5: It's All About the Birds: Dr. Len Reitsma

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I met my guest today 24 years ago in my senior year of college at Plumas State University. And as you can tell from when you listen to this, he is an absolute expert in the field of ornithology and ecology. He's just amazing. His tie-in to the weather information you're going to get so much out of. And he's just generally a phenomenal human being, just such a great sense of humor. And you're really going to love today's show. It's one of those things too that I think it should encourage you. I hope if you had a mentor, a teacher, a caregiver, a parent, whoever in your life that was one of those role models, please let today's show be the time that you as a prompt, the time that you take to thank them, send them an email, call them, text them, let them know how much of a difference they made in your life because I know that's so important to that person. Sometimes they don't get that immediate feedback. And today's guest was that person in my life, one of those incredible role models. I hope you get a lot out of the episode. Enjoy. Obsessed with the weather is brought to you by Jim Wolfe and Wolf Painting Company, the premier interior and exterior painting company on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Contact owner Jim Wolfe today at 617-435-1793 or visit WolfPaintingCO.com. That's WOLFE. Don't forget that, he painting CO.com for a free estimate and mention the promo code, Obsessed with the weather for a 10% discount off your full painting project. I am welcome to the Obsessed with the weather podcast. I'm your host Steve McGuire. This podcast is coming to you from the home of some of the world's most diverse weather situate Massachusetts. A reminder to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify or whatever you listen to your podcast on and visit ObsessedwithTheWeather.com to find out more information about today's episode and some great information about the weather. I have a great episode for you today as I walk on one of my ornithology mentors and friends Dr. Len Wrightsma to the podcast. But as always, let's begin with our weather quiz. Our weather quiz today is our show is about birds and the weather and climate today. Our quiz question pertains to that. Some research has shown that birds have the ability to predict the weather. Or be sensitive to when severe weather is about to occur. So the question is this, what is the meteorological condition that prompts birds to prepare for severe weather? And so because it appears to be kind of a difficult question, as the teacher in me has said, let's make this one a multiple choice question. So your choices are. So the meteorological conditions that prompt birds to prepare for severe weather, your choices are A, changes in the sky conditions, B, changes in atmospheric pressure, or C, the ability to smell moisture or precipitation in the air. So the meteorological condition that prompts birds to prepare, A, changes in the sky conditions, B, changes in atmospheric pressure, or C, the ability to smell moisture or precipitation in the air. So we'll get to the answer to that toward the end of the show. Like I said, I have the great privilege of being able to welcome one of my ornithologists and biology mentors, one of my friends, Dr. Len writes more to the podcast, Len, welcome to the show. Great to be here. So we're psyched to have you here. And one of the questions I'd like to start with, Len with every guest is, you know, obviously the theme of our show is weather, but I love to sort of find out where people, how people got to where they are in their life. Back in the day, a long time ago, you were my ornithology professor, seems like forever ago now. And you've been at Plumas State University for a number of years, but can you just kind of take our listeners through your path and what kind of got you to where you are today? Well, sure. I grew up in New Jersey 20 miles west of the George Washington Bridge. And although it's pretty built out now, back then, it was really quite a diverse landscape. There's a lot of forest right at the end of our dead end street. And so I'd go down into the into that forest. By the time I was 14 years old, I had my own binoculars and my own bird field guide, little Peterson, uh, east of the Mississippi. Awesome. And, uh, I, um, I started birding and I got in with a few, uh, high school classmates, uh, few grades ahead of me. And all of us were influenced by my high school biology teacher who was a, a really hot bird. And so, um, really, that's what got me into birds. But then after high school, I went to college and I didn't major in biology until my third college. Really? And once I did, I, I got in with the, uh, the ecologist at William Patterson University and, um, a mentor to me. And that ecology course really changed the direction, uh, of my sort of intellectual, uh, trajectory. Um, I then wed my bird love with ecology and I had no intention when I started college, I was going on to get a PhD. But once I had done that, I, I, I sort of pulled together my, my passion for birds with the discipline of ecology. Uh, I just really got into school in a big way. And so I went right on to do a PhD after my undergrad and, uh, from there, I really didn't know that I was going to end up being a professor, but I just, I really loved my career, um, teaching and doing research on bird. Awesome. And so, Len, what's your, your current role? I always like, I, I think it's super awkward when podcasts host, uh, rattle off this, you know, the person's long resume. I know that's something you're totally not into, uh, either, but can you just kind of give us like what is your title and what you do specifically today? Well, so most of what I do, uh, at some stage is teach. Uh, it, it is a teaching professor shift and we do, uh, the equivalent of 12 contact hours per semester. And so that's a fair bit of teaching. But I've also done, uh, a lot of, uh, research as well. Uh, we were encouraged to do research, but, you know, it can, it can be busy between teaching and doing the research. I have been, uh, I was, I was hired as an assistant professor. I, I got tenure and went on to be an associate professor and then five or six years after that. I was promoted to full professor. I was also the chair of the newly fledged biology department from 2003 until 2010. Awesome. And have since been, uh, a professor of ecology teaching many different courses. Um, yeah, like, ornithology, virtual, biology, current environmental issues, conservation, ecology, tropical biology, um, that kind of rounded out. Great. So, so one of the things that, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna get into the weather part and the climate part of birds, but you would, you just mentioned something that I think was vital that I know from me as a student was a game changer. Uh, can you, and that I've tried to take on in my own teaching as well. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of, and the weather ties into this as well, uh, about the field work. You know, obviously, you know, ecology and biology and ornithology are field related. Like you need to be out there to see the birds and things like that. But can you just talk about even the intangibles of the field experience of being out there with students and having them experience the outdoors? Yeah, I mean, for me, that's the one of the more rewarding aspects of the courses that I teach is the fact that the laboratory is nature and, um, in my class, students collect original data. That is to say that we design field studies and we go out and deploy our measurements techniques and collect the data and then they analyze the data with statistical software and basically are testing hypotheses, um, that are field based. And yeah, they, that really, I think, um, take hold with a lot of students. They really enjoy that aspect of the courses that I teach. Um, and of course, one of the side benefits for that is that, um, some, if not many, really get turned on to identifying species in the field. And I know I've been with you and your students and I know how much passion you bring to those outdoor experiences with your own student. And, um, the same is true for me. I mean, there's, there's quite a few students who have gone on to be really added birders and some of them have actually even gone into Avon ecology as a career. - Amazing. - So to me, that's one of the surely one of the most rewarding aspects of my job and something that I look back on with a lot of pride and satisfaction. - Yeah, and I mean, I look at it even 20, and I was kind of doing the math as you were talking here. Even 25 years later, you know, you and I know the inside of this, but you know, there are two things that stand out the most to me. And these are the things that I hope as educators are listening to, listening today and anybody that is, you know, gonna get into birding or, you know, as interesting in this type of path. Two experiences stood out to me. You know, our listeners don't know this, but every spring, I either call and leave a message with Len or get a chance to talk to him, and it's normally mid-March when the American woodcocks start doing their dance, the mail start doing their dance, and I call Len, and sometimes the only message I'll leave with him is I'll just say it's woodcock night and hang up, because I was in the field with you when we went out on the railroad tracks, I think in Romney, New Hampshire, or somewhere like that, in some open field, and we saw that dance for the first time. And for those that are listening, if you're a consistent listener, you'll know that I put links to all of our episodes and I'll put a link to the woodcock walk and what that is on the website today. And the second experience, I remember, again, 25 years later, as it was a Saturday morning, and again, it's a Saturday morning on a college campus, so it's usually a ghost town, but we were out early, we were at the field where the hockey rink at Plymouth State is now, and you had heard a Grasshopper Sparrow, which the rest of us are just like, "Ah, it's some sparrow," and you specifically heard a Grasshopper Sparrow, and we followed that, and we got that bird, which is not a very common bird at the time that we had been birding. So, you know, for educators that are listening, this is a 25-year-old experience that definitely still is hooked with me today as an educator. So, you know, I think both of us will advocate if you can get kids, even your own children, if you have your own children, if you can get them outside, get them outside, whatever it is, particularly more than ever, given today's time of kids being on screens and phones and all those things. So, I couldn't agree with you more, and I have witnessed the passion that you bring to these field experiences in your own high school classes, and it's really, I love to see that. - Yeah, it's a lot of fun. So, you know, you have done just unbelievable, I was doing a little bit more research on your research this morning, and you've obviously done something, you know, you've traveled the world, you've done some incredible work with students and with colleagues. Can you talk a little bit about, and you said you have, you know, lots of material on this. So, you know, obviously the climate is changing, weather is consistently changing. Can you just touch on a little bit of the impact that that weather and climate change has on birds? And that's such a loaded question, like we could talk about this, could be in seven episodes, but, you know, can you talk a little bit about, just start that conversation about how birds are impacted by climate and weather? So, the birds, I work on bird populations, which means I go to a certain area, and we catch the birds with msnets, and we draw them in with playback of their song and chip notes. And then we put an aluminum fish of wildlife band on and color bands, and then we monitor them after we release them to figure out what habitat they prefer and how well they do reproductively. And so that's kind of, and I've also done that in the tropics during the non-breeding season. So that's the work that I do. It is not driven per se by climate change. Got it. But what I can say is that, like many other bird researchers, one thing that has become clear is that the phenology of any particular species, that is the timing of different phases of their annual cycle has changed. So with, for example, the Canada-Worbler population that I've been studying for 18 consecutive years here in Canada and Hampshire, their arrival date have become earlier and earlier in the spring. So that's interesting, because they're obviously prompted to begin migrating from areas in South America that are more equatorial. And so what are the cues that they're using that indicate to them that the season may be starting earlier in the spring in the northern temperate zone? We don't know. Right. So the fact is that, yeah, the fact is that they are indeed arriving earlier. And I don't know. So one of the consequences that may not be as severe for Canada-Worbler, as we know it is for some other species, is that the timing of the season is pretty critical for reproductive success of birth. All right. And can you. So, yeah, I've seen this one with a little bit with Manamette down in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They are a banding station as well. And, you know, I've seen kind of their data. Can you. I think you're about to get into that. But can you, for our listeners, can you explain why that is so critical the timing piece of that? Well, do you think about the latitudes where we live? The winter is long, and spring is short, and then we have this sudden explosion of leaf out. And it is quite sudden, if you think about, you know, the timing of things. And we're leaflets up until early May, and then by mid-late May, it's like a jungle. You know, it's really beautiful. But the thing is, that's the primary production. Those are the autotroids, the plants that are, you know, using the sun to create all that edible tissue, then come the insects. And the insects are what most of the birds that I've studied, all the birds that I've studied, and most birds in general, are eating. And so, if that timing gets tweaked, even just a bit, like say, by a week or two, what can happen is leaf out as early, insects may or may not be able to adjust to that. And depending on whether they do or don't, that's going to affect, in a sort of a top or bottom-up way, from the primary producers on up to the secondary consumers, the birds, that's going to affect the availability of their food. So, in the end, you know, if, in fact, spring comes earlier, and some of the insects do not emerge on time to be able to consume those younger leaves that haven't been sort of impregnated by the plant itself with the kinds of protective chemicals that they will produce over time, then there won't be as many insects for the birds to eat. And so, this becomes a pretty important part of how climate change is affecting bird populations. So, if you look at another way, let me ask that slide. - Climate is affecting bird populations, that we now know that severe weather is more frequent and more severe. And so, if that happens in particular during the season we're about to enter the hurricane season, then it's entirely possible that even though your lead-up question for today's episode is an interesting one, there still can be the sudden weather changes that can be dramatic and can be consequential to particularly some bird that will leave the coastline at some point north and not really make landfall again until over a thousand miles. You know, black hole warberg comes to mind. It's just an extraordinary bird that can leave the Atlantic coastline as far north as Maine and not make landfall until it gets to the Bahamas or the greater Antilles. And so, you know, a storm comes through and you know, it could be toast for a lot of these populations that are in the air going over the ocean. - Right, which is incredible. We're gonna, I'm gonna ask a follow-up question to that in just a second, but I wanna get back to what you talked about in your regard to just sort of big picture climate stuff. So if you take this past spring in New England, in the US here, we had a very, for lack of a better term, it was a very cold wet spring in New England. And now we're into this sort of, at least where we are in southern New England, we're in a kind of a drought situation, we have in a lot of precipitation. But when you take a cold wet spring, you know, big picture, a whole bunch of those aren't good, but even in the short term, where you don't, where leaf out is later and where, you know, it is so much colder and so much wetter than normal. That's a great question. can have an impact on just one season of migration and birds, correct? Is that, that's definitely a thing, right? Oh yeah. And it also can have a dramatic impact on the reproductive success of birds, especially those that come back earlier, like say you compare a black or blue warbler that arrives in early to mid-day and get started right away and pairing and net building and so forth. And if there is such a spring, you know, we can even have snow in late May. Right. That can really cause a lot of failure of the first nesting attempt. Now, if they do fail, it's entirely possible that, well, it's probable that they will try to re-nest depending on when that failure occurred. And in fact, I think that happened this season. It wasn't due to weather, but what happened this season is, I don't know if you had a down in situ, but we had an explosion in the Eastern chipmunk population. And that actually resulted in what we suspect was a lot of first nesting attempt failure because chipmunks will depredate messlings and eggs in nest as well. Is there any reason for that? Do you know, do you know, do you see any reason for that? Is there any reason for the chipmunk explosion for the Hacker-Metta term? Well, I mean, it's almost certainly due to the tree species that mastered, like they, I don't know where the beach mask was at, but a beach in particular results in higher over winter survival of mammals in the family's day or day, which include chipmunks and squirrels. What's interesting though is that we did not see the same uptick in the squirrel population. So I'm not really sure what has caused the chipmunk population explosion, but I do believe that even in the studies that we're currently doing, that resulted in a fair number of first nesting attempt failures. But we have evidence that, like for example, the Blackbird of Blues went my backyard on our tree farm that we were monitoring this season, the majority did successfully pledge at least one brood. So that's good news. Yeah, definitely. So you had talked, you got, before I asked that other question, you had talked a little bit about the Blackpole Warbler that migrates. And now, if, you know, non-birders, when I know this, when I teach my own anthology kids, when I give them some of these numbers, they just can't process this. So Blackpole Warbler, for those that don't know, very small bird, not hummingbird, but small bird, will migrate north or south over a thousand miles, like Len just said, over open ocean with no stopping. And most people can't even process that. And obviously, the weather is a massive impact to that. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, whether it's the severity of the storm or the weather that helps them, you know, just the migration process and weather's role in that Len. So we suspected that Blackpoles do this extraordinary trans-Atlantic flight. I mean, not trans in terms of going from west to east to Europe, but trans in terms of going, you know, sort of north to south. And it's mostly in the fall that they do the long over ocean flight. Okay. We suspected that they did that, but we know that they do it now because of the work of, and actually a Plymouth State University graduate, Dr. Bill Deluca, who went on to get a PhD and worked with birds. And he and the people at the Vermont Center for Eclipse studies actually put geolocators on Blackpoles. And then the summer during the breeding season, and then when they came back, they were able to retrieve, I think it was seven of those geolocators. And they could deduce based on the data in those geolocators, they could deduce the root and timing of their migratory flight. And indeed, they go, like you just said, Steve, they go out over the ocean and they are in flight without stopping for more than three days. Wow. Really rather remarkable. There are ten grand birds that can weigh almost double that in some cases before they leave the coastline in the fall. And that's because they put on all this fat that they absolutely must have in order to do that energetically-stupendous flight over the Atlantic. We also know from Billsworth that they actually go a bit south east farther out to the ocean and they do that because then they can catch a tailwind that brings them back towards the Caribbean and that actually reduces their energetic demand during the second stage of that over-ocean flight. So really rather remarkable. So then of course if they are doing that and a front comes through and this is all during hurricane season, they can't necessarily just turn around. I mean we know from geolocator data on things like big shorebirds like curloughs that if you got that much back, in some instances they do that. There was one that was going from Australia just wild. I can't remember where it was going but it was going to the northern polar region. They got into a storm and it turned around after like 18 hours of flight over the ocean. But a black pole warbler is not going to be able to do that. And you know that's black poles. A lot of birds have a trans-golf flight. They go over the Gulf of Mexico because it's the most direct route to get to their, are they're towards the breeding grounds in the spring or to the non-breeding grounds in the fall or many actually overwinter in the Caribbean. So all of this involves some significant over-ocean flying. And if that flight over the ocean occurs during a time when there's a sudden change in the weather, well it could be very consequential. Yeah definitely. So I know one of the, just to give my students context of the birding world more than anything else. I show them the movie The Big Year and they love it. The movies, for our listeners, if you've never seen The Big Year, it's just, if you're a movie fan, it's just a great movie. And then if you're a birter, it's even better on top of that. And one of the things they talk about Len and I'd be psyched if you could talk about, I'm sure in all your amazing diverse experience that this has happened to you multiple times. Can you talk about what fallout is and how it pertains to weather? Right so during migration and again, you asked a very interesting question at the beginning of the show. During migration, birds are pretty dialed in to weather conditions. And I'm not going to reveal the answer to your question, but they do have the ability to gauge weather conditions ahead of when those conditions change. And so if, for example, in the spring, we're having one of those a doubts of colder weather with a more northern wind or northwestern wind, that's going to hold up a major migratory flight. And so they'll just stage in an area and try to get on as many calories as possible. And then when things open up, there can be these massive flights where in one tree you can see 10, 12, even 15 species of worburs and verios together in one single tree. Can you talk about just for our non-birders? Can you talk about what it means for a bird to stage, Len? Yeah, stage would be to hold tight in a more local area and try to put on mass. Okay. Shore birds are famous for this and they come in and spectacles of tens of thousands during migration. And for example, the red knot is known to rely on horseshoe crab egg along the eastern coastal areas, like for example, at Forsyth National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey. And so it is consequential to red knot when the horseshoe crab populations are declining for a variety of reasons. But that's what's staging is. It's when birds will hang tight in a particular area to try to put on as much calories as possible. Got it. Okay. So they hit that point. So there's a scene in the big year where they talk about that, you know, the birds are going over the Gulf of Mexico and then there's a cold front that comes and all of a sudden they drop down into a place, the example they gave is a place called High Island in Texas. Have you had those experiences just as obviously as a biologist, but also just as a bird that you've processed and can you talk a little bit more about it? a little bit about some of those field experiences you've had. Well, that's really thrilled about the set of weeks coming up because I sit where I am right now on the deck and back in our backyard. And we live in a wooded setting and I just look out at this clump of Gray Birch. And I see, I tally up the species that I see coming through in the fall. This would be mid-August through mid-September. And I will have days where I get 15 to 18 different species of birds. And it's not every day. It's, you know, it does depend on the weather. And so in a sense, every late summer, experiencing these fallouts multiple times over the course of the fall migration. And I have also, as have you, experienced that in the spring, where like I was saying before, conditions hold up northerly migration. And then all of a sudden the skies open up. The winds are favorable and birds just come through where you can, like I said, happen. More than a dozen species of migratory warbures and a single tree. Yeah. So extraordinary. It's beautiful. And it's what a lot of birders live for. Yeah. It's, it's there. There's that moment, particularly in North America, mid May that, you know, we celebrate it with birding festivals and in Massachusetts, we call it something called birdathon. And, you know, everybody's so excited for that time of year that we've been waiting for. Can you, that you alluded to it a little bit there? Can you talk about, um, so you talked a little bit about some of those ideal days. So amazingly enough, we have about due to the analytics of this podcast. We have about 15 international listeners. Okay. So keep that in mind when you answer this question. So can you talk about, I guess it is a universal worldwide thing when birds actually migrate. And they're on the move. What is the ideal migration conditions for them as they're getting ready to move you? They're in the fall with their spring. Well, I think, you know, in general, for some degree, it depends upon the, the sweetest species that you're referring to. Like, for example, I've done a fair bit with the raptor migration too. Going down to Cape May with my good friend David Merker and a banding hawk through the, the Cape May bird banding. Hawk banding program. And there it's only going to fall and there the ideal conditions are northwesternly wind. So one important component to the proximate immediate weather conditions that will promote and encourage birds to be on the migratory move is favorable wind. Okay. And of course, what that usually translates to is a tailwind. They, they want to be in conditions where the wind is going to exist them in covering the greatest amount of distance with the least energy expenditure. Great. It makes sense. And another one, of course, is going to be, you know, avoiding inclement weather because even in a drizzle that's going to increase. The mass of the bird slightly, you know, by a getting wet and it's going to potentially sort of mess a little bit with their, their, their thermal regulatory process. So I mean, birds can, it's amazing how much rain birds can withstand. But in general, they're not going to do a lot of migrating during inclement weather. Okay. So they have a tailwind. And bear in mind also, we're referring to, we're imagining birds doing a lot of this migrating during the day. But in point of fact, and we have this interesting snow level radar data from kind of state that verifies its validates. But we do it anyway. A lot of strong birds do the majority of their migrating after sunset until about midnight. So you, it's worth encouraging your listeners. And about a month from now and in the early teens of September to go outside, go outdoors after sunset and tune in your hearing to the sky. And you're going to hear these little chip notes as birds migrate overhead. It's really quite a cool thing. So having had experience that I can confirm that from lens thought here is if you can do that, it's amazing. And you don't even realize, obviously, the, I'm sure there's data about this. And I know that there are bird observatories. I had mentioned man and, and Plymouth Mass earlier. They have started setting up microphones. And they, we've actually been able, I brought my students down there in the spring. And we, this is incredible. The level of science here is incredible. We were able to in front of us, the fuel biologist brought up and processed those chip notes on a sonogram and was able to match that sonogram with what field researchers had done. And then was able to identify the bird on like a three second note, right? Like not even, I mean, they entered it in the program that sonograms matched. And it said, oh, American Red Star went over to 17 a.m. Right? Like this is ridiculous. That level of science that's there. My house, you know, so for the non-birders to watch, you know, for me to watch 20 high school kids just go, oh my goodness. They can, people are actually doing that. It's a thing. And the science behind that is just amazing. So, you know, Len said it if you can get outside and listen at any idea, Len, and I again, I know this may not be your forte, but any idea of the numbers or like the sheer math. So say you have a clear great tailwind night, not too windy, but a good tailwind night. And, you know, the skies are clear. Like I said, any idea of the numbers of birds that are going overhead? So, so here's an anecdote. So it's, you know, a sample size of one, but it's my first and experience. My good friend of decades, Dr. Pam Hunt, who's at the New Hampshire Audubon, when she was living in Enfield. She and I decided that we would concurrently record the number of birds we heard chipping as they went overhead. So I went up on the roof of my house and she went up on the roof of her house. How far apart are you now? How far apart? Basically, how far apart are you houses? So we were probably, I would say about 10 miles apart. Okay. And so the birds that we detected were completely not overlapping. Because we're out about the same latitude. So the swath of birds that were going over her place were completely different than what was going over my place. And in a half hour from about 930 p.m. to 10 p.m., I detected 87 and she detected, I think somewhere around 116. Wow. And that's just in a half hour. So if you extrapolate what that means for the entire multi hour period that this migration was occurring, it's not total migration. And then by the area, because neither of us were in a particular flyway. Right. It's really quite, quite remarkable. Yeah. And I just love the visual because it's definitely not a lot of humans on earth doing what you guys did. Right? Like, hey, you get on your roof. You get on your roof and I'll get on my roof and I'll call you in an hour. But that's great. That's amazing science. Can you talk a little bit about the nighttime piece that I know most non-birders don't know this and our listeners may not know this either? So you know, a lot of people think, oh, I see birds during the day while they're everywhere. Why would they, and even from a weather perspective too, like, why would they choose nighttime? Well, I mean, while we may not know for certain, our best guest, our best hypothesis is that, they are more protected. They're more concealed. There are fewer predators on bird that are active at nighttime, at least, aside from, say, owls, you know, an owl can't fly a fast-paced on bird in general. So that it affords them some protection. And furthermore, I want to make a tie into the main theme of today's episode. Again, weather conditions are important in predicting how many birds are going to be involved in these nocturnal migratory flights. Because we know that birds use celestial cues. They, they can read the sky, if you will. - They do. - Most of both lunar and stellar accused. And we know this because of some very elegant experiments that were done in planetariums, where they can shift the sky and look at what's called Zuggenrua, the migratory wreathlessness of birds. And they've shown that if they shift at 90 degrees, the wreathlessness shifts 90 degrees. So pretty remarkable stuff. And so birds have a higher RT of external cues that they use to stay on course. And that also may be a reason why birds are chipping during these not-tonals, right? Because if you think about that, imagine this large number of birds moving in the same direction. By being able to detect each other's chips, it helps them to stay on course as well. - So there's a communication part to it. - Yeah, that is, I mean, we don't know exactly why they chip, but that's, I would say, a reasonable hypothesis. - Incredible. You had mentioned a couple minutes ago, you had used the term that some folks may not be familiar with a flyway. Can you talk a little bit about, and maybe tie in some weather if you can? What a flyway is? - Yeah, well, I mean, flyways for strong birds are probably not as common as flyways for water birds. And that's because water birds are going to need to stage at appropriate habitat, like pondered areas or tidal flats or the like. That said, there still are some frontal effects that have happened with all birds. And so you can imagine birds using multiple spatial cues for staying on their migratory roots. And mountain ranges, for example, I'll have to mount for coastlines or rivers, for example, might all be potential cues for birds to stay, especially if they're sort of oriented north south, like say the Connecticut River. And so, yeah, a flyway would then be an area, say longitudinal width that we would predict there to be a greater abundance of migratory birds than outside of that longitudinal width. - Got it. - And these are sort of evolved behaviors that are conserved because they've been successful. - And so some people have, you know, in a very layman's term, some people have considered these, they sort of highways or just most common paths birds take to migrate. Would that make sense? - Right, and one of the reasons why they persist is because the birds that have used those roots are the one that survived. - Got it. - So whether it be because there's more food, there's more protection, there's suitable safe habitat from predators or all of the above, you know, that they could all be reasons why certain flyways persist. - Great, and so when you get a bird like a, so when you get a vagrant, when you get a bird that just randomly shows up in a place that it's not supposed to be for lack of a better term, that's our, those are human terms. You know, maybe the bird's supposed to be there. We just don't think it's supposed to be because of the constraints we've sort of created. But so you get a random bird that shows up, you know, it's supposed to be a West Coast bird or an Arctic bird or whatever, and it shows up somewhere it's not supposed to be. Is there a weather component to that? Is there a just randomness, you know, again, you may not have the full answer to this, but can you talk a little bit about vagrants and sort of how that may happen? - Well, I think in any particular individual case, it can be one or another reason. There was a Fort Tilt fly catcher in the Champlain Valley about 10 years ago that my friend Dave and I went to see, and I don't know if there's a reasonable weather explanation for that. Some birds just get off course, and as you know, it's hot times for a lot of birds when that happens because they all flock to see these birds. And in other cases, we suspect that there clearly is a weather component. So for example, a lot of times when you get, especially down where you are in situate, when you get these vagrant water birds or shore birds, like you were just saying to me before the beginning of the podcast, the Curly Sand Piper, that can actually be the result of some stormy weather that has sort of blown it to places where it's not usually occurring. - Right, so a good example of that too was, I think it was last spring or last maybe mid-summer. There was a two or three sightings in Maine of a rosy eight spoon bill, which is a Florida southeastern bird. They were first state records ever, and a lot of people attributed that to a tropical storm that had come up the coast and the bird. I mean, there were a bunch of them being seen in the Midwest as well. That bird basically doesn't migrate. And so you had talked a little bit about it before, even though that's a big bird, they can get stuck for lack of a better term in systems, they can get stuck in weather systems. - Yeah, certainly. Yeah, I think that's the most reasonable explanation why that bird ended up in Maine. - Right, so one other piece I definitely want to talk about, so one of the things that we've established, we have a great relationship, my own mythology classes, with the Cornell School of Aurethology, they have started something called Birdcast, which is basically for lack of a better term radar for birders. Do you have much experience with that, or have your students used it, or can you talk a little, even if it's not Birdcast itself, predictive ways to know waves of birds are coming through? - Well, a lot of work with regards to the use of radar in monitoring migratory flight, started down along the Gulf line, where they have now been using radar for decades to not only document when birds are doing their flight, but also to document the decline in overall bird abundance. - Wow. - So the way it shows up in radar is through different colors and densities on the radar, and so it's been pretty clear that the overall density of birds that are doing that trans-golf flight has really declined. And this is running, I'm sure the listeners are aware of the articles that have come out within the last year about the dramatic decline in overall bird abundance. - So, yeah, and then I alluded to another kind of radar that we used as plenty of space. It wasn't actually being used to monitor birds, but the meteorologist contacted me and said, we got this interesting phenomenon where we're seeing what has to be birds showing up on the radar. - Right, certainly not, it's not aliens, right? - No, no, no, no, no, indeed we worked it up and it's, I mean, all of these waves of images on the radar are completely in sync with when fall migration occurs in songbird. - Incredible. - In fact, there's now a whole new sub-discipline within avian ecology that's purely based on radar. It's become a zone field. - Incredible, right? I mean, and Tab, seeing some of that, I know even on a very layman's level, just to show the predictive ability of the radar, of hey, this is gonna be a, this looks like a hot, you know, night for migration and this one doesn't look so that way 'cause of precipitation, it's just, it's amazing how much that technology has helped. So, as we get ready to kind of wrap up here, Lena, I'd be completely remiss if I didn't ask, you've had a multitude of them. But can you talk about maybe one or two birding moments in your life that just really stand out as the most memorable to you and why? - Well, I'd like to say that I think in general, humans underappreciate the intelligence of non-human species. And so, the two that I'd like to share, speak to what I consider to be the remarkable intelligence of where And I should also say that our whole understanding of bird intelligence has undergone a radical shift so that the the the regulatory term bird brain is really a misnilum at this point because birds are indeed quite intelligent. Their their components to their brains are different than humans, but they are really good at problem solving, particularly a couple families like to tacitade the parents and the court of the the ravens, crows and jays. Anyway, I was doing work in Alaska in the 90s, early 90s with a couple of friends and we're on a title flat on a military base looking at ducks that were getting sick from this munition that was being used in a practice or killer rearrange of white fosters. And so a there was a flock of dauertures that were feeding and a pergain falcon came in and flushed them and commenced to chasing them. And which is probably a scene these flocking birds say in very tight pattern. And so both these species, the dauerture and the falcon have pointed wing tips and so they are high speed flyers. And so every time that the pergain would get close, the dauertures would bank in sync with each other and the pergain couldn't really single out what one individual. And so they boarded. And then it went back of our observation tower. The dauertures landed again in the same little sort of mud flat pool that we were walking to begin with. And the pergain caught thermals and went higher and higher and higher and higher. So my two friends went back to looking at ducks and I said I'm going to keep an eye on the falcon. Well, what's it got really high and went into a stoop and you're listening as they know that the highest recorded speed of any bird is a pergain falcon in a stoop. And so when I went out close to the surface of the water, it leveled off horizontal and it came streaming in over that dauerture flock. And before they detected the falcon, it was on top of the flock and it put out its talent and it raked the the the back of the neck of one of the dauertures to the point where it was mortally wounded. And then it swooped up, came back, grabbed it with its talent and took off. Wow. So what you have there is, you know, plan A didn't work. Right. So resorts the plan B. Amazing, right? Yeah, I think that's amazing. And just one more quick. Yeah, no, I want you to please get to the story, but I want to ask you this, what, you know, again, these are incredible, memorable life experiences. How long ago was that? I believe that was in 1993. Right. So these are things that just stay with you for your life that, you know, birding can have on you. Awesome. Okay. Well, this one happened about four years ago, four or five years ago, and it was on the north eastern part of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. And I was camping with my wife and another couple car camping ahead of the North American ornithological Congress that was meeting at the University of British Columbia. Anyway, we were at this. It was again, a sort of like a title pool. And there were these small shorebirds peep, I don't know if they released through some I palm, they had sandpipers that were feeding. And a Merlin flew off of its perch. Can you tell folks about what a Merlin is? A lot of Merlin is a small falcon. It's about the same, maybe a little bit smaller actually than a castel, but it's built differently and they're super fat. So the Merlin went out over the flock and the flock flushed as one might expect. And again, you've got a falcon with point of wing tips and these shorebirds have point of wing tips through both. All of them are fast flyers. Anyway, there was a breeding colony of purple martins on the far end of this ponded area. And so they took to the air from their big colonial next box and the Merlin got in with that martins flock. Now martins also have point of wing tips. And so while birds that are often victims from alien predators are very good at detecting those predators. It was pretty clear that these shorebirds could not detect this Merlin when it was in among the martins. And as the martins flew closer and closer to this shorebird flock, the shorebirds did not fly away. The Merlin went into a stoop and was successful. Wow. So it didn't camouflage itself, but it built itself into that flock. Yeah, more or less it was camouflage itself. So again, what you have is plan A didn't work. So it resorts to plan B. And I think about, you know, obviously some listeners might think I'm crazy, but think about the level of sophistication of that strategy. Right. Yeah, it's just, it's a me. So they have to make that for lack of a better term that on spot, audible to make a difference in hunting success. It's just incredible. You were, my wife and I were burning brush this past. And I don't know if you were, if this has happened to you previously, if you've had it with Paragraphalcans, this is a, you know, I'm 46, never in my life had heard this. So we're burning some brush this past spring. And we heard a kill deer calling and flying around. And you know, we both kind of mentioned, oh, hey, there's a kill deer. And then I went to good turn to turn to 10 the fire. And I'm so glad I have a verbal way to do this because I put this in writing and it just isn't the same. I can't make it up. We had a Paragraphalcans come so low past our heads in the fire near the fire chasing this kill deer that we heard the. Which I didn't even know was a thing like, and to this, you know, to this day, it's now like a top five most incredible burning moment. You just talked about their travel speed. They're able to travel so fast they make that noise. We thought there was a firework that came out of the fire. So they're able to, they're able to travel that fast in the ideal wind and what, regardless sometimes of whether to go that quickly, right? Yeah, amazing. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. So lend, incredible, so grateful. Obviously, we just, I love to talk to you anyway, but now we get to record it for the rest of the world, which is awesome. Before. Yeah, go ahead. I'd like to say that connects weather to birds and, and I'm sure almost every listener knows about this. Maybe not, but there's been a lot of range, shift shifting, range expansion. So for example, because the weather is overall getting warmer each year, the predominant shift that occurred in our area is for birds that used to be south of us and now the commonly coming, red belly woodpeckers are a good example. In fact, a lot of these data goes back to patterns that already started in the 60s and 70s, like titmice and northern card, northern Monkingbirds, Carolina Rennes, all four of those have expanded their ranges northward rather remarkably. In fact, this breeding season was the very first time that we recorded a Carolina Rennes breeding season in our door yard. Wow. So that's another phenomenon that they're carrying and what that speaks to is the ability for birds to actually adjust in shorter time periods to changes in environmental conditions. And that's a good thing. Oh, yeah, definitely a good thing. And it's funny. You mentioned Carolina Rennes and red belly woodpecker. I tell my students 25 years ago, you never would have seen this. And then I ask, what do you think that is? You know, it seems like a pretty easy question, but they do have the ability to adapt, which is amazing. I always love the end interviews, giving my guests the opportunity for people to reach out to you. So do you? I know you're not a big social media guy, but is there a contact or an essay beyond our episode website? Is there some contact information that they can reach out to you at? Yeah, you can share my email with them at L-E-O-N-R at plymouth.edu. Great. OK. So you can reach out to Lynn that way. And again, Lynn, just incredible. So let's get to our, our email. answered to our question and again the question was, and I'll I always love to let our guests answer this. So what is the meteorological condition that prompts birds to prepare for severe weather? So your options were A) changes in the sky conditions B) changes in atmospheric pressure and C) the ability to smell moisture or precipitation in the air and L) I'll turn it over to you. Go for it. Awesome. B) is correct. I'm going to let Len explain more of this because he knows this better than I do, but the answer that I found is B) is correct. Most birds have, if I'm pronouncing this correctly, what's called a Vitaly organ is a correct one. Yeah. And that's that it's a special middle-ear receptor that can sense extremely small changes in atmospheric pressure and that organ allows them to respond to those changes in pressure and put themselves in a safe space or remove themselves from a space prior to a storm. We want to talk a little bit about that, Len. Well, I think it pretty much summed it up there. It's that physiological capability to be able to sense changes in atmospheric pressure that really can be a lifesaver for them, can result in them not heading into dangerous conditions. Now, of course, that now with sanding, there's still going to be those situations where you're a black hole warler or another species that has to go over a significant amount of water and conditions change rapidly. But still, this is an evolved mechanism to decrease the risk of mortality during the migratory phases both in the spring and the fall. Right. Incredible. So again, Len, I want to thank Len for joining us today and I put this out there. I say this to Len a lot and this usually wants her twice a year that I encourage our listeners to do this. I always at least once a year send in Len an email or a quick phone call or we've actually seen each other in the last couple of years. I encourage our listeners if you have a mentor in your life that you have not said thank you to whatever in whatever field or profession or even if it's 25 years ago, there was that one person that made a difference in your life. Please make sure you reach out to that person and let them know and I know in my life, Len's been one of those people and so grateful to have you on the show today. Len, thank you so much for joining me this week. You can find out more about today's show as well as upcoming episodes by visiting obsessed with the weather.com. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify or whatever you're listening to your podcasts on. And again, obsessed with the weather.com to find out more and I hope you have a great week. [Music]