Alyssa DeRubeis Transcript
Victoria:
Our guest this week is Alyssa DeRubeis. She got her Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens point. And she has a Master’s degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Alyssa’s research for her Master’s involved answering the question how do we know if we are really helping birds? She focused her research on grassland birds, which are some of the most endangered birds in North America. She’s going to tell us all about her time doing field work with nesting and winter birds in Arkansas tallgrass prairies.
This week’s questions were submitted by the listeners through emails and on social media.
Alyssa, thank you so much for talking to us today.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Thanks for having me, Vikki. I’m really excited to be here and especially to reach out and encourage kids to get excited about birds and birdwatching.
Victoria:
(Isaac – How do you help birds/what do you do?)
(Kristy – Why do they need help?)
Awesome. Well with that, we can start with our questions for today. This first question is actually a pair of questions. One from Isaac and one from Kristy. Isaac wants to know how do you help birds/what do you do? And Kristy wants to know why do they need help?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. And those are some really good questions, actually, all the questions were spectacular and I’m very excited to answer all of them.
But yeah, to start, how do I personally help birds? I did when I was doing research. And when you research a species, you learn more about what that species needs to survive, and then you can make better conservation plans. So through my research for grassland birds, I figured out, Hey, these birds need these certain things in their environment, or maybe these particular things aren’t as important for these species. So we don’t have to worry about them as much when we are making like management plans to help protect these birds. So that’s how I helped birds. And that does lead into what I did. I was a Master’s student and I for my degree, I was required to research something and I chose to do grassland birds.
And for why grassland birds need help? Well, and I mean, birds in general need help, but I’ll get into grassland birds in a second. But birds in general needs hope because a lot of them are declining. And I don’t know if any of you guys, you know, heard in the news, it was about a year ago, but there’s a huge study came out and it said that in the past 50 years, we actually lost 3 billion birds. Let’s say that one more time. In the past 50 years, 3 billion birds died.
Victoria:
Wow.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. That’s huge. And keep in mind too folks that this is including when we know that birds don’t live forever, it’s not like you know, we are taking that into account in this research. So the loss including the deaths that we expected to happen cause birds don’t live forever. The loss is still 3 billion birds. So that’s, that’s huge.
Victoria:
Yeah. That’s scary.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
It is. Yeah. And, you know, I’ve talked to older folks and they, some of them can even see differences from when they’re kids versus now. Some, I think of our people who used to see bobwhite quail all the time and they were just everywhere on their property. And now you would be very lucky to find a flock of bobwhite quail. So, you know, I think of those stories and it really does match with this big study saying that we lost so many birds.
And there’s a lot of different reasons why they’ve been lost. And most of them are because of humans, because of our actions, they do have consequences on birds. The main one would be habitat loss. So we are just, we’re cutting down forests, we’re cutting down grasslands, we’re building over wetlands. And this is for us to have farms and to build buildings and infrastructure and things like that. So that’s why they really need our help.
And yeah, and I also just wanted to say that, you know, you might think, Oh, well, they’re just birds, but I like to say that, you know, birds and other wildlife, they deserve to be here as much as humans do. So that’s why they especially need our help because we’re doing the damage and it’s hard for the birds to undo the damage that humans have done to them.
Victoria:
Wow. I’m glad that people like you are out there researching this and helping them.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Well, thank you.
Victoria:
(Perry – What is the most endangered bird in the US?)
So we’ve got a bunch of questions coming up about birds and bird species. Perry wants to know what is the most endangered bird in the US?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
All right. The most endangered bird, I did not have this answer memorize. I didn’t previously know it. So I actually just went online and looked for it. And I found a list of the top 10 most endangered birds in the US, and it looks like the California condor is one of the most endangered and there’s only 500 birds left. And I think only 300 of them are in the wild. So. That’s pretty crazy. 500 is not a big number for birds. Trying to think of how to put that in perspective. I mean, there, there are few, I mean, I feel like there aren’t a lot of towns that I know of that have only 500 people in it. So, one of those towns that has all the California Condors in it, you can look at it that way. So yeah, that’s not a lot.
And so I was talking about that I got that information from a list of the 10 most endangered birds in the US, I just wanted to point out that four out of 10 of those, so about 40% of them rely on some kind of grassland habitat. So that gives you an idea of how endangered grassland birds are. I mean, a lot of them are on the endangered species list.
Victoria:
(Brooke – What are the most endangered birds in the world?)
Wow. Speaking of endangered birds, Brooke wants to know what are the most endangered birds in the world.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
This was also news for me too. I didn’t know. I had some guesses in my head, so there’s 10,000 birds, more than 10,000 bird species in the world. So it can be hard to remember all of them, so I looked this one up too, and it looks like giant ibis is one of the most endangered. I believe this is an Asian species and ibis is, they’re like herons, but they have like, they have a, a beak that is strongly D curved usually. And there only 200 giant irises in the world, in the whole world. So.
Victoria:
Wow.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah, not that many. It’s wild to see all these different population sizes. And then you think about how many humans are and there’s more than six billion.
Victoria:
Yeah, yikes.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
A lot more humans.
Victoria:
(Staci – What birds are grassland birds?)
Yeah. All right. Switching gears a little bit, but still questions about birds. Staci wants to know what birds are grassland birds.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
So, what are some examples of grassland bird species? I am going to talk about the North American ones. But there are, there are other grassland bird species in Europe, in South America and elsewhere, but I’m not as familiar with those because I studied birds in North America.
So that’s where my list will come from. So some pretty typical grassland birds, there’s a lot of songbirds, so there’s quite a few sparrows, like, Henslow’s, and grasshopper and LeConte. Those are all grassland birds. There’s other songbirds that are like Red-winged Blackbirds. They’re in the same family, but they’re the grassland bird version.
So there’s one called the bobolink, which is super cool. I highly recommend you guys. Go ahead, check out the song because it’s just this super super bubbly song. I think it’s one of the happiest bird songs in the world, in my opinion. Yeah. But babbling. And they look really cool too. They’re black, they’re very black, but they have a bright white patch on their wings. And then they have a little bit of yellow on their head. So kind of an interesting combination for color combination for birds.
And, and then a very classic one of course is Eastern Meadowlark. And a lot of people who live in the country will recognize their song. They’re one of the more common ones, but even they have declined by about 80% since the 1960s. So even when a bird seems common to us, it doesn’t mean that it is compared to maybe what it should or could be up, and Eastern Meadowlark is a really good example of that. So they used to be very, very common even compared to now, but anyways, so Eastern Meadowlark.
Eastern Bluebird is one, I would say. A lot of folks might, may have already known that one, but they will nest in tree cavities and pretty open grassland environments. So they’re a little bit different because most birds don’t do that.
What are some other good ones? Ooh, I really liked the American Kestrel. That’s a, it’s a small Falcon and they really like open kind of grassland environments and the males are orange, blue, white and black.
Victoria:
Oh, wow.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah, it’s a very colorful little raptor. And yeah, so it’s mostly, it’s a lot of songbirds and then, and some raptors, I didn’t say all of the Hawks and Falcons and such, but those are just ones that I immediately thought of right now.
Victoria:
(Toya – Where do birds in grasslands build their nests?)
Speaking of these grassland birds, and you mentioned this a little bit, but Toya is interested in where do birds and grasslands build their nest.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. So. To answer that, I think I need to just briefly say what a grassland is. And I think most folks will probably say, Oh, it’s a place with a lot of grass. And if that’s the case, then a lot of people’s backyards, their lawns would be a grassland, and they’re not really grasslands. But a grassland is, there is a lot of grass, but there’s also wild flowers, and it is dry. So there’s usually not a lot of water. And there are no bushes or trees or if there are, there’s like maybe a couple, very few. So this is a very open environment. It’s dry. And it’s covered in vegetation everywhere with grasses and flowers.
And so keeping that in mind that, doesn’t give birds a lot of options for places to build a nest. And so, you know, as you might expect, they just build them right there on the ground or they’ll build them in the grasses. Some of them, like the Meadowlark, they’ll even make a little roof over their nest, maybe to protect from, you know, things stepping on it, like bison, maybe. it’s really cool to see them, cause it really is just like this little, it seems like a little cave and then there’s little babies in there. That’s pretty awesome.
Victoria:
Oh, cute.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. And you think, Oh, if they’re on the ground, they must be really easy to find. And that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I think the birds know that they’re in a very vulnerable position when they put their nests on the ground. So they do everything they can to make sure that it blends in with the grass.
Victoria:
(Gevian – What types of birds did you see?)
That’s cute. This next question comes from Gevian. And I think you’ve probably already covered this, but I’ll ask it just in case there’s others that you haven’t mentioned. Gevian wants to know what types of birds did you see?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. Well, and that is a good question because there were, now that I’m thinking about it, there are a couple that I saw at my research sites, but I didn’t mention before in my list.
So, some special birds in Arkansas that you can’t see in a lot of other places, one of them is painted bunting. And if you don’t know what that is, you most certainly need to look it up online, but it is probably our most, it’s like a rainbow songbird. I think that’s the best way I can describe it, but it has a blue head, has a red belly, and it’s got like yellowish green wings, and it has like a red circle around its eyes. So it’s a really cool bird. It’s something that a lot of birdwatchers really, really want to see. And that’s one that you can find at some of the grasslands in Northwest Arkansas. And they have a really lovely song too.
And another really cool one was scissor tailed flycatcher. And they have a tail that is, I think, as long as its body, so a very long tail. And it does look like some, they kind of spread them apart, so it looks like scissors. So that’s why they’re called scissor tail flycatcher. But they love the grasslands. They were at all of my field sites in Arkansas. And they’re very noisy and they’re always chasing each other around. Yeah, they’re neat.
Victoria:
I’ll post pictures of all the birds you’ve mentioned in the description of the episode. So the listeners can just click on it and see what they look like.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Okay. Yeah. That that’d be great actually, because I do really want the listeners to see and hear what these birds are like. One more I’ll mention, and I mentioned it very briefly at the beginning of this program was the, it’s called Northern bobwhite. It’s a kind of quail and they’re very cute. They’re very round chicken like birds, and they’re also in grasslands. And you can usually hear them. And their sound is easy to recognize because it’s actually in their name. So it’s bob white, but it sounds like bob white.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s cute.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. They’re really darling.
Victoria:
(Shay – What’s the biggest bird you’ve seen?)
Well, speaking of birds that you’ve seen, Shay wants to know what is the biggest bird you’ve ever seen?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
That is a loaded question. So biggest bird for me. So big can mean two things. It can mean weight or it can mean length. So I’m thinking, for example, there’s two owls, there’s a snowy owl and a great gray owl. The great gray owl is longer than the snowy owl, but the snowy owl weighs way more. So, you know, if you’re talking about the biggest owl, you know, I would say it depends if you mean by weight or by height.
But I think a lot of people, it can be hard to determine what the weight is without holding a bird. So I’m just going to go with the tallest bird, for the longest bird I’ve ever seen. And this bird is actually the tallest flying bird in the Western hemisphere. So I’m glad to say that I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it twice now. And that is the Jabiru Stork. It’s got kind of a fun name and it’s a huge, huge, it’s, I mean, it’s like a Heron, but it has a very big beak, and they live in central and I think maybe a bit in South America as well. So you’re not going to see that here in the US or Canada.
Victoria:
That’s cool.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
What’s the biggest bird you’ve seen, Vikki?
Victoria:
Oh, gosh. Let’s see. So I went to in Australia at the Australia zoo, they have this like sort of petting zoo area where you can touch the animals that are in this area. And so there was an emu that was in the area. And so I got pretty close to an emu and it didn’t really let me pet it, but I was like pretty close to it.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh yeah. That’s an animal you want to give space to, but it sounds like it was probably a pretty chill bird if it was in the petting zoo.
Victoria:
Yeah.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
That’s cool. You got to see that. I have not seen, I’m trying to think, maybe I’ve seen one in a zoo, but haven’t seen a wild one.
Victoria:
(Reggie – What can kids do to help birds?)
Well, getting back to the questions. The next several questions are all about helping birds and what’s affecting birds in the present day. And so this first question is from Reggie, what can kids do to help birds?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
That’s a really good question, Reggie. And I appreciate that you care for birds and you want to do something to help them in there. Honestly, there are things that we can all do to help birds and there’re little things where they can all add up to something big.
So. My first piece of advice would be just to watch them. And that might sound weird. But to me it makes sense because people aren’t going to want to protect birds if they don’t think they’re cool and if they don’t have fun watching them. So get to watch them and get to appreciate their really interesting colors and behaviors and all of that. And then over time, you’re more likely to think about them and to want to protect them. So watching them is really important.
One of, probably one of the best things we can do as individuals is donating money to conservation organizations. And now I know that’s hard to do as a kid because you know, you don’t have a job, so you’re not, you don’t have a lot of money, but maybe, you know, if you want, that’s something you could ask as a birthday gift or something. That’s as an adult, I do ask for that sometimes as a birthday gift, that I buy something or I have a, usually it’s my sister actually, who gets me the same thing every year and it’s called a duck stamp and it’s like a $20 stamp, which right, that’s really expensive, usually they’re not more than like a dollar each or whatever. But the reason why they’re so expensive is because 98% of all the money that they make on, it goes into protecting wetlands for ducks. So that’s why it’s called the duck stamp. And because of that, ducks have actually, duck populations have gone up in recent years. Hunters are required to buy it, buy the duck stamps. So that’s the main reason, but you know, that doesn’t mean that like, I don’t hunt, for example, that doesn’t mean that I can’t buy them, so anyone can buy duck stamps. And there’s other like the Nature Conservancy. It’s a good one because they buy land and there’s probably a lot of local groups near you that like to buy land. But the main thing is buying and protecting land for birds, because a lot of them just simply don’t have a place to go build a nest or spend the winter or whatever. So we need to make sure we’re providing these spaces.
And you personally, you can provide this kind of space if you are planting native flowers and trees in your backyard, because native flowers and trees are what birds are used to for finding food and building a nest and all of that. And there are even some invasive bushes that are toxic. So really planting native flowers and trees, I think is really important.
And then one last thing, which I know can be, kind of hard to do, because I think for a lot of us, it feels natural to let our cats go outside and, you know, kind of let them roam and explore like, and get exercise. But what you may not know is that a lot of these cats are killing birds. And there was a study and I think it’s in the area of millions or billions of birds every year in the US alone. And this can be pretty easily prevented if you just keep the door closed and said easy, just keeping it close. And there’s other ways to make sure that your cat gets exercise and you can still bring your cat outside, but just do it at like on a leash, I would say. And you can turn your cat to go on a leash, just like a dog. I don’t think people know that, but you can and it’s yeah, it’s pretty fun.
So yeah. So keeping those things in mind, conservation organizations, planting native vegetation, keeping your pet cat indoors, and then just watching the birds, just appreciating them for what they are.
Victoria:
(Kristy – What is the answer to your question about how do we know if we are helping birds?)
Oh. Speaking of what kids can do to help birds, this next question is from Kristy. And Kristy wants to know what is the answer to your question about how do we know if we are helping birds?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
How do we know we’re helping birds? It is a hard question to answer and, you know, you might think that scientists have everything figured out and we really don’t. At best, usually we have a good idea about something. Like, for example, how do we know we’re helping birds. But from my research and reading the research from other scientists, we’re looking at the population size. So we know that birds aren’t doing well because their populations has declined. So naturally we have to be like, well, how can we get their population increase again?
And there’s a couple ways to look at that. And that probably the most obvious one is like, Oh, well they just make more babies. So there’s a specific term for that. And this is what I looked at in my Master’s thesis and it’s called nesting success. So, you know, it’s one thing, right? Like if you’re a dicksissel, so you might lay four to five eggs. it’s one thing to lay the eggs, but it’s another thing to have those chicks successfully leave the nest, and that’s what nesting successes. And oftentimes those eggs and chicks don’t make it to that point. And with my research, I was trying to figure out, well, why aren’t they doing that? And I wanted to know what was causing these nests to fail. And I hate to tell you guys, but most of the nests fail, I think at one of my sites it was around like 90% of the nest didn’t fledge any baby birds. Which is.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh my gosh.
Victoria:
It’s pretty bad. But you know what, Vikki, it’s because these birds are nesting on the ground. They’re very exposed. So it’s really easy for things like snakes to eat them. And that’s exactly what did eat them. And I was trying to figure out if there is a pattern between like where the snakes are. So that’s what I was trying to look at.
And my big question is trying to compare two different kinds of grasslands. I was looking at grasslands that have been there forever, and I was looking at ones that humans just created recently, like within the past five years or so. And I wanted to see if there was a difference between them. And if there was a difference, maybe that means that, you know, these old prairies are actually more important for birds than the ones that we make. But in my research, I didn’t find a difference between those two kinds of grasslands, which is actually good news. And you might be wondering, how is it good news? It’s good news, because that means that that those two kinds of grasslands are comparable. And that means that we, as humans, we can recreate grasslands for birds and the birds will use them, and they can build nests there, and they can rear offspring there, which is really important because we’ve lost probably around well, on my home state of Minnesota, we’ve lost about 98% of all of our grasslands. So these birds need a place to go. They literally don’t have places to go and raise their babies. So we humans, according to my research, we can restore grasslands for birds, and that can be habitat for them again.
Victoria:
Oh, good. That’s a positive message then.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
It was, yeah, it really was.
Victoria:
(Staci – Is it bad to feed birds?)
(Robin -What do birds eat?)
Speaking of things that humans do, this is a pair of questions that come from Staci and Robin. Robin wants to know what do birds eat? And Staci wants to know, is it bad to feed birds?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
All right, let’s start with what do birds eat. Because that’s a bit more general. And then I’ll get into the second question, which is more specific.
What did birds eat? The short answer is pretty much everything. In North America, the majority of land birds, at least part of their diet is arthropods. So spiders and all sorts of insects, caterpillars, things like that. Those are really important for a lot of birds. But there are some birds in the world that eat really bizarre things. For example, I will give you two, I guess a few extreme examples there is a vulture in, I think Africa and Europe, the bearded vulture, and it eats bones.
Victoria:
Wow.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yup. It’ll. I think it’s the bone marrow specifically. So it’ll grab a bone and it’ll fly up high and drop it to try to crack it open, so it can access the bone marrow. So that’s one weird thing that birds eat.
There’s a bird in South America and it’s called the stink bird. That’s a nickname or the hoatzin. It really looks like a dinosaur. And they eat plants. Stink birds, because you know, like cows, if you’re eating a lot of plants, you don’t smell good. Right. But yeah, they’re actually eating leaves, which is pretty rare for birds to do.
And then there’s like, in birds they will specialize in things, like there’s this one hawk I know, it’s in central and South America, it’s called the Hook-billed kite and it only eats snails. That’s basically the only thing he eats. It finds these snails up in trees and it uses its strongly hooked bill to take them out, to pry them out of their shell, which is neat.
Lots of birds that eat fish. There’re birds that eat other birds. There’s of course like with hawks and owls, they eat all sorts of little mammals. In some extreme cases. There’s I think Golden Eagles, like in Spain, like go after goats, which I don’t, I still don’t understand. Apparently. Yeah, probably like baby, like smaller goats or sheep. And of course, yeah, like seeds, or some birds they’re called granivore. And granivore means that you’re you were a seed or grain eater and berries. There’s some that really like to eat berries. And nectar, hummingbirds eat nectar.
Victoria:
And then what about Staci’s question? Is it bad to feed birds?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yep. great question. My only thing is that, it’s only bad if the feeders aren’t clean. And by that, I mean, if the feeders are dirty, that’s a great place for bacteria and viruses live. And that’s a way that we can transmit diseases to birds. And it’s really birds transmitting it to other birds, but they do it because we put that feeder out and because we don’t clean it. So as long as you’re keeping your feeders clean, and I usually recommend like, once every few months you clean it. That’s a good reminder for myself cause I have some bird feeders and I need to go clean them. I’ll probably do that this weekend and yeah, just clean them with like, I usually use a water vinegar mix. So something pretty, pretty simple, and you just, you know, scribble the bird poop off it. And you put it back out and you’re good.
Some good things about bird feeders is that they can help birds during extreme weather conditions. So I’m thinking like droughts, if you have some water out, you can provide a drinking source for them, or during snow storms. So like where I’m from in Minnesota, it can be, you know, if there’s a lot of snow, it can be really hard to dig for seeds or little bugs hidden beneath the snow. And then that’s when I notice a lot of birds coming to the bird feeder. And there was even a study on chickadees. And remember we were talking about nesting success earlier, chickadees that live near a bird feeder actually had higher nesting success in those that didn’t. So they were really benefiting from having that really reliable food source.
Victoria:
Awesome. Yeah. I’ve been thinking about getting a bird feeder, so I’ll have to get it and keep it clean.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yes. Yeah. And I’ll make a note here for folks. If you want to start feeding birds or maybe you do, and you just want a good tip, but make sure you’re buying food that the birds are going to eat, because I’ve noticed a lot of kind of big stores, they might sell this big bag of seed and it has pictures of all these different birds on it, and the bird seed is pretty inexpensive and that’s why people like to buy it. The issue with that particular bird seed is that a lot of the seed in that mix are seeds that no birds in North America are going to eat. So what happens is you buy the seed and the birds eat hardly any of it. And then like, yeah, it was cheap, but they didn’t eat anything. So it really wasn’t worth anything. So just make sure yes, I would recommend most birds in North America, the sunflower is a pretty good bet, peanuts can be good, and suet. Sunflower or safflower either one of those is a favorite of a lot of birds. And sunflower, I think is the most popular.
Victoria:
Okay, good to know. Thank you.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You bet. Good luck. That’s really exciting. And I have three bird feeders right now, I have a sun flower, a safflower feeder, and then I have one for suet and the birds. I’m telling you, there’s so many birds on those feeders, and it’s just, it’s really fun to watch them. And I like bringing the birds to me
Victoria:
(Ana – How is climate change affecting birds?)
Yeah. All right. Switching gears a little bit. This next question is from Ana. How is climate change affecting birds?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
I really liked that question because it can be a hard thing to notice in birds, but truth be told is that climate change is affecting birds. It depends on what kind of birds though. One that seems really obvious to me, but it’s something that wouldn’t be easy to observe unless you were deep underwater in the ocean, are how seabirds are being affected by climate change. Seabirds are birds that live in the sea. So when they’re looking for food, they’re going into the ocean. They’re diving underwater and looking for oftentimes very specific kinds of fish. And what’s happening in the oceans is that the water is getting warmer. Right? and so these fish have to go lower in the ocean, deeper into the water where the water’s cooler. Now think about a bird that needs to breathe air. It can only go so far, you know, it can only dive so deep into the ocean. So the issue seabirds are having now is that they’re starving and that they can’t raise any babies. It is a huge issue. And I’m really concerned about that because I’m talking about, there could be an island of many, many birds, and there’s not a single baby that comes out of there in a breeding season.
Victoria:
Yikes.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. So that’s a pretty big red flag, I would say. And then we have boreal and or mountain birds. And when I say boreal, I’m talking about the forest in Canada, so where there was like a lot of spruce trees. For a lot of these birds, their range is moving a little bit further North, which doesn’t seem like a big deal, right? It’s like, Oh, they’re just moving, you know? They’re just slightly changing where they live. However, the further North you go, eventually you’re not gonna have any more boreal habitat. So then they don’t have a place, eventually they’re not going to have a place to go, and that’s going to be a huge issue. And we are already seeing declines in boreal species.
And then it’s similar for birds who live on mountains is that again, if it’s getting hot, they have to keep going up the mountain where it’s colder. And if climate change continues as it is, even the top of the mountain is going to be too hot for them. And then what do you do as a mountain bird? Where do you go?
Victoria:
Yikes.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
You know, also yikes, lots of yikes for this answer. Isn’t it? And then one more that I’m thinking of is a big one, it’s called decoupling, decoupling situation. During migration, when birds are coming back to their breeding grounds in the spring, they usually time it in a way when they have babies, it’s right when a ton of bugs emerge. And like, you know, there’s a ton of caterpillars hatch the same time, just a lot of food items that they can feed their babies. What’s happening right now is that they’re not aligning up through migration correctly because they’re looking at cues in the tropics, like, so they might be in the rainforest for the winter and when the rain changes, when the rainfall changes, they’re like, okay, this is time to go migrate. It used to line up with when these bugs would emerge, but it doesn’t anymore, because climate change is affecting those areas differently. So the bugs are coming up earlier in in the North where they come to nest. And so by the time they get there, they’ve actually already missed the bugs for their babies.
Victoria:
Another yikes.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Another yikes. Yes, indeed. So there’s a lot of ways, and honestly there’s probably even ways that we don’t know about yet that climate change is affecting birds. And that’s why we really, really need to take climate change seriously.
Victoria:
(David – Why do some birds fly south in the winter, while others don’t seem to?)
Yeah. Okay. David wants to know why do some birds fly south in the winter, while others don’t seem to?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. So that is kind of odd, right? Like why are some deciding to migrate south, and some are deciding to stay. And it’s because these birds have different survival strategies, and there are pros and cons to each of them. So a bird that goes to the rainforest of Brazil, for example, it doesn’t mean it made a better choice than the chickadee that decided to spend the winter in your backyard. But again, there’s pros and cons to each.
So, for birds that to stay here in the North, they don’t have to spend any energy on migrating. And it’s a lot of work flying, some birds to fly over parts of the ocean, they might have to fly nonstop for two to three days. So that is a huge, huge energy expenditure. For birds that spend the whole year in one spot, they don’t have to worry about that. So that’s great. The disadvantage though, is that it can be really hard to find food when it’s cold. And a lot of them have adapted to that by storing food. So like there’s nothing patches and in Canada Jays, they will grab some food during a time when it’s easy for them to find food. Maybe there’s not as much snow on the ground or whatever, maybe it’s not so cold. And they’ll grab as much food as they can and they will save some of it for later. And the Canada Jays even have this crazy cool technique where they have this really like sticky saliva and they can preserve their food in it. And so then when foods low, they can go back to, they call it a food cache, they can go back to their cache inn and eat what they stored. So that’s how.
Victoria:
Wow!
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah, I know. Isn’t that cool? I mean I guess we kind of do that, you know, when we go to the grocery store and maybe there’s a sale on something, you might grab a bunch. So that you don’t have to spend as much money on it later and then you’ll have extra for later.
Victoria:
Yeah. It’s like birds have invented their own freezers and refrigerators.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah, they have. Yeah. That’s what the great white North is for, I guess, for some birds.
And then now the birds that fly south, as I mentioned already, a big disadvantage is having to find a ton of food to make it through migration and have the energy to make it through migration. But if you do that, once you get to the tropics, there is food everywhere. There is fruit, there is nectar, there are tons and tons of insects. And did I mention fruit? I love to eat fruit down there. And they don’t have to worry about dying because of the cold. And birds that spend the winter up in places that’s cold, they can freeze it death if it’s a really cold season. But birds in the tropics, like if they go down to the rainforest for the winter, like our oriels do, for example, that’s not something they have to worry about. So it’s just less stressful overall, I would say once he gets down there. The only issue is getting there.
Victoria:
Yeah. If I were a bird, I would definitely go south. I do not like cold weather.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. I was thinking like, yeah, I might try that too. Ideally, I wouldn’t want to fly over an ocean if I could avoid it. Like maybe I would just go to Mexico. So it wouldn’t be as far.
Victoria:
Yeah. That sounds like a good choice.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. Good compromise. Kind of get the best of both worlds.
Victoria:
(Joe – How are birds continuing to evolve?)
(Shay – Are birds that can’t fly less evolved than ones that can fly?)
Yeah. All right, switching gears to another interesting bird topic. This is a pair of questions that go together. The first one is from Joe, how are birds continuing to evolve? And the second one is from Shay, are birds that can’t fly less evolved than ones that can?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
All right. So we’re talking about evolution, and I’ll just briefly explain what evolution is. The textbook definition is looking at the change in a characteristic, and it’s usually on a genetic level, basically looking at the changes of your genes over time. That’s evolution. And what’s interesting to me is that I think a lot of people assume that evolution was something that happened, like when there were dinosaurs, and it just doesn’t happen anymore. Right. That was like like a dinosaur thing, and that’s it. But that’s definitely not true. That is totally false. Birds are still evolving. Lots of animals are still evolving.
One specific example I can think of is a gentleman in the United States was looking at these birds called cliff swallows, and these birds they use the nest on cliffs and allow them still do. But humans invented this wonderful nesting surface called bridges. So they nest under bridges and maybe you’ve seen them in the summer, like a bunch of these little swallows flying in and out of a bridge and that’s probably the cliffs follows. And this guy was looking at the wing length, which might be a, I mean, that’s a pretty specific thing to look at. Why would you look at the wing length? Well, what goes under the bridges? Our cars, and cars are a huge death threat too, birds are flying really fast. And it turns out that if you are cliff swallow and you have shorter wings, you can kind of dodge these cars quicker. So what’s happening is the birds that are getting hit by cars are more likely to be birds that had longer wings; and the ones that avoid the cars and can survive in, can make new babies. Those birds had shorter wings. So that’s a really good example of human driven evolution, which I think is just crazy. So that’s one example. And that’s something that, I mean, that’s a bird I’m sure you have where you are.
Victoria:
Yeah, I see him all the time.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh, sweet. Yeah. And then they’re evolving. Yeah. Right under our noses.
Okay. So birds that can’t fly. Are they less evolved? So scientists that study evolution, they’re really careful with how they use more or less evolved, because again, it really just depends on their environment. So when I think about birds that can’t fly, the reason why they can’t fly is because there was no pressure for them to do so. They lived in areas where they didn’t have predators that they needed to fly away from. Instead, they can just run away from them with their long legs, and they’re big size overall. So while those are some of the older birds on the planet or the flightless birds, the ratites. We actually discussed them earlier when Vikki was saying that she saw emus in Australia. Because they have not been able to fly that doesn’t mean that they’re less evolved. That just means that there wasn’t any reason for them to become flying birds. There was no pressure.
So. And this is true, even for traits that are neutral. Like if you notice something on a bird and you’re like, why does it have that? Like, I can’t see that helping it. It may have been a trait that helped it at one point historically. And maybe it doesn’t give it an advantage anymore for survival, but it also doesn’t give it a disadvantage. So there was no reason for the bird to lose a trait. If it’s a neutral or good trait, usually they’re kept; if it’s a negative trait, then they get lost through natural selection because birds with negative traits are more likely to die and not reproduce.
Victoria:
(Staci – Are birds warm-blooded or cold-blooded?)
That makes sense.
Another a bird physiology question. Staci wants to know are birds warm blooded or cold blooded?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. So birds are really interesting because they’re technically reptile, which I know blows a lot of people’s minds. Scientists will even refer to them as living dinosaurs, which, you know, technically yeah, they are. And we know that reptiles for the most part are cold-blooded, there’s like a couple of exceptions, but birds are actually warm blooded, which is important because I don’t think they would be able to fly if they weren’t warm blooded, because if they lived in a cold environment they wouldn’t be able to get warm enough to even be able to fly. So it is a warm blooded or if you want to sound like a real scientist, you want to say endothermic, which means, thermic meaning heat, the heat comes from within – being endo. And humans are the same way we produce our own heat.
Victoria:
(Ana – Do all birds lay eggs?)
Awesome. And another physiology question to follow that up. Ana wants to know, do all birds, lay eggs.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Ooh. Do all birds lay eggs? Yes, all birds do lay eggs.
Victoria:
(Isaac – Why do birds sometimes jump a lot when they are on the ground?)
All right. This is maybe another bird physiology question. This is just an interesting question from Isaac. Why do birds sometimes jump a lot when they are on the ground?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh yeah. And I liked this question because there could be a few different answers for it.
One that I’m thinking of is a really common move that’s done by sparrows. I’m thinking of like white throated and fox sparrows They do something called the scratch jump, but they jump up in the air, move their feet forward, and then they jumped back and scratch the ground. When doing that, they’re uncovering bugs that are hidden beneath the dirt or the leaves. So that could be what you’re seeing, like if there’s sparrows that could be ground feeding with the little scratch jump move. That would be like my main guts.
It’s possible that it could be doing some kind of display, maybe a threat display, maybe a mating display to attract a mate, or it could be yeah to alert others to a danger or something.
But normally I would think it’s cause they’re looking for food, and they’re trying to move in a way to expose that food that could be hidden.
Victoria:
(David – Do you have a pet bird?)
Yeah. That makes sense.
Okay, switching gears. The next group of questions are all about you and your interest in birds and your study of birds. So this first question about you is from David. Do you have a pet bird?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
I used to have a pet bird. When I was in fifth grade, I got two parakeets and they’re very sweet. The male, his name was Prince, he loved to sing a lot. So it just, it was neat to see that. But they were pretty shy. So like I never got to hold them. If it was something I’d practiced more, I probably could have trained them to sit on my finger, but I never got that far. But yeah, they were sweet and they’re really nice blue and kind of turquoise yellow colors, like really pretty.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s adorable.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. And you Vikki, have you had any pet birds?
Victoria:
Nope, just cats.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Okay. Well I love cats too.
Victoria:
Yeah. I sometimes joke that I should have a pet bird because as a paleontologist, I study dinosaurs, and birds, like you said, are living dinosaurs. I always joke that I should have a pet bird, but I don’t.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh man. Well, it would have to be like I guess for you since, I mean, you have a dinosaur focus, it has to be one that kind of looks like a dinosaur. So maybe a hoatzin if it wasn’t illegal, you could have a pet hoatzin.
Victoria:
That would be awesome.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
That’d be pretty cool.
Victoria:
(Reggie – What made you interested in birds?)
Yeah. All right. This next question is from Reggie. What made you interested in birds?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh, well, I’ve been interested for a long time, but I really owe it to my parents for getting me involved and especially my mom, she always had field guides laying around, and in those field guides, some of them are reptiles, amphibians, some of them were of birds or plants, but I learned how to read on field guides. Like those are my children’s books.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. Yeah. So I was always interested, and she always encouraged my interests. So for me, I think it’s important to have someone who can kind of be there to get you excited about birds, but I’ve also met people where they just discovered on their own, like maybe they were walking home one day, and they saw this hawk just attack a pigeon and start eating it. You know, there can be some really, really special moments, and you’re like, wow, birds are cool.
And usually we call that bird that, sparked your interest in birds, we call that a spark bird. For me, I like to tell folks that my spark bird was an American Redstart, which is a little I call it like a little Halloween bird cause it’s black and it’s got orange spots on it, very flashy little songbird. And I still remember it to this day, I was five years old and it was spring migration in my backyard. And there was this American Redstart and it was on the ground, and I’ve been more than like four feet away from me. And you know, me as a kid being that close to something, so brightly colored, I was completely moved. I was like, this is so cool. I have to keep watching birds cause like, things like that exist. So You know, having a spark bird, like what’s one bird you really like, and try to think of that bird whenever you’re outside, you know, and that might motivate you in watching birds.
Victoria:
That’s awesome. I love that, a spark bird.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. Do you have a spark bird?
Victoria:
Yeah, I don’t know that I have a spark bird. I have a spark dinosaur.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh, what’s your spark dinosaur?
Victoria:
Stegosaurus. Because it’s the Colorado state fossil. And so growing up, I learned about the stegosaurus and I learned that it was the Colorado state fossil. And in second grade, we had to pick the topics to do independent studies on. And so I picked the stegosaurus and so that’s my spark dinosaur.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh, that’s so great. And I didn’t know that States had like state fossils. That’s so cool.
Victoria:
(Gevian – If you could fly, where would you go?)
Yeah. Well, speaking of cool things, these next couple questions are to really fun use your imagination questions. So the first one is from Gevian, if you could fly, where would you go?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
I would probably want to fly to a place that we can’t go to as humans. So, for example, there’s an Island called the Inaccessible Island, and there’s a bird there called the Inaccessible Island rail. And you can probably guess, you know, the only place on earth where you can find them, yes, I guess there’s a big wetland on this Island, but humans we can’t really access it too well, which is why it’s called inaccessible, but it’s has like these huge cliffs and there isn’t really an open place on the Island to land and the Island is small. So I would probably go to a place like that or some other place that’s really hard to get to by boat or plane or whatever.
Victoria:
That’s super cool.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Right?
Victoria:
(Brooke – If you could be any type of birds, what bird would you be?)
All right. And here’s another one from Brooke. If you could be any type of bird, what bird would you be?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
So, you know, if I have to be totally honest, you know, there’s some days where I’m just really lazy and I don’t want to have to worry about, you know, if I were a bird, I certainly wouldn’t want to have to worry about flying. And there are some birds and they can soar a couple hours without having to flap their wings. One of those kinds of birds that I grew up with were Turkey vultures. So they would just sore and sore and sore. And they’re often soaring over these like valleys or bluffs or rivers, like really gorgeous scenic areas. And So I imagine they must have a fantastic view and it must be so chill just to fly enough, to worry about, I mean, they’re not going to get eaten or hunted by anything up there and they don’t have to flap their wings. Like how cool is it?
Victoria:
(Toya – What is your favorite bird?)
That is very cool. All right. And then a good follow-up question to that from Toya. What is your favorite bird?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh, man. I get asked this question a lot, and it’s always so hard because there’s tons of birds that were my favorite birds. Like I might be looking at bird and be like, yeah, it’s my favorite bird. That’s one of my favorites. It’s funny because I probably have, there’s probably like a hundred bird species I say that about. Maybe I can think of what’s my favorite bird today. Was there a bird I saw recently that I really liked? Hmm. I mean, I guess the warblers are always so fun, and I talked about the American Redstart. But warblers was in general are just amazing. They have really vibrant, bright colors, they have great songs. They can be very curious about you, so sometimes they’ll, you know, like that American Redstart, either it was curious or it simply did not care that I was there, and you can get really close to it. You don’t even need binoculars to look at them sometimes, they come so close to you. And then of course their migration is really remarkable. Some of them will fly over open water for two to three days straight.
Victoria:
Wow.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Yeah. So they’re just very impressive to me overall.
Victoria:
(Kristy – When you study birds, do you have to be very quiet to not scare them away?)
Yeah, that’s cool.
Speaking of getting close to birds and observing them, Kristy wants to know when you study birds, do you have to be very quiet to not scare them away?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
You know, I would say generally yes, you should be quiet. Does that mean, you know, I mean, I’ve gotten birding with people plenty of times and we’re kind of talking at this volume level, if you will, and birds don’t really seem to have an issue. The only thing I would really discourage is shouting, because yeah, the birds might be scared of it, but also it makes it hard for you or other people to hear the birds, and listening to birds is really effective way to find them. And I’ve even done some bird surveys where, you know, I counted birds on these bird surveys and I would say about 80% of the birds that I counted I only heard them, so I had to be quiet enough to hear them. So, I mean, yeah, I would generally, I would say yes to be quiet, but you can probably talk quietly and that’s fine.
Victoria:
(Perry – Can you do bird calls?)
That makes sense. All right. And then this is our very last question. That’s kind of a fun question from Perry. Can you do bird calls?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
I can do some bird calls. Some birds though, make really, really crazy sounds. And there’s no way a human can imitate them.
Well, because I mentioned it, I can do the Eastern Meadowlark. I mentioned that close to the beginning of the podcast, and that’s one of the very like traditional grassland songbirds. It’s a very, a very nice sweet song, whistled song. And it goes like this. [bird call.] They’re just very like very soothing, simple whistle.
And then, well, Cardinal is pretty easy. I’ll do that. [bird call.] That’s a common one that you can practice.
And then chickadee. [bird call.] That one’s pretty simple.
So yeah. There’s the whistled ones you guys should try or the listeners should try finding some whistled songs and practicing those.
Victoria:
Yeah. Those are cute.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
They’re fun. They’re fun.
Victoria:
All right. Well, that’s all of our questions, but do you have any questions or comments for the listeners?
Alyssa DeRubeis:
This might be a fun project to do, but there is a way that you guys can contribute to research and it’s pretty easy. All you have to do is find some birds and count them and identify them. And then you send your observations to this great free online database called eBird. Have you heard of it?
Victoria:
No, I have it.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Oh, it’s awesome. And so many people use it and more importantly, researchers use it and they can look at changes in maybe the timing of migration, remember we were talking about decoupling, so they can look at that. They can look at the overall abundance, they can see if ranges have moved over time. And if you go on their website, they have a really extensive list of studies that use eBird data. This is a kind of citizen science project. So this is something that you guys can go do. And you can do it from your backyard, but make an account on https://ebird.org and it’s free. It’s pretty straightforward, you know, just kind of play around on there and see how to, you know, to submit a checklist. And yeah, it’s a great, not only is it great for scientist, but it’s great for you too. If you want to like keep track like, Oh, when was that one day when we saw the purple finch come to our feeder and you can go back into your account on eBird and you can say, Oh yeah, it was September 30th of 2017, that’s the last time we saw a purple finch. So it’s a really kind of quick way. And there’s other ways you can organize your data and look at them, but it’s really fun. And I’ve been getting into it more just in the past few years, and you can even submit pictures on there, so you can kind of keep track of all your bird photos that way. It’s amazing. It’s totally amazing. I think everyone needs to do it.
Victoria:
That’s super cool. We’ll include the link to the website in the description of the episode, so you can just click on it and go there.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Perfect. Yeah, that sounds good.
Victoria:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
Alyssa DeRubeis:
Thank you so much. Any excuse to talk about birds and I am there, anytime, anywhere.
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