Birds Are Cool- Birding Stereotypes

This is a podcast episode about birding and the stigmas surrounding it. The host and his friend discuss their experiences with birding and address the misconceptions that birding is only for old people or weirdos. They share advice for beginners and provide interesting bird facts. The episode concludes with the answer to the question of the day, which is that the fastest flying bird is the peregrine falcon. Hello listeners and welcome to the Birds Are Cool podcast. We want to start the day with every other podcast the question of the day. Today's question of the day is what is the fastest flying bird? Is it A. bald eagle, B. peregrine falcon, C. red-tailed hawk, or D. gray falcon? Stay tuned to the end of the podcast for the answer. Hello and welcome to the Birds Are Cool podcast. Today we will be discussing some of the many things that make birds so fascinating. Birds are cool. Whether you have never been birding or an experienced birder, this podcast is for you. By the end of this podcast I guarantee you will be more interested in the amazing world of birding. Thank you. My name is Alex Christensen and I'm the host of this podcast. If you are interested in birding or even want to start birding then this podcast is for you. To give you a little background on myself, I'm a cadet at West Point and I live in a small town on the coast of Massachusetts called Scituate. Among my many different hobbies, birding is one of my favorites. I originally took an ornithology class, the study of birds, senior year at my high school, Scituate High School. I thought the class would be an easy A but I never thought that I would become so interested in birding. Fortunately for me, my teacher, Mr. McGuire, was an incredibly interesting person and made the class very exciting. We would leave school during class periods about two days every week to go look at different species of birds both in the woods and at the beach. The class that was supposed to be an easy A quickly became my favorite class that I was taking. I would now like to introduce you to our guests who had a similar experience with birding as I did. But before we do that, I would like to thank Home Depot for sponsoring us today. Remember, no project is too big or too small and whatever you are working on, Home Depot guarantees they will have the supplies you need. Home Depot, how doers get more done. Now to introduce you to a fellow bird enthusiast and one of my best friends in the world, Connor Spinelli. Thanks for having me on today, Alex. I'm always excited to share my birding experiences with the world. Thank you for coming today, Connor. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about your background in birding and why you find it so interesting? Yeah, of course. Well, I grew up with Alex my whole life in the same town and we've been best friends since elementary school and we went to the same high school. I had similar motivation for wanting to take on orthology. I thought it would be an easy A and a class where I could just relax. Similarly, the more time I spent learning about birds, the more fascinated I became in observing them. In that class, we saw a total of 139 different bird species over a span of five months from January to May. That's a lot of birds. How many birds have you seen since you started tracking them since taking the class? Well, after the class ended, most of the class continues to bird on their own, like the two of us. I've seen around 250 different species birding on my own. And actually, do you remember when we took an afternoon of our senior trips in Maryland to bird? Of course. We saw 18 new species that day and even brought our friend Tom, who had never gone birding before. Tom goes to a different high school and never got to take the class, but we took him into the woods and after a bald eagle flew about 20 feet above our heads, he was instantly hooked. However, he originally thought that birding is only for weirdos and old people who have nothing better to do with their lives, which to be fair, that's what I originally thought until I tried it out for myself. Connor, do you want to speak on the stigma regarding birding and the typical birder? Yeah, I think you explained that perfectly, but almost everyone views birding as a hobby for old people or for people who have no life. These are definitely not accurate assumptions though. Everyone tends to view something that they have never tried before as weird. Birding can be for everybody, regardless of any age or any other factors. Don't let these stereotypes prevent you from going out and looking at birds. Nobody can really understand the joy of birding until they see their first rare bird and looking back at them from a tree, playing that bird call on a speaker around the woods. Facts. I think that people don't really give birding a chance because they are afraid that they are going to look weird and stupid with binoculars and all that, but just like Mr. McGuire used to say, you have to fully embrace it in order to have the most fun. This means that you just have to throw on your binoculars and walk around the woods with a speaker, blaring different bird calls, not caring about what others are going to think about you, regardless of how weird you think you look or how other people look at you. I personally think that birding is a great way to connect with nature and appreciate the true beauty of animals that live among us. I bet many people don't know that there are over 10,000 species of birds in the world, all different in one way or another. Yeah, and I think people tend to underappreciate the beauty and significance of birds. I recommend that people watch The Big Year, which is a movie with Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin. We watched it in our ornithology class and it's about The Big Year, which is an annual contest about who could see the most birds in the world. It's completely based on honesty. Great movie. Definitely shows how incredible birds can be and how exciting birding is when you really put time and effort into it. Also, it shows the fallout, which happens to be my favorite birding event. Birds are able to feel when there's a big storm coming and the fallout is when there's a big storm in the sky and all the birds who are migrating settle in one area, which can create rare birds that are not typically located in one state to be in that state. In the movie, it occurs in Arizona and the filming is incredible. If you go to Google right now and search bird fallout, you will see thousands of birds in the sky and soaring around an area. I've always wanted to go to a fallout and that is still what my life goal is today. Connor, what's your favorite thing about birding? Favorite thing about birding? It's got to be the competitiveness when birding with friends. There's nothing about being with a group of friends that love birders, like finding a rare bird and spotting it before everyone else. That's just the competitiveness in me though. I feel like it adds to another way of excitement in birding. Oh yeah, and for all our listeners out there, what is one piece of advice that you would give to people who want to start bird watching on their own? I would say the best first step would be download the app Merlin Bird ID. It's an app created by the Cornell Ornithology Lab that allows you to record any bird noises and it will tell you what birds that are around. It also allows you to keep track of all the birds you've seen and tells you how rare each bird is. The app makes birding a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable. That's a good one. Merlin Bird ID is definitely helpful. I still use it today. Well Connor, thank you so much for joining us today and I'm sure the viewers loved hearing a different perspective from another birder. Thank you for having me. I hope all your listeners put all those stereotypes and opinions behind and try birding for yourselves. Thank you. To recap today's episode, we talked about the stigmas that surround people who enjoy bird watching. When I first tell people that I'm a birder, they typically respond with, wow, but you're so normal. I understand where these stereotypes are coming from and how people picture things in their mind as strange. But remember, you should never judge a book by its cover and do not judge birding until you go on your own. Now I would like to take some time to share some bird facts that surprised me the first time I heard them. For almost all birds, the brighter a male's feathers are, the more likely a female is to want to mate with that bird. This can be seen in birds such as the red-winged blackbird, where the brighter its little orange spot is on its right wing, the more likely the bird is to attract a mate to reproduce. Another interesting fact is that crows recognize human faces. This means that if a crow has a bad experience with a human, then they pass on that message to other crows and when other crows see that human, they will begin to screech at them as a way to alert danger to crows around them. I recently emailed my ornithology teacher from high school and asked him what he most enjoyed about ornithology. He said that, and I quote, in today's day and age, less and less people are fascinated by nature. I feel that birding is a great way to get people to put their phones down and go out into nature and learn to appreciate it without staring at a screen. End quote. Mr. McGuire is very knowledgeable and if you would like to learn more about birds, you can visit his podcast on Spotify called Obsessed with the Weather. He talks about how weather affects birds in certain episodes and is quite fascinating. He mentions that birds can fly over the entire Atlantic Ocean without stopping when they are migrating. This is due to the fact that birds look for specific areas of strong winds that will allow them to fly faster with little effort. Before we go, we would like to revisit the opening question from the start of the podcast. The question was, what is the fastest flying bird? The answer is peregrine falcons. Peregrine falcons are the fastest birds in the world. They can reach a top speed of 242 miles per hour while diving for food. Peregrine falcons are a member of the falcon family and that is believed to be the fastest family of birds. If you search for an image of a peregrine falcon, you will recognize that this bird is a large bird that is gray and white with black stripes and has striking bright yellow feet. Falcons will soar around and circle their food so that they do not use up much energy. Then they will dive down and attack their prey. They accelerate as they move down and use the surprise of their advantage and stun their prey with their sharp talons. This is among the most fascinating tactical animal hunting in the world, in my opinion. I hope you learned a lot from this podcast and continue to do your own research on birds and experience birding for your own. You can go bird watching almost anywhere and are guaranteed to spot some rare birds that will make you appreciate nature. If you have any questions about birding or the first steps in how to go bird watching, feel free to contact me at alexchristensen0 at gmail.com. Once again, this is Alex Christensen and this has been another episode of Birds Are Cool. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to like and subscribe to my podcast channel. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day!