The Science of Birds Ivan Phillipsen
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The Science of Birds is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology. It's a fun resource for any birder or naturalist who wants to learn more about ornithology. Impress your birding friends at cocktail parties with all of your new bird knowledge! Hosted by Ivan Phillipsen, a passionate naturalist with a PhD in Zoology.
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The Avian Digestive System
This episode—which is Number 94— is all about the Avian Digestive System. That’s right, kids, we’re looking at bird guts today!
If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a fish swallowed by a kingfisher or what happened to that piece of bacon swiped off your lunch plate by a cheeky Ring-billed Gull... Well, you're about to find out.
I’ll do my best to describe in words the anatomical features we encounter today. But I’ve also drawn a diagram for you. You can check that out on the show notes for this episode on the Science of Birds website.
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House Sparrow
This episode—which is number 93—is all about the the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), one of the world’s best known and most abundant birds. It expanded across the planet along with humans over the last 10,000 years, with the spread of agriculture. Today, this plucky little bird is a model organism for the study of basic bird biology. Over 7,000 scientific studies of the House Sparrow have been published.
In this episode, we’ll get into what this species looks and sounds like, where it lives, its behavior, its breeding biology, and more.
Links of Interest
World Sparrow Day
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Bird Habitat: Deserts
This episode—which is Number 92—is all about the value of desert ecosystems as habitats for birds.
Deserts are important for the birds that are adapted to live in them—birds that can handle the harsh conditions.
Deserts are home to relatively few bird species. Only the polar regions and maybe some parts of the open ocean have less bird diversity.
Even if a bird species can handle the extremes of heat and cold in a desert, the desiccating winds, and the lack of water, that bird may not find much food.
Because where there are few plants, there are few invertebrates. So a bird in the desert can have a hard time finding any leaves, seeds, fruit, or bugs to eat.
And yet, an assortment of bird species from many disparate families have managed to carve out an existence in the world’s most arid lands. There may be nowhere near as many of them as in, say, a tropical rainforest or a temperate woodland…
BUT, the birds we do find in the desert are, I think, a particularly fascinating and admirable bunch. They’re tough little buggers. They’re resilient. Desert birds have interesting adaptations and behaviors that allow them to survive in places that would kill most other birds in a day.
CORRECTIONS: I realized after I recorded this episode that I mispronounced the names of the Namib and Thar deserts. Namib should be pronounced "NAH-mib." Thar is pronounced "Tar."
Links of Interest
Grayish Miner in the Atacama Desert [VIDEO] ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~
Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website
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Chickadees, Tits, and Titmice
This is Episode 91. It’s all about birds in the family Paridae. These are the chickadees, tits, and titmice—cute little forest-dwelling songbirds known and loved by many people around the world.
I’ve had a lot of requests to make a podcast episode about chickadees and their kind. Some species in this family are familiar visitors to backyard bird feeders. They’re highly active, vocal, bold, and sometimes quite confiding with people. It’s possible to gain the trust of t**s and chickadees of some species by feeding them seeds out of the palm of your hand.
These birds not only visit bird feeders regularly, at least in winter, but they’ll also happily lay eggs in artificial nest boxes. All of these traits make birds in the Paridae family great subjects for scientists who want to study bird behavior and ecology.
So chickadees, t**s, and titmice are among the most well-studied songbirds on the planet. Lucky for us here on The Science of Birds podcast, that means there’s a lot we can learn about them
Links of Interest
Ground Tit [VIDEO]
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Flowers and Feathers: The Importance of Birds as Pollinators
This is Episode 90 and it’s all about the importance of birds as plant pollinators.
If I had to use only one word for the topic of this episode, it would be ornithophily. The definition of ornithophily is “the pollination of flowers by birds.”
Today, I’ll be focusing mostly on the ecological relationships between plants and the birds that pollinate them. Another way to look at all of this would be through the lens of evolution—the fascinating ways that plants and birds have co-evolved with respect to pollination.
I’ll make another podcast episode, at some point, about bird and plant co-evolution. We’ll touch on it today, but the main focus is ecology.
Pollination ecology is actually an entire subdiscipline that many scientists have dedicated their careers to studying. It’s really interesting stuff!
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Fascinating Things We Learned About Birds Last Year
This is Episode 89. I’m publishing it right at the beginning of 2024, and it's a review of some fascinating things that happened in the world of ornithology and bird conservation over the last 12 months, in 2023.
Naturally, this isn’t an exhaustive review of every scientific discovery about birds in 2023. That would be too much. An exhaustive review would be, well, exhausting. Maybe not for you, but definitely for me.
Instead, I’ll tell you about a handful of studies and projects that I think you’ll find interesting. These gems were hand-selected by me for your educational pleasure.
Links of Interest
Colossal BiosciencesBirds, Not MosquitoesHow Wolbachia Can Save Forest Birds [VIDEO]Puzzle-solving caracaras [VIDEO]
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Customer Reviews
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
I love this podcast it is so good! Personally I need podcasts to get to sleep, and I highly recommend this one. (Not trying to say it’s boring at all!!) This podcast is definitely a good podcast in general too. When you're cleaning, or in the car or just bored, this podcast is a good one to listen to. I think that you should also listen to this because it is educational. If you aren’t somebody that likes to listen to educational stuff then you should still listen to this because it is teaching you but it is teaching things other than science, math, ela, and history. It’s teaching about birds, and to some that is not boring to learn about! Thanks for reading HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PODCAST!!
Just what I was looking for!
There are a ton of podcasts about birding as a hobby, many of which are quite excellent, but not as many focused on the actual science of ornithology. Ivan wonderfully fills that void with this informative but welcoming and accessible podcast. A must-listen for all bird lovers!
Bird Central
I’m starting at the beginning to glean everything I can from this podcast. Every episode is packed with information about birds that connects the listener to their habits, beauty, history and importance in their ecosystems. As a casual observer of backyard dinosaurs I’m grateful for the opportunity to expand my knowledge and appreciation of birds.