E26. We borrowed a phrase from human dating and tried to pin it on birds. Turns out they never needed the rulebook. Dr. Wenfei Tong, biologist and author of Bird Love, joins Scott to unpack what bird partnerships actually look like once you stop projecting our scripts onto them, from females who run the territory to males who guard their paternity in deeply weird ways.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why the drabbest little brown bird in the garden has one of the wildest sex lives in the animal kingdom
• How a female calls the shots when she holds the better real estate, and what the males do about it
• The cloacal pecking payoff you have to hear to believe

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Laysan Albatross audio contributed by Ted Miller, ML117679
• Black-capped Chickadee audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML202239
• Spotted Sandpiper audio contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML516963
• Northern Jacana audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML140224
• Red-necked Phalarope audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235440
• Black Coucal audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML3084
• Papuan Eclectus audio contributed by Thane Pratt, ML169808
• Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML249827
• Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94215
• Red-capped Manakin audio contributed by David L. Ross Jr., ML57360
• Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
• Greater Flamingo audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML2443
• Dunnock audio contributed by Niels Krabbe, ML249162

E25. The blue-footed booby has become an internet personality: cartoon feet, a goofy strut, a name that practically begs to be a punchline. But Scott sat down with Dr. Carlos Zavalaga, Universidad Científica del Sur, and one of the people who first taught him how to study seabirds in Peru, and the "fool" reputation falls apart fast. Get a booby in the air or underwater and you're watching one of the most specialized hunters in the bird family tree.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• How six-plus booby species carve up the same ocean without starving each other out
• What 20 years of GPS loggers, depth tags, and bags of fresh fish revealed about who eats what
• Why El Niño, avian flu, and overfishing keep stacking the deck against these birds

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
• Red-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85911
• Brown Booby audio contributed by Gerritt Vyn, ML136211
• Masked Booby audio contributed by Chandler Robbins, ML32604
• Nazca Booby audio contributed by Oliver H. Hewitt, ML31543
• Peruvian Booby audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML29399

E24. Flight is the thing we associate most with birds, so what does it mean when a lineage gives it up? Dr. Scott Edwards, Harvard, joins Scott to unpack how flightlessness evolves, why it keeps happening across the bird family tree, and what the genome reveals about how a bird loses the ability to fly.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• How losing flight reshapes a bird's body, from feathers to forelimbs to that one famously enormous egg
• Why the answer wasn't where geneticists expected to find it
• What an extinct giant and a tiny tropical relative can tell us about where moa actually came from

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Falkland Steamer-Duck audio contributed by Maurice A. E. Rumboll, ML4114
• Great Tinamou audio contributed by David L. Ross, Jr., ML57320

E23. Across sub-Saharan Africa, wild birds and people work together to find honey. No taming, no breeding, no domestication… just a partnership thousands of years in the making. Behavioral ecologist Dr. Jessica van der Wal, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, joins Scott to unpack what's actually happening when a honey hunter calls and a greater honeyguide answers.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• What each side gets out of one of the only known mutualisms between humans and a wild animal, and why this bird in particular evolved to seek us out
• The remarkable signal the honeyguide uses to communicate with people, and what playback experiments revealed when researchers tested it across very different communities
• What happens to a partnership built over generations when one side starts buying honey at the store

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Greater Honeyguide audio contributed by Jennifer F. M. Horne, ML55972

Additional media courtesy of Dr. Claire Spottiswoode and Dr. Jessica van der Wal

E22. Folklore says birds know a storm is coming before we do. Scott talks with Dr. Gunnar Kramer, Iowa State University, about what's actually happening when a tiny warbler decides it's time to fly, or time to bail.

In this episode:

• Why the question itself might be slightly wrong, and what's really going on inside that bird
• A storm, some missing warblers, and a discovery nobody set out to make
• What 300 birds falling out of the sky over Texas can tell you about how much fuel is in the tank

Listen, follow, and tell a friend who’s a little superstitious.

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Yellow-billed cuckoo audio, Wil Hershberger, ML94446
• Barnacle goose audio, Bob McGuire, ML235525
• Golden-winged warbler video, Benjamin Clock, ML476422
• Blue-winged warbler video, Eric Liner, ML469433
• Yellow-billed cuckoo video, Larry Arbanas, ML466566
• Eastern kingbird audio, Wil Hershberger, ML534398
• Tennessee warbler audio, Wil Hershberger, ML85236
• Tennessee warbler video, Eric Liner, ML466381
• Wood thrush video, Benjamin Clock, ML471755

E21. We're talking sense and scents with Dr. Danielle Whittaker, Oregon State, and author of The Secret Perfume of Birds, who spent a decade unraveling a 200-year-old myth that started with John James Audubon and a dead pig under a bush.

In this episode:

• The bird that smells like a fresh-baked sugar cookie
• Why preen oil is a dating profile written in chemistry, and how seabirds use the same chemical cue that's now leading albatross parents to feed their chicks plastic
• The bonus myth Danielle wants gone

New here? Listen, follow, and tell a friend who still thinks birds can't smell.

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Brown-headed Cowbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94262
• Dark-eyed Junco audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94361
• Red Knot audio contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML516895
• Crested Auklet audio contributed by Sampath Seneviratne, ML132014
• Laysan Albatross audio contributed by Ted Miller, ML117679

E20. Less than 1% of what's in a museum is actually on display. So what's happening with the other 99%? Scott talks with Dr. Sushma Reddy, Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the Bell Museum and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, about the extraordinary scientific afterlife of a specimen in a drawer.

In this episode:

• How birds collected 150 years ago are answering questions their collectors never imagined, from air pollution to insect decline
• Why falcons turned out to be closer to parrots than hawks, and what other surprises fell out of the bird family tree
• The case for making museum collections more open, especially to scientists from the places these specimens originally came from

If you have a few seconds, please follow, rate, and leave a review for the show. It makes a huge difference in helping others discover it. Thanks for listening!

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Bald eagle sound contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML 200943
• Red-tailed hawk sound contributed by David McCartt, ML 229578
• Gyrfalcon sound contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML 516973
• Kea sound contributed by William V. Ward, ML 8523
• Small ground finch sound contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML 86711
• Iiwi sound contributed by Doug Pratt, ML 5888
• Sickle-billed vanga sound contributed by Anonymous, ML 100013

E19. More than 55 million Americans feed birds, and it's not exactly clear the birds asked us to. Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, Research Scientist and Project Leader of FeederWatch at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, joins Scott to unpack what four decades of data tell us about whether feeding birds helps them, hurts them, or is really just for us.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why bird feeding is mostly for us, and the handful of moments when it actually tips the scales for birds
• What forty years of FeederWatch data reveal about shifting ranges, feeder dominance, and the bird that definitely should not be bossing everyone around
• How to keep your yard from becoming an ecological trap, plus the best way to feed birds that doesn't involve a feeder at all

Ready to join the longest-running winter bird monitoring program in North America? Sign up for Project FeederWatch's 40th season at feederwatch.org. You don't even need a feeder.

Want more exclusive clips from this and future episodes. Signup for our newsletter, Bird Droppings, at okaybutbirds.com to get bonus content not available anywhere else!

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• European robin audio contributed by Matthew D. Medler, ML140049
• Cooper's hawk audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94518
• American crow video contributed by Jay McGowan, ML472843