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Oh, yeah, they plucked them right off.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thanks, Sarah.

SARAH LIPSCHUTZ: Thank you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Dr. Sarah Lipschutz is a behavioral ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

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