The Science of Birds

This episode—which is Number 57— is all about the flocking behavior of birds. Birds of many species spend at least part of their yearly cycle hanging out in groups. This could be just a handful of in...

This episode—which is Number 56— is all about the colors of birds. The diversity of color in bird plumages is one of the things we love most about these animals. But bird plumages are impressive not o...

This is Episode 55. It’s all about birds in the avian family Phoenicopteridae. These are the flamingos. No doubt you already know a fun fact or two about flamingos. These birds are crowd pleasers tha...

This episode—which is Number 54—is all about bird eggs. This is an important topic. Eggs are a fundamental aspect of bird biology. Recently, in Episode 49 of the podcast, I covered the topic of nest...

This episode—which is Number 53—is all about Avian Influenza. Or colloquially what we call the Avian Flu or Bird Flu. Depending on where you live, you might have noticed news headlines in recent mont...

This is Episode 52. Today, we’re talking about bird species that are way, way bigger than your average chickadee or finch. Our focus will be on evolutionary lineages that spawned some very large bi...

This is Episode 51. Our bird of interest today is the Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis. This species is widespread across the eastern and southern US. It’s so well-known and loved that it’s t...

This episode—which is Number 50— is all about Female Birdsong. Songs are one of the things we love most about birds. They define the soundscapes of the natural world. Even though humans have been ...

This episode—which is Number 49—is all about bird nests. There are tons of fun facts fun facts here, since nests are one of the more impressive aspects of bird behavior and breeding biology. We’ll ...

This episode—which is Number 48—is about the “Pecking Order” in birds. Or, to use the more technical term, dominance hierarchy. Our focus will be on dominance hierarchies that we see among birds wit...