754: Spark Bird
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Last week I went out in the woods in Oregon with this bird expert Noah Stricker looking at birds. Every day he goes out for at least an hour often it's a lot more. On trails around his house that he and his parents cleared back when he was a kid. And I'd never been birding. I had no idea how much a bird watching. You're actually just listening for the birds. When we stood out in the morning it was still foggy. Already I can hear some birds calling now so there's a spot at Tohy. Rump. Calling just behind me. That was a California quail waking up. Did you get a little... That was the sound of a stellar's jay imitating a red-tailed hawk. Wait you know the birds well enough you can tell when a bird is imitating another bird badly? Yeah it's not a real red-tailed hawk. Stellar's jays are just kind of bullies in general and they imitate red-tailed hawks. As far as I can tell just to terrorize other little birds in the forest. Does it work? I don't know honestly. What's weird about this is if Noah can tell that it's not a red-tailed hawk and he's not even a bird. Can't other birds tell? If they can why would stellar jay keep doing it? To answer that question Noah tells me about how a couple years ago he bought this powerful microphone a parabolic microphone that capture bird sounds from a great distance. The first bird I ever aimed it at was a stellar's jay sitting up on a branch. So we turned on his recorder put on headphones and waited for it to make some noise. And I realized it was sitting up there with its beak closed singing a very quiet whisper song to itself that only itself could have possibly heard because it was so quiet. That just blew my mind. I have never listened to birds the same sense. So I think they do make noises just for their own sake a lot of the time. Going up birding with Noah is going out with somebody who is insanely knowledgeable about birds. He's written five books about their behavior toward the world seeing 6,000 of the nearly 11,000 existing bird species in just one year in 2015. So he knows a lot. But he's also still completely excited about birds can't get enough. He told me this story. He goes to Antarctica for months studying penguins and sometimes he gives tours to visitors of the penguin colonies. At first he says they love it. They go into the colony. They see the baby penguins which are super cute. And then like day five or so people get up in the morning and are like where are we going to go today? And you say we're going to a penguin colony. And there's like this look that I've learned to recognize. It's like I've just been to eight other penguin colonies in the past four days. How is this one going to be any different? But for me I have never felt that look in my whole life. I've never got penguin out. He happily goes back to the same colony with the same woods around his house every single day. Noah says this endless interest in birds began in sort of typical ways. In fifth grade he first noticed birds for real when his teacher suctioned copped a bird feeder to the classroom window and he could stare at the birds through the glass just inches away. He started reading the field guide looking for birds on his own joined a local birding club. Everybody else in the club by the way was in their 60s, 70s and 80s. He was like 12. The one kid is energetic birdie doogie howser. In person Noah actually does have kind of a neo-patric Harris vibe. But the thing he says that changed him from that kind of leisure time murder into somebody who organized his entire life around it happened because of turkey vultures. One particular pack of them when he was 16. And he saw this episode of a TV show called The Life of Birds where David Attenborough goes into a trinity and rainforest. And he has this
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