EP: 465 | Modern Techniques for Studying Waterfowl

On this episode we’re joined by Orin Robinson of Cornell University to discuss the modern methods of monitoring birds and especially waterfowl. Orin is a Senior Research Associate in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and has traveled the world studying birds. His love is waterfowl and he explains eBird and Merlin to us. It’s a fascinating discussion with a scientist that has amazing insight into the modern methods of studying of waterfowl and terrestrial birds. The future is here and we can all be citizen scientists and help. 

Listen, Learn and Enjoy. 

https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I'm Jeff Foxworthy and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, everybody you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Most Yook Land Enhancement Studio as they discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices. News, and of course, money. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm going to tell you, I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

We're live in three, two, one.

SPEAKER_06 0:28

All right, guys. This is going to be really interesting because we love talking about ducks. Period. Period. Well, it's going to have kind of an emphasis on ducks for sure.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

But uh looking at his background, I wish everybody could see it. Yeah. He's got a bunch of turkeys up there. I think it's like he's got, I was saying before we started, he's got a kind of new AI virtual reality screen. It reads the host's brainwaves and projects their dreams, you know, scenario. So Bobby would love behind his desk to show one, two, three, four, five, about six or seven strutters or more. It's the world slam. That's right. According to I'm just saying it, I think that's your dream.

SPEAKER_06 1:08

It's one of them for sure. Yeah. So, guys, let me go ahead and I'll get him introduced. We've got Mr. Orin Robinson, who is a senior research associate with Cornell uh University and Cornell College. And he's uh that Cornell Aviation Population Study, the lab of ornithology, if I'm saying that right, or is it ornithology?

SPEAKER_03 1:32

Close enough for an Arpong grade. Aviation.

SPEAKER_06 1:36

Did I say aviation? You did. I think it is aviation. Avian. Avian, right? Yep. Look, we're just this is I'm messing this up all the way around.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

You're right. Butchering the Queen's English.

SPEAKER_06 1:46

Yeah. Orren, welcome and thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_07 1:52

Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability Faculty Fellow. But how do you say that it's not aviation?

SPEAKER_04 1:58

It's Avian.

SPEAKER_06 2:00

Avian.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

It didn't have the shine on the back of it. It's simply aviation.

SPEAKER_06 2:07

I'm going off of memory. I'm almost well, that's your problem right there. What memory? Yes, that's right. Uh, Orin, look, I have long wanted to talk to somebody at Cornell about birds. Uh looking, we all use the Merlin app. We love it. Absolutely. It's the most incredible thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

Pretty magical. Yeah, it's really fun. If you don't have it out there, you should.

SPEAKER_06 2:30

Yes. So before we go, we ask you some of those questions. Orin, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? You've already surprised me this morning.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, I'm uh, like you said, I'm a research associate at uh at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Um I've been there for almost 10 years, 10 years in September. Uh before that, I was uh I was postdoc at Auburn University. Oh, working with the uh working with the Black Duck Joint Venture on uh some black duck research and uh did my my PhD before that at Rutgers University and uh master's at the University of South Alabama and uh my undergrad was at Auburn University, originally from uh Mobile, Alabama. How about that? Um grew up hunting and fishing. I like that.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

That's where I cut my teeth as a young man, just north mobile, not far.

SPEAKER_07 3:28

Are you yeah, he definitely surprised me. I you know, I was thinking Cornell, probably from up north, yeah, you know, connecting it. Which is fine, which is okay.

SPEAKER_06 3:37

But uh are you going to the fishing rodeo this week?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

I have not decided. Uh we we have some good friends that are they're involved uh in the fishing rodeo. My my dad was involved in it when I was younger, so I spent a lot of time down there. Uh many, many years uh at the fishing rodeo, so it's always always a good time. But uh it would be fun to take my kids down there this year so they could experience it.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

It's a lot of people there.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

Don't we have a big thing? Yeah, the retail crews down there, Jess and all the all the folks are down there.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

This is the Dolphin Island one, right? Yeah, you know he's not gonna miss that one. No, but there's a couple, no, he's not. But there's a couple different big ones down on the coast. Yeah, that's think that's the biggest one, though.

SPEAKER_07 4:17

It's fun to go to those and watch the boats come in and put their fish on the scale.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

I mean, I think they have a uh a trophy for the pin perch or the mullet. Oh, fresh one for every chance. Yeah, catfish.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

I mean, yeah, it's it's a super all inclusive thing. Give boats away. You've got you've been to it, haven't you? Me? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

I thought so. Yeah, of course. Did you did they yeah, but they caught you baiting your trot lines at night?

SPEAKER_04 4:38

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't fish in it.

SPEAKER_03 4:41

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

But I would have baited my trot lines at night if I would have been fishing. When else do you bait trot lines?

SPEAKER_06 4:47

Yeah, well, I don't know. Late in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_04 4:49

It's kind of like when Marcus said you can burn whenever you can.

SPEAKER_06 4:52

That's right. You fish whenever you can, that's for sure. All right, Orren. Look, I promise we're gonna get around and get serious here.

SPEAKER_05 4:58

That's not possible.

SPEAKER_06 4:59

We're uh we we've got a lot of questions to ask you, but before we do that, we always we like to get to know our guests just a little bit more with uh Dudley's got some rapid fire questions. They're sponsored by Nutrient Ag Solutions, our our friends and oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

We just gonna be calling a lot coming up. Yeah, especially with her side questions. Right around the corner.

SPEAKER_07 5:17

All right, Doug. All right, Orin, I'm gonna ask you a few questions in rapid fire mode. Just want a quick answer so we can get to know you better. So are you ready? I am. Uh would you rather have lots of bird feeders or lots of native plants and trees in your yard?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Plants and trees, yeah you got they are bird feeders.

SPEAKER_07 5:42

That's right. Uh, how many bird species have you collected yourself on the Merlin app? Or have you counted?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Oh man. Uh a few hundred probably. Wow.

SPEAKER_07 5:58

Yeah, I've got friends that keep up with it. You know, one of my friends, like, I got I got to 36 the other day, you know. Yeah. Uh what is your current favorite preparation?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

So that's not all at one time, right?

SPEAKER_07 6:12

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Yeah, he meant over your lifetime.

SPEAKER_07 6:14

Yeah. Uh next. What is your current favorite preparation of homegrown tomatoes?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Oh, raw, sliced, a little bit of salt and pepper. Old school.

SPEAKER_07 6:29

What is the rarest bird species you've ever worked with or seen?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Gosh. Um seen is probably Kirtland's Barbler in uh in Michigan. Worked with is Hubarabustard in uh in Morocco. Um that's uh that's a cool species. They're they're harvested, but they're also rare, so there's a lot of put and take hunting of them, but also trying to boost the population, which is a weird problem.

SPEAKER_07 7:07

Okay, yeah, I've heard of that. And and that leads to this next question. What is the furthest away location you've traveled for bird work?

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Uh Alaska, probably.

SPEAKER_07 7:19

Okay. Um, is there a family of birds that interests you the most?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Ducks, waterfowl.

SPEAKER_07 7:26

Hey, hey. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Uh name your favorite pizza joint.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Oh man. Uh there's a couple of good ones in in Ithaca. Uh, there's one called Adipai near our house that we we frequent quite a bit.

SPEAKER_07 7:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

That's probably it.

SPEAKER_07 7:46

Uh, what is the last concert you attended?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

I don't know. It's been a while. It's been a long time. Uh gosh, I Garth Brooks in Atlanta when he came back. Oh my god. The last time? Probably. Well, that's we were still living in Auburn then, so that was, you know, 12 years ago.

SPEAKER_07 8:10

Okay. Um, and what do you hear the most in your neck of the woods up there? Y'all, you guys, yens, or you's my my wife's also from Alabama, so I hear y'all quite a bit. That's good to know.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

But yeah. I think y'all is becoming pretty uh pretty widespread. That's okay.

SPEAKER_07 8:33

And last but not least, where and when did you kill your first turkey?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Oh gosh, it was it really it wasn't that long ago um in Illinois uh trip with with my dad and some some friends, uh probably 10 years ago, maybe. Okay. Nice. Awesome.

SPEAKER_06 8:56

Good to know.

SPEAKER_07 8:57

That's it.

SPEAKER_06 8:58

That's a good question, Stuff. Thank you, Bob. Yeah, so Ithaca, New York. Uh how did how did Cornell become such an authority on avian species? How about that? Look at you, avian.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

That uh the the lab of ornithology has been there a long time and uh you know has attracted just uh you know, early on uh attracted a lot of uh you know great scientists and it has just uh you know been building its uh you know, there's a lot of education and and other things that that get put out of the lab too, as well as you know, Merlin, Eberd, and then the uh the scientists that are there as well. So, you know, they uh from the beginning they they started putting out good work and uh it has just grown to what it is now.

SPEAKER_06 9:49

Every college seems like they have there's something that they're kind of like known for. Oh, yeah, and and and I've just always associated ornithology with Cornell.

SPEAKER_07 9:58

Yeah, and he he mentioned rutgers, you know, they've developed a lot of vegetables and things and cool plants.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah, there's the rutgers to me. Sure is. I've grown them before.

SPEAKER_04 10:09

Yeah, didn't realize that was the same rutgers.

SPEAKER_06 10:12

Learn something new every day, Bobby. I tell you what. So Orin, kind of I I know you're not deep into the the Merlin, uh, but but can you can you talk about how that kind of came to be a little bit, just educate us on it?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, so Merlin initially was uh photo ID app to help people if they they would take a picture of a bird or had a picture of a bird that they could load uh to help identify it. Um and you know, there's that that is all done with with these machine learning algorithms, you know, people will train these these algorithms to learn what each species looks like. Um and you know, you have real people saying this is what it is, testing that algorithm constantly. And that just kind of morphed into let's do sound as well. Uh there's a large bioacoustics research group there at Cornell um that were working on similar things, and uh they were able to get that algorithm to where it was very accurate and can work on your phone, you know. So that's uh and it's it's constantly being refined and uh you know made better. You know, that we're constantly adding, you know, new species that may have been you know trouble spots or you know, species that there just wasn't enough data, you know, five years ago to build a confident model. Um, you know, but maybe we have that data now with more people out there recording things like that. So it's it's constantly evolving and and getting better. Um, but yeah, Merlin started as as photo ID, and uh, I think most people now use it for the sound uh aspect. I know I do.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

Well, it's great. I mean, I use a lot in the spring woods, of course. We're sitting there, you know, listening for turkeys, and so many birds are going on. You've always questioned what is that? What is that? What is this? Yeah, man, you turn it on, and it turns even a slow morning turkey hunting. Not that a slow morning turkey hunt is that bad, but it is adds a little dimension to it.

SPEAKER_03 12:17

It's fascinating, it is truly fascinating. And I can see why it evolved because it'd be a lot harder to capture the picture of something, you know, and get it good enough to you know recognize or not, but then if that app just opens up, I mean the sound part just opens up a whole new world.

SPEAKER_07 12:33

Yeah, I mean, how many times do you try to take a photo of a bird and like it's you know, the it's got the bright sky behind it?

SPEAKER_03 12:40

It's just hard close enough, you know. It's hard to do.

SPEAKER_06 12:43

Orin, I I hadn't maybe mentioned this lately.

SPEAKER_04 12:46

I knew it was coming. I'm glad they're making some revisions to this.

SPEAKER_06 12:50

So I'm I'm the only one at this table, and Toxie wasn't here the day we did this. Don't put me in this, I don't even talk about it. I'll exclude Toxie, but I was the only one I was able to make Merlin think I was a wild turkey, a hen.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

But what he's talking about is not everybody that called into the Merlin app did it recognize as a turkey. And I think at that point there was a large-scale multi-level controversy around this office about that.

SPEAKER_04 13:17

And we all know that you spent at least three weeks yelping into Merlin to be sure you knew what to do, and then busted that on us. But I'm so I was so glad to hear that there's all these new updates because there's no way I heard him yelp. He does not sound like a turkey. That's not true. Y'all also. He wasn't his usual yelp. He kicked back in that chair. Well, I got away from the microphone. Yeah, he kicked it back. Well, but it is super cool. Is that a is that a part of eBird or it is not, it's a separate app.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Um, there are a lot of folks who will have Merlin and Ebert open at the same time, you know. And I'll I'll do the same thing, you know. You may be seeing or listening to something, and then Merlin will clue you into something you just didn't hear, and then you can kind of get a search image for that bird uh and go, oh, there it is over there. Um, so so that's that's one thing I use Merlin for when I'm out, you know, looking for birds. Um so yeah, there's there's a lot of folks use them together, but they are not, you know, integrated or or the same app.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

You know, as a kid, I was I've told that story before we had a bird feeder right side the breakfast room window, which was all windows and all. And it was actually an old red bow tree, but it was close, so you could just see, oh, kind of I just had a she bought me books. I would just have the book out of looking up everything all the time. I can't imagine what I was getting at if you could get kids involved today, if they had stuff, you know, and I I know it's bird seed and whatever, but still bird feed are close enough they could observe and take a picture and learn from just it'd make it so much easier and fascinating today. Because if I'd have had that back then, I might be doing what he's doing for a living, that's that's all I'm doing now. Because I do that was my first load.

SPEAKER_06 15:02

I I don't know that I know what eBird is. Could you explain that a little bit? Is that y'all's app?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

It is. EBird is uh an app it was created back in the early 2000s um when uh when when there were no cell phones with apps. Uh it's it's a place really for birders to submit everything they see on a given trip. Wow. Uh and and with with eBird, you know, you can go in, you tell it where you were, how long you were there, how far you traveled, uh what you saw, those kinds of things. Now it's on the app, so you don't have to come home and do all that stuff on your uh your your computer. Um it will track your your movement if you want it to. Um it will track the time you're out there, so you don't have to pay attention to that stuff. You just go look for birds. And you know, you you put in a count of how many you know robins or or whatever you see in uh in that app. And that that data comes uh to the lab, but it also you know you'll have your own private page or you can share it publicly uh that keeps track of all the birds you've seen as long as you have have put them into eBird. So you know there are people out there with just thousands of species in eBird. You have a map, your map will light up wherever you have uh seen the birds, and uh, you know, it's it's it's really a cool way to organize your you know personal life list um for for your birding, but it it also is a uh a huge source of data for us. Right now, there's over uh two and a half billion bird observations in that database. Incredible. You know, we get over two million checklists a month from around the world. Holly. And uh, you know, getting that much data on where birds are uh and what time of year they're there, we we can do a lot of really cool stuff with that.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

That's maybe I was gonna ask if they had do they have to elect to allow you to use it or is it kind of automatic in downloading app? I I think it's part of the the terms of agreement when you sign it. It should be using that platform. If you if you if now if you don't want a certain bird to be known about to, you know, just don't put it in there, I guess if it's that important to you. But uh what a great data set.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

No long beard yeah, and sensitive species um do get hidden from the public. Ah so if there's sensitive species in there, you know, you can see the a large map roughly where that thing was. Um, but when you zoom in to get a location, it disappears. So so for sensitive species. But what's an example of a sensitive species?

SPEAKER_04 17:44

Here would be long beards, you wouldn't put those in there.

unknown 17:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

So so one that that uh in the United States would be black rail in on the East Coast. Um that's uh that's a species that's not doing very well. Um and pretty sensitive marsh habitat. So when folks see them, they we don't want a lot of folks going to those habitats to see them. I mean the birders know roughly where to go, um, but we don't want to bother a single bird in a location with a lot of people by giving away that bird's that is an interesting looking bird.

SPEAKER_07 18:23

That's smart. Yeah. Um, and you know, technology seems to get a bad rap these days, but uh stuff like the Merlin app and e-bird, iNaturalist, I mean, that has just turned so many of us into uh birders or naturalists. And uh it's it's just caused a chain reaction, and I I think it's just really helping.

SPEAKER_06 18:47

Well, Orn, you guys use a word that I I found very interesting. Uh I think it's called citizen scientists.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yes. So citizen scientists, or um there there's there's a few different terms out there, um, community scientist or uh participatory science is is another name you you or you may hear. It's um it's really anybody, anybody who um provides that data into eBird or iNaturalist or something like that, you know, you are uh aiding in our research by giving us data. And that's uh, you know, that's that's just that term. And you know, and it's not just things like that. There's um a lot of different citizen science programs uh around the world. There's a huge uh butterfly citizen science program in the UK. I think there's uh a big lionfish citizen science program uh in the United States, you know, recreational divers and stuff kind of reporting, report lionfish, things like that. So there's there's uh there's a lot of of cool citizen science programs out there.

SPEAKER_06 19:56

So uh, can you kind of let's kind of focus in on waterfowl now? And uh, how are you guys using eBird and some of this data from hunters to help with waterfowl management?

SPEAKER_01 20:09

So what we what we can do with this eBird data is better understand where birds are and in what relative abundance um they are there uh throughout their annual cycle. So we have a product called Status and Trends that uses eBird data and it's available. You can get on there, and you can watch on this status product throughout the year at weekly jumps where the relative abundance of the you know North American population of a given species is. Um I I think I linked you guys the blue wing teal map. Yeah, I don't know if you had a chance to check that out, but it's it's it's something like that. Um so we can take the data from there to say there are more or you know, we we can't really say there are uh, you know, we can't make an estimate of an absolute number of birds. That's that's not possible with with this kind of data. But we can say with uh with a lot of confidence for most species and locations, um, you know, a relative abundance. There are twice as many here as there are there, that kind of thing. And we can do that at a weekly temporal resolution and uh you know three by three kilometer uh spatial resolution, which is which is pretty small. Um and we can do that throughout the year for most species in North America, and and we use that data uh really just to say when and where are the bulk of the waterfowl. You know, we can see that curve throughout the year for a given location of when birds are there and when they're not, and we use that with uh you know various joint ventures um that are uh responsible for Managing given species when they are in their region to say this is when they're there. This is the weeks that would be best for your active management. This is how many roughly will be there. By linking that relative abundance to their own on the ground counts, a lot of groups are, you know, being able to translate that relative abundance into all right, this is how many ducks are going to be on the ground. This is how much food we're going to need for all these ducks in our refuges and things like that. So this is how we have to manage a given marsh or or a given given area.

SPEAKER_04 22:43

Well, I'm on it right now looking at this blue wing till link you sent me. And I talk about amazing. You can actually see the duck migration. You can put it on on time lapse and play it and play through the months. Uh super cool.

SPEAKER_06 22:54

So are do you think the waterfowl hunting community is is uh has embraced and is helping input data into this, or would you like us to help encourage them to?

SPEAKER_01 23:05

I I would love to encourage uh more hunters to uh to use eBird. You know, hunters are are are gonna be in places that that some birders are not gonna go to, you know. So data from places that uh that we're not getting to, right? And that that is touchy. Uh I know that. That's that's one of the issues, is is nobody wants to uh tell anybody where they are with with hunters. You know, everybody's got their spot.

SPEAKER_04 23:34

Who would do that?

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Um but uh you know hunters are also there during a time of year when a lot of birders aren't gonna be out and about, you know. Um if you're you know, I I use it, I e bird, uh from from spots, but you know, when I come down and and hunt with friends in Arkansas, we're on private land, there's nobody gonna go take that spot, right? Um, you know, so so yeah, I I know there's there are a lot of public land hunters who don't want anybody to know where they were, what they saw there. And that is uh that that that's one issue with uh with trying to to get hunters to to provide data.

SPEAKER_06 24:20

Yeah, I can I can see hunters, Dudley. Can't you? I mean, I can see a guy not wanting to share.

SPEAKER_07 24:25

For sure, especially, you know, that you think you found some secret spot, you know, you don't want to tell the whole world that Mallard's gonna be dropping into it in the second weekend of December, you know.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

I wouldn't tell anybody.

SPEAKER_07 24:38

With private, you know, which the majority of a lot of the flyway is private, um, you know, I think you're probably gonna get enough data.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Um I think the danger is like for someone think this the danger is real time information. But if you I mean if you really want to help, uh keep a record of stuff and then log it in later.

SPEAKER_07 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

I mean it's not real time and it's a season's over.

SPEAKER_07 25:05

Most duck hunters keep a log anyway.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

I I just can't imagine it would be so specific and meaningful as to be able to target something. I get in the case of a spot that's never hunted and all of a sudden it showed up on the radar, maybe, maybe so. I get that, but I guess short of feeling like you're giving something away, we we all ought to try to help wherever anywhere we can. Even if it's a little bit, it helps. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_06 25:33

Right now is uh well, so Orn, let me ask this. So so can you address that? Or it is is a guy have to worry about his pull spot being immediately known by everybody? Uh can you just address that?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

I would say no. Um nobody I I don't think people are are cruising eBird for spot, but they may after this now.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

Um but uh That's what I'm doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

But I yeah, I I don't think uh anybody would you know pinpoint that location uh and and say, oh, this person saw you know 18 mallards and a couple green winged teal yesterday, I'm gonna go there tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

I wouldn't think so either.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

Yeah, I wouldn't but I know there are a lot of people are so scared of that that they would imagine it would be.

SPEAKER_06 26:24

So yeah. Right. But guys, we got to be citizen scientists and help out.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

There's a lot of headwinds in the waterfowl world, and if if we can help give scientists uh some more information, well the more we can help people realize that they can actually help, as opposed to just asking blankly for it, you know, and that's why you know having him on board talking about that helps so much. Because he's at the you know he's at the driver's seat of this stuff like this.

SPEAKER_06 26:47

So, Arn, uh you mentioned that there uh earlier that there might be some biases associated with some of the the data. Can you explain some of that?

SPEAKER_01 26:56

There are. So you can imagine uh with you know citizen scientists, they're people will have their favorite spots, right? You're gonna get a lot of data from uh you know places that are close to urban centers or uh just on the side of the road, easy to access, things like that. So there's there there's quite the uh spatial bias in the data from where it comes from. And we uh we we handle that with you know statistical methods that you know kind of grid up the area and then select checklists from there so we don't uh so we don't select you know a ton of checklists from one single spot. Uh you know, so there there's there's a lot of uh mathematics that goes on to to make sure we we help ease these biases as best we can. You know, there's also bias in the uh just the individual observers, right? So some people are great birders, some people are not. But anybody, regardless of skill level, can enter data into eBird. And we uh we we have a way, you know, based on your eBird history of of knowing, you know, your your birding level, at least with regard to eBird. And we can account for things like that within those those models, like you were looking at for the blue winged teal. Um you know, we can look at the effort that someone put in onto a checklist. So somebody might be out for four hours and somebody else might just kind of glance at a spot for for five minutes, right? Those two people have a very different uh, you know, chance of observing different species, right? So we've got to account for things like that in those models. And you know, so so those a lot of questions we get are how do you how do you handle this? How do you handle that? And and though those are kind of the big ones that people want to know about, uh, especially when they when they start eBirding and they go, well, you know, this trip was completely different than the last trip, but they both go in as the same kind of data. How how do you guys how do you guys handle that? Um and and those, you know, kind of kind of at a at a high level, that's that that's how we how we do that. We have these very sophisticated statistical models that uh that help take care of those things.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

It sounds like you tell me if I'm wrong, it's like what's the you know, we got people out there have no idea what to do. You know, there's most of the people have not utilized this. I mean, I guess your your passionate, you know, birders who, I mean, there's a I I forgot that you can tell us in a second, tell us how many y'all estimate there are in the country, but it's a big number. But the average person hadn't, I mean, it sounds like to me, if I'm I'm interested in going down this road, the best way to make a average person an expert is by being able to take really good photographs somehow. Because then your app is telling you exactly where it is. I mean, what it is, you don't have to be an expert. You know, so that's to me, that'd be the first step. Is if you I know you can the phones are so much better than they used to be, but if you've got something you can zoom in and take a good picture on, it'll it'll help everything.

SPEAKER_07 30:14

You know. Oren, can you can you think of a species where you know, like the public has helped uh professional birders identify like, oh my gosh, this this bird is going to this area now, and they, you know, historically have not. You know, I I can't uh that black belling with black belly whistling duck kind of comes to mind.

SPEAKER_04 30:44

I was just looking him up. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah, we got a bunch of. Yeah, so we we have one of those status maps for black belly whistling duck, and you can see on the uh the trends map how they have just blown up uh in the in the southeastern United States. That's so funny. So that's that's a good one that you know we we have we can uh we can see that on our maps. Um back when I first started the lab, I worked with a species called uh tricolored blackbird out in California, and it was thought that you know essentially the entire population was in California, but people were saying, oh, we were kind of seeing them in Oregon and Utah, uh, and and some of our models with the eBird data showed that there's great spots to see them in the in those places. And then, you know, within a year or so, they started popping up in eBird in those places. So um, you know, that has happened, but as far as you know, we didn't know this bird was there, and and now we do, um, I I cannot think of an example.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

So, yeah, ask a bit ago. I don't think you mentioned how many how many birders do you estimate there are in the United States, even casually and whatever?

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Oh, uh, geez. Um I I know we have over a million unique e-bird users.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

And I I would imagine, you know, that's probably just a small percentage of the number of birders that are like even if someone buys the bird seed and a bird feeder and puts it in their yard, I mean, I guess they're considered one. But then people that would list that they are a bird or bird watcher in some form, I want to say we got the numbers on it's like 60 million, 70 million people. Way more than hunters. Oh, way, way bigger than bigger than hunting and fishing.

SPEAKER_06 32:40

Yeah. So, Arn, like the this uh this e-bird, if you went back 10 years and looked, uh, would you be able to say, like, boy, the these Eurasian-collared doves that were kind of in the deep south, um and that they've kind of been moving out. You still are people seeing more and more of those? And can y'all go in and then make recommendations to state agencies about what they may ha actually have?

SPEAKER_01 33:06

We can. Um, we we haven't done that with the Eurasian-collar doves. Um, you can you can see, you know, on our maps that they they have declined over the last 10 years or so in those areas. I remember, gosh, 15, 20 years ago, uh, dove hunting in Arkansas. And you know, it seemed like half the birds we killed were those Eurasian-collar doves. Um, you know, and now you you might you might see one or two. Uh, you know, so so what you're seeing on the ground as a hunter, uh, we have definitely picked that up in eBird. Um as far as going to state agencies and helping them with management recommendations, uh, we can absolutely do that. Uh it would be, you know, so I I'm not an expert in what to do on the ground. You know, I don't I can't tell somebody this is the thing you need to do to, you know, help manage this. Um but you know, we can give them the you know relative abundance in different areas of their state. Uh, we can tell them when they're there, when they're not there, uh, that kind of thing. And then that we can then work with them to kind of hone in on what those actions may be uh that they need to do, uh given you know the information that we have.

SPEAKER_04 34:31

Real quick, jumping back on the uh this says, and Google says now, you know, everything on the internet's true, Bobby. So uh 91 million backward bar backyard birders, uh 43 million traveling birders.

SPEAKER_03 34:46

Now I would say that traveling, it said at least a mile, travel at least a mile from our home for the purpose of observing. I think those would be the hardcore guys, but yes, but still that's a ton.

SPEAKER_04 34:56

It's a ton. And it just as far as the 91 million, that is like 35% of the whole population. So you have a lot of upside orn.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, which means our conservation efforts for all birds have the upside.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

Yeah, I guess does this tie in with that uh the U.S. geological survey guys we had on before? They're the ones that introduced us to orange. Well, there you have it. Well, you know it. It's a small world. So they use eBirds. Yeah. They use eBirds.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Well, they so those guys really use uh BBS. So the Breeding Bird Survey, I'm sure they they talked a lot about that. We so BBS has been going for a long time. Um, it's it's kind of the standard survey for uh for all birds really that are that it's used uh to kind of assess population health. With eBird now, we can also produce trends across years uh like the BBS does. And we uh we recently published a paper with those guys just comparing, looking at you know, what trends do we get out of eBird, the citizen science data, versus the trends they get out of BBS over the same timeframe. Uh you know, just just to see because that that was the first thing people wanted to know when we when we started doing trends with eBird was how does it compare to BBS? Because that's the one everybody knows. That's kind of the been been thought of as the gold standard uh for for bird surveys. So so we definitely uh have worked very closely with those guys.

SPEAKER_07 36:27

Um that's great. And you know, the the BBS, uh my understanding is there's like set routes where where people go. Uh whereas uh eBird, it's just wherever you see a bird. And so uh I would think it would be you know pretty different. You know, they can collaborate on information, but uh that e-bird is is just everywhere you see a bird. Um and it uh one bird that comes to mind uh that would be cool to follow is the northern Bob White. You know, now it seems like a lot of more lot more folks are managing their property for turkeys and you know that early successional habitat. Uh it'll really be interesting to see how Bob White's uh range or populations change in the future now that folks are actually doing things that are gonna help them.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Yeah, and that's uh that that's that's a really cool species to think about because that habitat uh is also vital for things like Bachman sparrow and uh red cockaded woodpeckers, you know. So all of this stuff that's being done to help out Bob White is also beneficial to those species, which are have uh you know not been doing well recently as well. That that you know early successional longleaf pine ecosystem. Sure. Um so that's uh you know, there there's there's benefits, you know, when you manage for one species, you you can you can benefit lots and lots of others.

SPEAKER_06 38:01

So Orren, can you talk talk to us, uh give us a few examples about how eBird has been used in waterfowl management?

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Yeah, so I'm uh, you know, so so one one thing uh with with using eBird and in waterfowl management is uh the question of how good is it, right? That that's kind of the first thing. It's like this is cool, we have these awesome maps. How good is it really? Um, right? And and before you want to use it in any kind of management situation, you you want to have that that confirmation that it's giving you good information. Um so we have taken various surveys from different joint ventures, from different states, uh, refuge surveys, things like that, and just compared that across their time frame with uh the eBird status product, uh, the one you were looking at for uh for Bluing Teal there, and showed that you know, that eBird product does very well at you know the the scale at which management occurs. Um and you know, specifically for more abundant species. So, you know, uh black ducks in the east, we do pretty well with, um, you know, wigeon, greenwing teal, things like that that are that are relatively abundant, uh, we do very well with. And so from there, you know, once once we you know we're able to show all of that, um, those eBird migration curves, essentially, so how that bird changes abundance throughout the year, um has been used by several joint ventures. The the Gulf Coast Joint Venture has used that for their management uh planning for for several species. Um there are other joint ventures using it for shorebird management. Um I'm part of NAWOMP, the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. Uh we have recommended that that those e-bird curves be used in the uh you know allocation of the species abundances uh for management in each region. So each region has you know a responsibility for their waterfowl essentially uh at given times of the year. And we are using uh recommending that the uh those e-bird curves be used in allocating that that management. So say there's you know 750,000 pentails, I'm I'm making that number up. Uh they don't all you know uniformly go across the the continent, right? So there's a ton over in California, and there's a bunch that come down the Mississippi flyaway. So we want to make sure that the uh the places that that hold these pintails are aware that you are holding you know 40% of the continent's pentails at this time of year, um you know, adjust your your management accordingly, right? That kind of thing. So eBirds being used to to make those recommendations. Um I have recently uh been working with the sea duck joint venture. Um so so these e-bird maps that we have, they're really, really good where we have good data. But sea ducks and some other waterfowl species often breed in extreme northern Canada and uh places where there's just no birders to go out there and see them, so we don't have the uh enough data to make a confident prediction in those areas. So if you look at you know a breeding season map from our work for something like Black Scooter, uh you'll see that where we make predictions, you know, the the Sea Duck researchers up there that know the species well say, yeah, they're they're there. You you've nailed this, but where you can't make predictions, there's tons of these things nesting there as well. Um so there are places where where we can't make good uh predictions. How we're handling that with this project with the uh the Sea Duck Joint Venture, uh, which is you know collaboration with a lot of folks, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, uh, Environment, Climate Change Canada, uh Docks Unlimited Canada is involved. Um we'll take various surveys that they have done and also telemetry data and combine that with eBird. So they've done the surveys in some of these areas, but they're smaller surveys. Uh, we have figured out a way to combine those data and analyze them together to essentially force eBird to predict to those areas given this new data that we have. Uh so now we're able to produce some really good uh distribution maps for the breeding season for a lot of these seabirds. Uh one other interesting thing that's come out of this is we're showing more pintails up north than were originally thought. Um you know, because they they've have been declining from the potholes uh during the breeding season, the prairie potholes. Um, but they are there are more nesting in the in northern Canada now than than we originally thought. Uh so we're able to see things like that by combining our e-bird data with uh with these other data. And and then that's that's one of the projects I'm currently working on. The next step with that is to hopefully help influence the uh the waterfowl breeding population habitat survey or the BPOP survey. Um so we can say, you know, we we might be missing a good chunk of populations of these species, and we can show that now. Um So hopefully, you know, maybe tweak that survey a little bit to get get a better, better bang for the buck, you know, um with uh with those flights, because those those flights are are not not cheap, you know. So we want to get the most information out of them we can.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

That might have been my my note for the biggest like selfish questions, like what insight you have into current trends and what's this year looking like, and as far as you know, selfishly duck hunting and waterfowl. Oh yeah. Because I mean it's we're you know, at this time of year right on the cusp of getting the the final data to tell you what kind of hatch we had and potential, you know, migration for the year.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Yeah, I I don't have that. Um I I don't have that information. I I don't uh I don't work with the with the BPOP survey itself. Uh I'll use historical data, kind of compare to see how we line up. Are we getting good information uh out of eBird relative to that?

SPEAKER_03 47:53

But when would they release that? You know, because at some point it's released to the public. I thought it would have been by July, but maybe not yet.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

I I feel like I don't know if I have seen that yet or not. Maybe maybe I was looking at at uh last year's. Right. But I I I don't know. You I I think it's around now. If you know I feel like I've seen it, I haven't seen it myself yet.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

I know there's always you know people that are privy to you know early information, and you can call certain people and they'll know a little bit more about it. But you know, they'll officially publish that, and it usually is about this time of year.

SPEAKER_06 48:29

Yeah, Jim Ronquest is usually pretty good about sending stuff. He sure is. I guess you did really good in the stats class.

SPEAKER_01 48:41

I so I yeah, I I was kind of forced into it. I had a project um completely failed, a field project, uh, when I was working on my PhD. So instead of uh you know having to completely redo a field season and all of that, I started uh I started learning, you know, math and stats. And and that's that was it was a complete accident that I that I got into that, but I I actually I'm one of those weirdos that just kind of loved it. Uh I love that.

SPEAKER_07 49:12

Yeah, that never happened to me. I'm I'm I'm glad that there are people that are really good at that.

SPEAKER_03 49:20

I was I was great at math, terrible at stats. I was kind of a weird combination. I love stats. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:26

So how let's would you take a moment and just what influenced you and made you decide to get into wildlife management or and specifically birding or bird management? Was is can you remember back to was there an event?

SPEAKER_01 49:44

You know, I I I grew up, you know, from basically the time I could walk going hunting and fishing with with uh you know my granddad and dad and uncle. Um so I I was always fascinated by the outdoors. And you know, I before I even knew what ecology or any of that was, you know, I was I was thinking about ecological questions like like all hunters and and fishermen do, you know, why is the deer over there and not over there? You know, why do the ducks pour in over there during this you know weather and and they pour in over there during this weather? And I just I got fascinated by those questions. And when uh when it it became evident uh in college that that you could you know make a career asking and answering those kinds of questions, I I got really interested in it at that point. Um and with with waterfowl uh you know, not not that any of the of the other research I've done on on non-waterfowl species is is any less important, but it it it's more meaningful to me personally. Um just because that's that's what kind of hooked me growing up was waterfowl hunting. Um so you know that's that's really when I had the opportunity to uh start doing more waterfowl research. Uh I jumped at it. And uh, you know, now that's uh that's that's almost exclusively what I'm doing right now is is working with uh various waterfowl groups.

SPEAKER_03 54:55

That's awesome. What can I ask what area? Because you talked about you know, all of us get imprinted as kids, and a lot of us get imprinted as kids. You know, everybody at this table, we've talked about those things imprinting the foreign we love, you know, the outdoors, not just hunting and fishing, but the whole piece. Was there, you know, you grew up in Mobile, right? Was there a particular area y'all went to as a kid that kind of just in kind of imprinted you the most that you just loved or were enthralled with? Because that lower Mobile River Delta so amazing, you know, and unique.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

It is. Um it's it's fantastic. Uh but for for us, we had uh we would go deer hunting a lot when I was younger up uh on near the Mississippi line and uh and outside a little town called Butler, Alabama.

SPEAKER_05 55:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Yeah. Um so we we I grew up grew up duck uh deer hunting there, and then uh there we met some friends who who we're still great friends with that that live in Arkansas and started duck hunting over there with them. I still try to make at least a trip down there uh every year. So so those those two places um you know are are where I really really got going. That's cool to know.

SPEAKER_03 56:12

Really is. I mean, Butler's not far from my heart, my homeboy from home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 56:17

Yeah. Chuck Sykes is from Butler. He sure is. Yep. Yeah. So what if you're a waterfowl hunter? What's your what do you like the best? Is it Arkansas flooded timber or is it uh something else?

SPEAKER_01 56:33

I man, I love I love being in Arkansas. That's uh, you know, standing there in the in the flooded timber watching the watching the world come to life, man. That's that's just that's just one of the coolest things there is. Magic. Um I I have I have enjoyed, I've been able to uh go shoot some sea ducks on uh Lake Ontario. That's that's a lot of fun. Completely different world. Um this this past year, uh we had a really good kind of mixed bag hunting a marsh right off of Lake Ontario. That was a lot of fun. Uh but yeah, I I think uh you know, just just going back down to Arkansas and standing in the timber is is is gotta be number one for me.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

Yeah, this isn't connected to just your research life. But um I it's shocking to me to go into the I've only done it once or twice, the like central flyaway, I guess it's called, and and hunt where there's not a tree or any water within miles of you and see just thousands of ducks flocking into these fields in dry fields. I mean, we just don't see it much at all around here. Is that something that's just uh evolved over time as they adapted to food sources? Or is that just always, you know, what's what's the deal with that?

SPEAKER_01 57:54

Yeah, so you hear a lot of people say, um, you know, because grasslands are are starting to disappear, uh that that habitat is is is disappearing faster than any others. And you you I I hear it all the time at some of the the duck meetings I go to, that ducks are grassland birds. Uh they breed in the grasslands and and they use them, you know, quite a bit. So it's uh, you know, they'll they'll find those rivers and and and you know holes there in the central central flyway. Um but when it's it's time to feed, you know, they're they know those grasslands are are providing. Uh and that's just that's just where they go. You know, there's I I guess that's uh a better food source than any of the aquatic vegetation around uh and more plentiful.

SPEAKER_03 58:41

You know, it's probably safer because it's in the wide open, so hard to hide. I know people are good at hauling the trailers out there and setting up something to try to be disappearing out there, but it's such it's you know it spreads out the risk for them so much more than being concentrated around water. I guess I just wondered if it's just evolved more over time or if it's always been like that. Who knows?

SPEAKER_04 59:03

I don't know. First, I mean I've seen it 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 59:05

It's crazy, I'll say that for me. I agree.

SPEAKER_04 59:09

The first time I saw it.

SPEAKER_03 59:10

Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, you know, Louisiana to go out there and see that was crazy.

SPEAKER_04 59:15

Well, you know, I sometimes you get like you can catch turkey dusting because you can see the dust rising when the whole field is dusty and rising. It is wild watching them dry feed.

SPEAKER_06 59:26

So, Orrin, uh 30 something years ago, when I first showed up over here, the Toxie would talk about black ducks. Wow, we got a lot of black ducks. I kept hearing that.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

Well, we just have a bunch rod around here.

SPEAKER_06 59:38

And and through the years, they've it's just like it's rare to see one now. It's not common, I wouldn't say. Is that experience going on in other parts of say the Mississippi flyway? It seems like what you described, y'all have got an abundance of them in the northeast.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Yeah, in the in the northeast, that's that's where the main bulk of the population is, and they'll go, you know, some of them maybe make it as far down as Florida down the east coast, but they they kind of overwinter that Chesapeake area, maybe a little further south. Um you know, and we have there there'll day there will be days in uh in Ithaca there where I'll see just as many black ducks as I do mallards. Um but further west, you know, Ohio's about as far west as we see a large uh number of them. Um they they are definitely more rare in the uh Mississippi flyway. Um but you you do get them every now and then uh around. Yeah, what a cool but it's yeah, they're they're they're in the eBird.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:46

They really are. I always enjoy whenever we see them. Guys, what else we need to be asking him?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:55

In his position and all his not only what all he's done and learned, but his ability to access it, I mean we could come up with questions all day.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:03

I gotta tell you, eBird's fascinating. I've just got exposed to it today, and I am I've already looked up quail, black ducks, uh pintails. We need to go to India and hunt pentails, apparently, because they got a heck of a stock of them over there. Where is India?

SPEAKER_06 1:01:17

So, Orin, um, is that so if I go to the app store, is uh is eBird free? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:25

Yes, you will have to create an account, but everything is free. All they want's your data, Bobby. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:34

All your secret uh canvas back holes. Yeah, you can't wait to try it out.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:38

So you it's really cool. Y'all have got a million e-bird users. How many Merlin users? Is that something you can share? Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Uh quite a bit more. Um, that's awesome. Gosh, I think it's in the 30 to 40 million. Oh, well, that's getting close to that number that you were talking about. Oh, it is, yeah. 37 million.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:57

But you the casual spend time in the woods person that's not even a serious bird watcher, is like us. I mean, it is so fascinating to sit there.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

You know what it helps the the unintended consequence, which is a good one of Merlin to me, is someone's in the woods, especially hunters, we're out there, and you know, it's kind of a slow day, like Dudley said. You know, it turns a slow day into a way to kind of connect with nature better. A hundred percent. Because when it forces you to go, look at that, and if you hear the noise and it pops up right away. Well, kind of it is it's just I don't know, there's something kind of draws you into your connection with the woods that day that you would not have otherwise wouldn't have. It's that's one of the really cool things about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:41

Oh, it'll make me stay longer. Yeah, I mean it will.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:44

And I know I hit on this earlier, but I mean, I'm just so thankful for the Merlin app because like people, you know, just sitting in their backyard. I know it happened more during COVID, and they're like, Well, I want a new hobby or something. And they find the Merlin app, and all of a sudden they're they're interested in the birds, but then they become interested in attracting more.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:04

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:05

And you know, they learn that that's past, you know, bird feeders are great, but they learn that there's more to it than that. And and then they start improving their yard to see and hear more birds, you know. How can that be anything but an awesome thing? That is great.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:20

Here's the oddball question, but is there a surely there's something out there that's kind of like a Bluetooth speaker in reverse, so that like you had it by your bird feeder and it was picking up sound to your phone or your app? Surely there's something like that out there. My point is saying that, so you're actually visually seeing the bird and watching it and and kind of connecting all those dots. We need to invent that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

There, there are those, there's some commercially available um you know sound recorders uh that kind of run a similar algorithm to Merlin that you can put anywhere. Um, so I just pulled up the numbers. We there are 42.1 million Merlin users. That's incredible. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:04

That's got to be one of the most popular apps in the whole country. I would think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:08

There were uh 11 and a half million users just in June. Wonder how that compares to Angular. Holy cow.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:16

If you're not using it, you're missing out out there. I would agree. I agree. Look, Orn, I I I want to ask you about uh are you paying attention to uh what Dr. Phil Lavretsky and the game farm mallard genetic research that's going on? Is that something you're paying attention to?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

Yes. Um I have uh I have chatted with him. We're we're working on some stuff together, uh, where in eBird we can see that in certain areas mallards don't act like typical ducks. Uh particularly if you look in the Mississippi flyway up north around the Great Lakes region, uh you see you know less mallard movement, you see more mallards in urban areas, more mallards staying put instead of migrating, things like that. And when uh when when I talked to Phil about this, he got really excited, uh, basically saying, well, that's where the bulk of the game farm mallards are coming from. You know, so that that kind of ties in with other research that's been done where where they put GPS trackers on mallards and then done the DNA so they could watch them while knowing what their um what their genetic makeup was. And it shows the same exact thing that you know game farm, the more game farm ancestry a bird has, uh essentially the lazier it is. You know, it doesn't migrate much, it doesn't move much during the day, it tends to hang out in in urban areas, and we can actually pick up that signal with eBird. So, you know, we uh we're looking at different areas uh with with him, you know, kind of combining this this knowledge that they're generating of where the most uh game farm mallard ancestry is coming from, and then where those ducks are behaving like game farm mallards uh that we can pick out in eBird. And uh we're we're definitely working on some some stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:21

Yeah, one attribute you didn't I think you didn't mention that I think he just vetted is they're much less successful in nesting too and raising babies, which is a terrible thing on top of all the other things you just mentioned. Right. Yeah, we're really paying attention to that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:37

Yeah, when we look in regions um like the uh you know lower Mississippi, alluvial valley uh versus up north uh in the Mississippi flyway, uh you don't see nearly as much uh in eBird, you don't see the behavior of a game farm mallard. You see mallards acting like ducks, or like you would expect ducks, that the habitats they're using, their movements, things like that. And that uh, you know, that kind of hangs with what uh the duck DNA project is seeing as well, right? So the mallards that migrate down that far are the ones that weren't game farm mallards, they weren't the lazy ones that state put. Right. Uh they're the ones that are acting like like you expect a duck to act.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:21

Why don't we do this? Guys, y'all think about if you got one last question. Let's do a Richie, why don't you ask him a trivia? All right. Let's see how he does with that. Uh here we go. So, Orrin, if you if you lose the trivia, we get to come up there and go hunt sea ducks with you. All right. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:40

Uh sea duck hunting's fun now.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:42

I would love to go do that. Shoot a is it a scotter, scooter? Scooter, that's a scoter. Scooter.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:47

That's what he was talking about earlier. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:49

Yeah, scoters and and long-tailed ducks up there. Uh how big are they, by the way? How big are they compared to, say, a mallard? Scooter is is uh about mallard size, maybe a little bigger.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:01

Uh, and the long-tailed ducks are a little smaller. I thought they'd I just think of sea ducks being bigger than our average duck, but maybe not.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:09

What looks interesting to me is that you is they're flying so low across the water you can see if you're shooting behind them or in front of them or lead them more! Yeah, you can get an idea of what uh what mistake you're behind them, Bobby.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

Yeah, we hunted them back in the day for when we were doing DU. Yeah. And we had to fight off uh seals. Oh, when you shoot them, uh the seals were no, the seals were trying to get our win our blind.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:32

Oh, really? How did you fight off the seals?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:34

I guess I was being a little animated with that. That's okay. But uh, yeah, no, they wanted up in the blind we were at. You know, it was a rock outcropping. Yeah. And so we were actually like in their sunbathing spot. Did you have to give them the boot? So we kind of we had to, you know, we shoe it. We stood our ground, let's say.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:50

They holler at you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:52

So, all right, here we go. So we had a listener who, or I say a fan who watched an episode on YouTube, and thanks to Eli for pulling this for us. Oh, we're on YouTube, Eli.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:02

Eli is in the house today. Yes, sir. Nope, he said no.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:06

Clementine Ganey 5494. 50 excuse me, 5194, left a review. I never clicked on a video faster. I saw a Kalahabi lily in the thumbnail, and I could feel in my bones that Mr. Kyle was on today.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:22

Oh, Kalahabi. Cahaba. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:27

Out of way, Reggie. I shouldn't be able to Kalahabi. No, yeah. It's you it's Reginald. It's Reginald, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:34

My bad, Reginald.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:36

Yeah, and the peanut patch is our sponsor. Uh look, growing up in Mobile, I know you ate a lot of boiled peanuts, but can you find them up there in Ithaca, New York?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:45

You cannot. Um I I had on the way. Had a had a postdoc, um, Nick Masto, I'll shout him out here, uh, who did a lot of the waterfowl work with us, who's also from from the South, he's from South Carolina, and he would have his mom send green peanuts and he would boil them for us. Oh, they're good.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:05

We're gonna send you up. That's right. Our friends at the peanut patch. So all right, Richie. All right, here we go. We might have a sound effect to begin this one. Uh uh I know what this is. All right, Richie.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

All right, so here's our uh trivia. Uh Whipple Will and Chuck Will Willow's uh Chuck Will's widow schedule their young to hatch about ten days before blank, just in time for the bright nights when its parents can hunt moths from dust till dawn.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:41

Oh gosh, the uh I I would say the longest day of the year. Well would be my guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:47

It could be tied to that, maybe so uh just in time for the brightest nights when its parents can hunt uh from dust to dawn.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:57

So it's by the moon? Full moon, probably. Oh, my bad. There we go.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:02

I thought that was really interesting. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:04

So it's variable then, because I mean the moon phase is not at the same point every year at the same day. I guess.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:10

But they they time it up. Uh Orin, uh I mean, you probably know all about that. That's that's so fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:19

That was a that was a guess, and the first guess you got to do it. It was a very educated guess. I don't know a whole lot about it.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:29

Well, I wonder how they figure that out. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:32

I guess they look at it, but honey, it's time.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:37

Well, he you know, the the the whipper wheels and the all that are just so fascinating and they're so camouflaged. They look like they're dipped in bottom landing. Even their physiology is But they fly at night with these great big wide mouths gathering moths. And it just, you know, we were we learned about how the how many caterpillars it takes to raise some of these young, you know, 300 a day perhaps. And you just think about all the moths that they have to catch and how nature has let them align the birth of those babies so that they have the greatest ask uh re uh And you still don't think the moon phase affects deer movement. We're gonna have to ask Bronson about that.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:15

Yeah, we hadn't asked him about that yet.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:17

Yeah, we'll have to why didn't we ask him about that? It's just nature is just so amazing.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:20

We do we digress.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:21

Yeah, yeah. Orren, we've really enjoyed talking with you today. Yeah, thanks for being on.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:27

I I really appreciate it. I've had a great time.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:29

And so guys can go to their app store, I guess, and and type in eBird and download that?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:34

Yeah, or jump on jump on the I mean the website's fascinating. I mean, I've been sitting here clicking around on it the whole time. What's the website? eBird.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:43

eBird.org. Um, and from there you can get to uh you know the science page which uh which has those status and trends maps we've been talking about. You can watch the birds move around the move around the country or the the world really. Yeah, um India.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:00

We need to have a podcast in India on Penguins.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:02

Yet another reason to support your land grant institutions.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:06

Great point, Dudley.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:08

Um I doubt any of that stuff is monetized. Um, so yeah, good point.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:15

Well, all right, Oren, you got anything you need to say before we before we let you go?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:21

Uh no, just just thanks for uh thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:24

Absolutely. I appreciate it. Thank you a lot of times I say thank you for your service. You definitely fit that category.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:30

Sure. It's fascinating what you guys do. And we're not going to let Chris Wood off the hook. We're going to get him on here at some point to go a little deeper into Merlin with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:40

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:40

He can he's definitely the one. Oh, that sounds good. All right, guys. Well, uh look, we always learn something when we decide about it. Yeah, now we find out we are citizen scientists. Oh, I like that. We can be. We can be if you can. I like your new title, don't you? Yeah, well, I want to help.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:56

That's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:57

You can go out to your little wildflower patch at the Ponderosa and You know they say it'll help the environment better than anything if you get on the fishing app and give them your fishing locations and I think that'd be very you should do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:12

Share them with me first. Check them and be sure they're good for everybody else.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:17

Yeah, well, we'll we'll consider that.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:19

All right. I'm looking around the room. Why don't you say goodbye, Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Richie.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:25

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Game Keeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Game Keeper Farming for Wildlife magazine, and don't miss the Mafio Properties Fistful of Dirt podcast with my good buddy, Ronnie Cut Strickland.