Podcast Episodes
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The Value of a Dust Bath
It might sound strange, but dirt helps birds scrub themselves clean. Birds of all sizes, like the Eurasian Skylark, often scrape a depression in the …
2 months ago
Ancient Birds Nested in the Arctic, Too
Every summer, millions of birds flock to the Arctic Circle to find mates and raise their young. In a study published in 2025, paleontologists found e…
2 months ago
Female Birds Sing in the Tropics
In temperate climates like North America, it’s often male songbirds that sing the most. Typically the males migrate north before females and establis…
2 months ago
Preening 101
If a bird’s feathers get too dried out, they become brittle. To prevent that from happening, most birds have a gland located above the base of the ta…
2 months ago
The Heart of a Bird
Birds’ four-chambered hearts run larger than those of mammals, relative to body size, and they are coupled with extremely efficient cardiovascular sy…
2 months ago
Magnificent Frigatebird Drum Roll
Magnificent Frigatebirds are huge, gangly seabirds found around the warm waters of the Western Hemisphere. When it comes time to mate, males inflate …
2 months ago
‘Ākohekohe
Sporting a fancy tuft of feathers on its forehead and a bright orange nape, Maui island’s ‘ākohekohe is one Hawaiʻi’s strikingly beautiful native for…
2 months ago
Letter to a Pileated Woodpecker
In this episode, ornithologist J. Drew Lanham reads a letter he has written to a Pileated Woodpecker, a large species of woodpecker that is sometimes…
2 months, 1 week ago
The Early Bird
We've all heard that the early bird gets the worm. But research shows that birds dining early and heavily may lower their life expectancy. Socially d…
2 months, 1 week ago
Spark Bird: Murry Burgess and the Painted Bunting
Urban ornithologist and children’s author Murry Burgess has always been interested in wildlife. But she first felt a spark for birds on a college fie…
2 months, 1 week ago