In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Which birds tend to become “city birds,” and why some species thrive in urban spaces while others disappear

• The concrete benefits and hidden costs of city living, plus the traits that predict an urban “winner”

• How scientists test whether birds are adapting and learning fast vs. being filtered by city conditions, and what the biology says about stress in urban birds

• 00:12 - The Human Shield Hypothesis and Urban Wildlife

• 03:27 - Urban Birds: Nature Thriving in the Concrete Jungle

• 06:07 - Urban Birds and Their Adaptation

• 15:34 - Urban Adaptation of Birds

• 23:34 - Impact of Urbanization on Bird Species

• 27:58 - Urban Birds and Their Challenges

Timestamp Disclosure
These timestamps were generated using AI and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided for accessibility and reference purposes only and may not perfectly reflect the original audio.

Dr. Fran Bonier (Excerpt)

Yeah, so we found that the, the birds that nested in the most disturbed places, like in the Arby's drive throughs and parking lots, they had higher fledging success. They were more likely for their nests to survive. And we think it's because of this thing called the human shield hypothesis.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Back in rural Canada, the city felt like a different species.

I grew up in a place where the loudest thing on the street was like a pickup truck that needed a new muffler, where traffic meant you got stuck behind a tractor for two minutes and then you told that story for a week. And I loved it. I was a woods kid, a field edge kid, a stand really still and you'll see something cool kid.

The city, though, I did not feel built for it. The lights, the noise, the way everyone walks like they're late to a meeting, the vibes were overstimulating.

So for a long time I had this assumption that cities were kind of biological dead zones.

Like sure, there are people and coffee and that one tree in the sidewalk cutout that's doing its best, but real nature, real birds, that's out there in the real world. And then I moved to Denver and Denver was like, oh, you thought. Because now I've got great horned owls posting up like they own my neighborhood.

Juncos, nuthatches and bush tits hanging out on the power lines. Canada geese treating the park like a private country club.

And Cooper's hawks just casually doing surveillance from a light pole across the street from my house. And it's not even subtle.

I'll be walking the dog and there's a bird two feet away acting like I'm the one who wandered into their habitat by accident. I'm coming to realize that some birds are not just surviving in cities, they're thriving.

They're street smart and they've hacked concrete, which is wild because on paper, cities seem like the worst group project of all time for a bird. There's noise, there's glass, there are cars, there are outdoor cats, which respectfully are tiny apex predators with zero remorse.

There's also weird lighting at night that makes everything feel like a gas station at 2am and yet some species are out here absolutely crushing it. I think the moment this really hit me was my first trip to New York City.

I remember stepping out and feeling like the air itself was moving faster than I was. Everything was louder than my thoughts. And I had the classic rural kid reaction of, wow, this is a lot. I would like to go lie down now.

So I escaped the only way I know how To I went to Central park. And if you've never had this experience, Central park is like a portal. You're surrounded by skyscrapers.

You're in the middle of one of the busiest places on earth. And then you take 10 steps into the trees and it's like, oh, birds live here too. And not just pigeons on statues.

I'm talking about woodpeckers and warblers flitting around like little neon confetti hawks overhead and waterfowl just hanging out like they've got nothing scheduled till brunch.

I remember seeing a red bellied woodpecker on 5th Ave median just adjacent to Central park and having this split second thought, wait, how is this happening here? It was genuinely comforting, though. A reminder that nature doesn't always leave when humans move in. Sometimes it adapts.

Sometimes it moves into the empty lot next door and starts a new life. And a reminder that city parks can play a huge role as habitats for birds. Which brings us to today's question.

Okay, but why do some birds thrive in cities? To help us explore the topic of urban birds, I'll talk to Dr. Fran Bonnier, a professor at Queen's University.

She studies urban birds, especially how city living shapes their stress, physiology and behavior and what that tells us about weather. City is actually good for them because cities are growing. The world is getting more urban.

And whether we realize it or not, we're building the habitats that a lot of species will either learn to live in or not.

So if a pigeon can turn a subway platform into a reliable food patch and a falcon can turn a downtown high rise into both a hunting and nesting tower, what does that tell us about adaptation, about avian intelligence and about resilience? And what does it say about us that some birds can live alongside us so successfully while others cannot?

After the break, Dr. Fran Bonier helps us understand the winners, the losers, and what street smart really means when you're a bird trying to make it in the big city. Stay tuned. Well, welcome to the show, Fran. I'm really excited that you could join us today.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, thanks. I'm excited to chat.

Dr. Scott Taylor

When we're thinking about urban birds and birds that live in cities, what sort of species are we usually thinking about?

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, so there's probably a bunch of species that everyone's familiar with because they occur in almost every city around the world. So things like rock pigeons, starlings, house sparrows, and then here in North America and a lot of our cities, we also have lots of native birds.

So those familiar ones that are all over the World have been introduced. Then we've got our native ones like American robin, Black capped chickadee, northern cardinal and a bunch of sparrows.

There's a bunch of native sparrows that do well in cities.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, yeah. There's often this time of year in Denver anyways.

There's lots of juncos around that seem to do pretty well in backyards while they're overwintering down here. What is the going knowledge on why some of these birds thrive in cities? Like rock pigeons and starlings and house sparrows.

Like you said, they're basically in any city you go to on the planet.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Some.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Some native species, but not all native species that can live in our cities. What's the deal with that? Why do some disappear even if you find them nearby?

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, so that's one of the biggest questions in urban ecology that people have been trying to answer for decades, including me. And so there's a few things that seem to come out that are pretty broad patterns. Like we're pretty sure they're part of the answer.

And that's generalist. Species tend to do well. So those are things that can live in lots of environments, eat different foods, tolerate different temperatures.

And that seems to be the one most repeated pattern that we see across birds. But there's a lot that don't really fit that where it seems like instead of being a generalist, they're kind of city specialists.

Like some cliff nesting birds that buildings look close enough to cliffs so they can nest on them. As long as they can find food, they can do well in cities.

Dr. Scott Taylor

It's interesting to think about cities as just a lot of really big artificial cliffs. I think the first time I saw a peregrine falcon in a city, it didn't really click until it did that. Yeah.

We've created all these cliffs across North America and in other cities of the world that are great for peregrines. And then the pigeons come in. They also nest on the cliffs and get eaten by the peregrines.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yes, cities are a huge part of the peregrines comeback. You know, they were endangered. They're one of the great success stories of conservation. And in part it's because they can do so well in cities.

Because skyscrapers are great for nesting on and pigeons are everywhere and they love eating them.

Dr. Scott Taylor

So yeah, it's such an interesting consequence of development and urbanization to create all this habitat for what was once an endangered species. For sure.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah. So like, related to the first question about why we don't see all of our native birds doing well in Cities. That's because of the costs for sure.

And so the costs and benefits really depend on the species that you're asking.

But some of the general benefits for the species that can tolerate all the noise and everything that comes along with cities is stable environment, more stable resources, so they can find food year round because of, you know, our bird feeders and also like food waste and things like that. But also cities tend to be warmer than the surrounding area and have less varied temperatures.

So there's a lot of birds that can overwinter in cities farther north at higher latitudes than they would outside of cities because of that warmth. And then escape from some predators is a real benefit for some urban birds because their natural predators don't come into cities, but for costs.

Yeah, it's noise, pollution, artificial light, and then there's some predators that are in cities that aren't outside, like rats and cats and things like that that love eating eggs and nestlings and can be a real challenge. And there's disease too.

Like because bird populations in cities are often more dense, there's more birds of a given species, disease can transmit more easily through them.

Dr. Scott Taylor

What are some examples of birds that, that can live in cities farther north than they would if they weren't in a city?

Dr. Fran Bonier

My favorite and like the textbook example is Anna's hummingbird on the west coast.

So they used to only occur in like central California and south along the west coast of North America and they have expanded all the way up to southern Alaska and they're year round residents. So they're living there, you know, through the winter. And that's because of urban tolerance.

So because they can live in cities and they eat, eat nectar at hummingbird feeders, but they also go to flowers in people's gardens. So that's the best example that I know of.

Dr. Scott Taylor

That's an amazing example. Yeah. To think of a hummingbird, these tiny little birds that are living kind of on the edge of everything.

From a metabolic perspective, being able to overwinter in southern Alaska is incredible.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah. It also helps that they go into torpor overnight so they can save their calories overnight. Torpor is basically a mini hibernation.

So it's where the animal can slow down its metabolic rate, slows down its heart rate. It'll look like it's fast asleep, but it's difficult to even wake it up. It's completely out during torpor and it helps them save calories. Basically.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah. So you're not maintaining the same body temperature overnight when you're not eating all the time.

It's super important for hummingbirds in many parts of the world. I think in the high Andes as well, a lot of them go into nightly torpor, right?

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah.

So if you think about it like, cities are sort of replicated natural experiments, for lack of a better word, where we've changed the landscape in similar ways all across the globe, there's some sort of similarities. And so if you can tolerate cities, you should be able to use them wherever they are, more or less.

And so when you think about why species have range limits, it's usually because the habitat towards the edge of where they occur starts to become too challenging for them. But if there's a city there, it allows them to persist and keep high numbers.

And then they can do this sort of leapfrog expansion from one city to the next to the next and push their ranges out. And that's what we saw with Anna's hummingbirds. We also see it with, like white crowned sparrows on the west coast have moved up into ski resorts.

So the mountain subspecies of white crown sparrows is meeting the coastal Puget Sound subspecies because it uses sort of disturbed habitat to move into different areas. There's some classic examples in mammals too. Like red foxes in Europe have expanded all over the place because of their urban tolerance.

Coyotes in North America are doing the same, and even cougars seem to be starting to do it. They're a great example of something that's recently becoming more urban tolerant in a bunch of different places, including in Colorado.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, we have them in Boulder pretty regularly, for sure.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah.

And that seems to be a cool example of where they're sort of recovering from habitat loss that reduced their numbers a ton earlier and then allowing them to expand, probably because they're evolving to tolerate cities.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah. What about Eurasian collared doves? I think a lot of people.

Did they use cities as a leapfrogging across North America or is there less evidence of that?

Dr. Fran Bonier

I don't know the Eurasian collared dove example as well as some of the other ones.

But a lot of our introduced species seem to use cities to expand, and sometimes they can't expand beyond them, but as long as they can get to the next city, they can expand their range. But like the house sparrow, part of why the house sparrow is so successful is because of its urban tolerance.

And at least in North America, you don't really see them much away from cities except at farms, but you don't see them away from people. So there's a lot of examples of introduced species that seem to really rely on cities for their establishment and expansion.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah. And for some of those house sparrows, I guess house sparrows were intentionally introduced in New York at some point.

But they kind of follow people around the world.

And there's really cool evolutionary studies of house sparrows that show that kind of their global expansion was with humans as humans, you know, became agricultural and moved around the planet and.

But it is, it's crazy, you know, to be in some completely different part of the world and see house sparrows like cities in Africa or here or South America. They're just thriving everywhere except I guess kind of where they came from, they're.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Not too in their native range, they're declining. Yeah. So in western Europe they're in decline.

We're doing a global urban bird survey where we're using acoustic surveys to record birds during dawn chorus in five different cities so far around the world. And the house sparrow is the one species that we get in every single city.

So they're in Rio, they're in Dakar, they're in Nairobi, they're in Paris and they're in Toronto, which is super cool.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, it's amazing to have such a globally distributed thing that you can study, like you said, in these different kind of replicated same, same but slightly different environments.

Dr. Fran Bonier

So the study was really motivated by the bias that exists in urban ecology, but also just in ecology more generally. Where most of our research is done in the global North.

And yet when you look at cities and where they're growing the fastest and where they are, a problem for biodiversity is in tropical and coastal regions in the global South. That's where our cities are growing the fastest. And we just don't have good data on how cities affect biodiversity in those parts of the world.

And so we partnered with experts in each of those cities.

So it's work that's being done by people who live in those cities and they use them community members, they recruit community members to go out with little digital recorders to random points across the whole city.

So they're going out and recording like in the middle of giant stories, slums in Rio or in Nairobi, which just isn't where most urban ecology research happens. And so we don't know near as much about how cities affect biodiversity in the global South.

So that was the main goal, is just to document what birds are able to persist in those cities and then try and figure out why.

Dr. Scott Taylor

So can you tell us a little bit about which traits tend to predict an urban winter and why those traits matter in these concrete, noisy human made environments?

Dr. Fran Bonier

To take advantage of all the opportunities in cities, you have to be able to adjust and do things differently than you would in your natural habitat. So, you know, nesting on a skyscraper is a great example of behavioral flexibility.

Eating different foods like gulls, being able to figure out that they can go eat out of dumpsters, that's behavioral flexibility. Also, behavioral flexibility is important for habituating.

To figure out what parts of the busy city are true threats and which things should you ignore?

Because with traffic going by your nest or people walking by and whatever, all those urban challenges that are associated with human activity, you need to be able to go about your regular daily life, take care of your eggs and your nestlings, and if you're disturbed every time somebody walks by, you're not going to do well. So being able to either baseline just ignore that human activity or habituate to it is really important.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah.

So there are all these really cool examples of birds that are not just persisting in cities, but thriving, or we see examples of them being savvy to living in a city. What are some of your favorite examples of that? Of birds that do have interesting city adapted behaviors.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah.

So there's a whole area of research into what they call foraging innovations, where a bird or whatever animal has figured out a novel way to and access food.

And so there's a couple of examples of urban birds doing that, like crows that will drop nuts into traffic and let cars run them over so that they can access the seed inside.

So cool gulls that will drop shellfish again in traffic and then just cool problem solving, like being able to open up garbage bins and things like that. Or knowing when to time visits to different places because that's when the restaurant is throwing away their leftovers for the day.

There's a lot of really cool examples of that.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah.

One example I think is really cool is in Arizona, where lovebirds, which have been introduced and you know, the introduction of these parrots in different cities across North America is often because of the pet trade. And anyways, that's a whole other interesting story, parrots and the pet trade.

But these lovebirds have figured out that during the peak time of the day, where it's very hot, they visit air conditioning vents to cool down.

And I think in the absence of that kind of learned behavior, not a force foraging behavior, but still an interesting urban survival behavior, they might not be able to persist in cities, which is pretty cool.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah.

And that's another thing that seems to be important for some urban birds is being smart, being able to solve problems so like the cockatoos, there's studies on, I think it's sulfur crested cockatoo and how they can do multi step problem solving to open garbage bins that have latches on top of them and they'll watch each other and learn it. Yeah. And sometimes brain size is bigger for urban tolerant birds.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Oh really? Like just on average.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Like controlling for body size. So birds that have a bigger brain than you would expect for their size tend to do well in cities.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Oh cool. Corvids are one of those groups.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Corvids, the parrots.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah. I guess I would expect there to be a stress response regardless of if you can tolerate it or not.

There should be some indicator at least I would expect that there'd be elevated stress levels. What have you found there?

Dr. Fran Bonier

So that was actually one of my chapters for my PhD 20 years ago was over 20 years ago going up and down the west coast of North America comparing white crown sparrows in cities to white crown sparrows outside of cities. And we found them during. We made sure everybody was at the same breeding stage because we know that can affect stress hormone levels.

And looked at whether the birds in the cities had different stress levels. Though I don't usually call the hormones or anti stress really, but the hormones a good measure of sort of how challenged they feel.

And the females had higher stress hormone levels in cities but the males didn't. And that's kind of. And then when you go and look in other birds you find the opposite or you find no difference.

So there doesn't seem to be one consistent effect of cities on stress hormone levels or any of the other measures that we have for trying to figure out how stressed a bird is. Like body condition or there's white blood cell counts some people use or things like that. Sometimes it's worse in the city, sometimes it's better.

And that points to. It really matters what species you're talking about, what city you're talking about.

Birds in Phoenix have way more stable and abundant resources than in the region around them. Around the city because it's desert.

And so the stress levels of birds in Phoenix have been studied a lot and there's really no consistent negative effect of cities on stress levels.

Dr. Scott Taylor

So that's cool.

Yeah, I mean, I guess different birds would respond in different ways and we like to look for broad patterns in science but sometimes they just don't exist because there's different ways of being. Which is a good reminder.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, a sharption just flew through the yard.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Sorry, I got to cool that's awesome. I can't see out of our studio right now, so I'm sure I'd be distracted if I could. There's a lot of good winter sparrows around right now.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, they've been eating the mourning doves at our feeder.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Oh really?

Dr. Fran Bonier

Way fewer mourning doves because they're being very careful now.

We're actually doing some work comparing closely related species that do and don't do well in cities and seeing if their ability to habituate to human activity differs. So like song sparrows do really well in cities, but swamp sparrows don't.

So you can go out to where they both are out in natural habitat and have a bunch of undergrads walk by their nests a bunch and see if the song sparrows are better able to learn that that's not a threat, habituate to it faster than the swamp sparrows.

Dr. Scott Taylor

And that's ongoing work right now in your lab.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Nice. I would have loved to do a project like that as an undergrad. Just get to walk around past nests and see what mom does while she's.

Is it during the incubation period then that you do that?

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, during incubation. Yeah.

We put little eye button in the nest so that we can measure their incubation behavior because they might not do anything overt that you see like alarm calling or flushing off the nest. But we're also looking at whether they just adjust their parental behavior. How they're sitting on their eggs.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Oh cool. Yeah. And whether maybe they're just like more skittish or something when they aren't used to people coming by versus when they are.

Dr. Fran Bonier

So we wanted to also include an urban population. So we did song sparrows in Kingston last year. Yeah. And they like we couldn't measure habituation because they are so tolerant.

So like we had nests in Arby's drive throughs and like in the middle of parking lots and stuff. So somebody had already done the experiment. Right. All the trucks and cars going through the Arby's drive through.

So you could walk right up to the nest and touch the branch that the nest is in. And the female just sits there and stares at you. You.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Wow.

Dr. Fran Bonier

She's not going anywhere until you have to actually poke the nest to get her to flush off of it.

Dr. Scott Taylor

That's amazing. I mean, yeah, I see how that would be beneficial like if there's lots of people around.

But I hope she has enough of a, like a understanding that a cat isn't a person to flush. You know, if there's a Cat coming or something like that.

I wonder what the intersection there is between habituation and predator, like not being predator avoidance.

Dr. Fran Bonier

I'm not with predators. Yeah. Or foolish boldness around predators. Yeah.

So we found that the, the birds that nested in the most disturbed places, like in the Arby's drive throughs and parking lots, they had higher fledging success. They were more likely for their nests to survive.

And we think it's because of this thing called the human shield hypothesis where, you know, animals go towards human activity for breeding because it protects their babies and themselves from their natural enemies, like the things that would, you know, eat their eggs or nestlings. And so those super busy places probably have fewer crows and raccoons and things coming in and finding their nests.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, yeah. There are some birds that like seem they are tied to cities.

One example is chimney swifts, which nest now predominantly in disused chimneys across North America that are kind of tied to cities. They don't have the large trees that they would have used historically to nest in and roost in. But they're also not doing well, which is interesting.

And you guys have a big swift roost in Kingston, right?

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, yeah.

So they even put up artificial chimneys on campus to try and replace as I guess the technology around the heating and stuff that requires chimneys has changed. So buildings have smaller or more protected chimneys, which is part of why they're not doing well.

And in some places they're putting out sort of artificial chimneys just to provide them that nesting and roosting habitat.

There was even someone here who studied a roost that had been there for decades and looked at how their diet had changed over time because they're pooping inside the chimney and they took basically like a core sample and looked at how the food has changed. And that's why we think they're doing badly is because their insect prey isn't doing well with climate change.

And so a lot of birds like chimney swifts that eat insects are declining because of that.

So it's not really cities that's causing them the problem, but they are really urban tolerant and still struggling because of climate change and insect declines.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Probably, yeah. These insect declines are something we chatted about with John Fitzpatrick a few episodes ago and, and they are like global and catastrophic.

And it's interesting to think about the context of like chimney swifts, which do super well in cities with chimneys where they roost as long as they have food. If you don't have food, it doesn't matter where you live, you're not going to survive. Very well. Yeah.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah.

So I had an undergrad who did her honors thesis looking at whether urban tolerant birds, like these birds that thrive in cities, are they more protected from population declines than urban avoidant birds? It was actually following up on work that got lots of media attention a few years ago with the. Was it three billion birds?

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, yeah. That's what we talked about with John Fitzpatrick. So 3 billion birds since 1970, basically, yeah.

Dr. Fran Bonier

We followed up on that study and we took their estimates of population decline, and we looked at whether our measures of urban tolerance for like, 430 birds predicted their decline.

So the ones that are really urban tolerant that can do well in these dramatically human impacted landscapes, you would think maybe they could also resist all the other anthropogenic challenges, the human caused, challenges that are driving declines. But we found they absolutely are just as at risk of decline as the most urban avoidant birds that we think of as more sensitive.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Okay, we've reached the part of the show that we call that's BS or that's bird stuff, where we give our guests an opportunity to debunk a myth that ruffles their feathers. So, Fran, what do you want to.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Call BS on people think you can't touch a nestling bird because if you touch it, its mom will reject it. And so, you know, if you see a nestling that's fallen out of a nest, you might think, oh, I need to leave it alone. But actually, it's.

It's perfectly fine to pick it up and put it back in the nest or put it up somewhere safe so that predators won't get it. Because, mom, birds have put a lot of work into those babies, and so they're not going to abandon them just because somebody touched them.

And a lot of birds also don't have a great sense of smell. So part of that myth is that the baby now smells like human, and so they'll reject it.

They probably can't tell that it smells like human, but even if they could, they're not going to abandon their baby just because you picked it up. So if you find that nestling that's fallen out of a nest, feel free to pop it back in.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Yeah, totally agree.

I think, you know, if birds rejected the nestlings we touched, my entire research program would collapse because we wouldn't be able to ban baby chickadees without them just. Yeah, deserting them. So that's an awesome BS and a very common misconception. So thanks for bringing that up.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Very common. We actually had to correct that misconception. With our animal ethics board which does a great job reviewing our research. Research.

But the people on the ethics board saw that we wanted to ban to nestlings and they thought, oh no, the moms will abandon them if you touch them. So we had to explain that. That's bs.

Dr. Scott Taylor

That's bs. You had to tell them. It's a very mammal centric opinion.

And I think our Aya Cook board also mostly focuses on rats and mice, which there is the potential that they would reject their babies, but they use smell a lot more. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

I really, really appreciate you taking the time to chat about these urban birds and it's been to think about cities and what they're doing and that some birds are thriving and others aren't, but that there's a lot of interesting research still going on. So thanks for joining us.

Dr. Fran Bonier

Yeah, thank you, Scott.

Dr. Scott Taylor

Birds are dinosaurs, and around here we like our snacks. So we end each episode with a dinosaur nugget.

Today's dinosaur nugget is that the birds that live in cities tend to be generalists, not habitat specialists. And they're often species of birds that are good at problem solving, like corvids and parrots.

Despite this, urban birds are declining at similar rates to rural species. And we still have a lot to learn as urban areas expand across the globe. That's a wrap on this week's episode.

Okay, but why do some birds thrive in cities? If you liked the episode, leave a comment. It really helps our show like and subscribe.

And if you really want to show your support, grab some merch from our shop at okabutbirds.com like my stylish but comfortable hoodie or my OBB phone case. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. Bye. Okay, But... Birds is hosted by Scott Taylor with production and creative by Zach Karl.

Transcript Disclosure
This transcript was generated using AI-assisted transcription and may contain errors or omissions. Please refer to the audio or video episode for the most accurate representation.

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::

• House Sparrow audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML539706

• Peregrine Falcon audio contributed by Mike Andersen, ML136378

• Rosy-faced Lovebird audio contributed by Derek Solomon, ML168222

• Sulphur-crested Cockatoo audio contributed by Mark Robbins, ML529861

• White-crowned Sparrow audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML207181

• Sharp-shinned Hawk (Northern) audio contributed by David McCartt, ML137605

• Chimney Swift audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML107413

• Chimney Swift video contributed by Timothy Barksdale, ML440546