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Speaker 1: stories of things we simply don't know the answer too. Well.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: I am Steve as usual, joined by Joe. All right,
Speaker 1: I thought Joe was going at their honey. Sorry. Well,
Speaker 1: this week we have yet another mystery to talk about,
Speaker 1: as we do every week, and this week we are
Speaker 1: going to cover a ornithological mystery. It's a bird mystery,
Speaker 1: a mystery most foul. Yeah, it's gonna happen. Happen, can't help.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be good. Let's got the funds out of
Speaker 1: the way. Now, I don't really have any What we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about is we're gonna talk about Washington's eagle.
Speaker 1: But wait, Steve, what did anybody suggest this story? Why? Indeed, Joe,
Speaker 1: they did. This is well scripted dialogue for having right now. Yep,
Speaker 1: this was suggested. This was suggested by Nick quite a
Speaker 1: while back. I've actually been looking into this one on
Speaker 1: and off for the last gosh two years now. So
Speaker 1: thanks to Nick for sending in the suggestion, and also
Speaker 1: a couple of thanks. I want to thank both Alyssa
Speaker 1: and Alec. They were experts that I consulted with for
Speaker 1: this episode. And then, though she probably doesn't listen, phoebe
Speaker 1: over at the Rare book room at the Multlama County
Speaker 1: Library because she helped me out a bunch took. Thanks
Speaker 1: and Alec. Yeah, so let's tell you what the mystery
Speaker 1: is in the briefest, and then we'll start diving into
Speaker 1: the details. The mystery itself is that in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: six John James Audubon, Yes, that Audubon recorded a large
Speaker 1: sea eagle, which he named Falco Washingtony bird of Washington
Speaker 1: is what that's is in his book The Birds of America.
Speaker 1: The problem is that no one has seen that bird since,
Speaker 1: and other than Audubon's paintings and a few other people's accounts,
Speaker 1: there's no real physical evidence of this bird ever having existed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird, and he only painted it once. Right on
Speaker 1: painting of it. He has one painting from one specimen
Speaker 1: that he had. He's cited it multiple times, but he
Speaker 1: only did the one. But we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the Birds of America and he and there he typically
Speaker 1: only did each bird one time, so it's not surprising
Speaker 1: that there's only one agreed. Okay, So let's back up
Speaker 1: the beginning where the order of events are gonna go
Speaker 1: here tonight is we're gonna talk about Audubon. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about his book The Birds of America, and finally eagles
Speaker 1: in general, and then the Washington eagle. That way, it
Speaker 1: kind of all makes sense. Okay. I know I'm weird
Speaker 1: that way to start with Audubon. Excuse me. I've been
Speaker 1: to the Audubon Society, and I consider myself an expert. Okay,
Speaker 1: not really, what is that? Me? Go ahead. I was
Speaker 1: just with autom On Society like two weeks ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have old Audubon books at my house. We're all experts.
Speaker 1: Birds outside. Can we keep going? Okay, thank you. In
Speaker 1: five Audubon was born, though at that time his name
Speaker 1: was genre Beane, and he was born in the French
Speaker 1: colony of I really hope I get this right. Let's Kas,
Speaker 1: which is in modern day Haiti. The French were everywhere,
Speaker 1: just like the English and the Spanish, and it was
Speaker 1: one of their colonies. Of course, Audubon was one of
Speaker 1: many children that his father, Jean Audubon, had sired. It
Speaker 1: just happened to be that his mother was one of
Speaker 1: John's mistresses, which technically makes him a bastard, which is
Speaker 1: only important much later on in our story in terms
Speaker 1: of something to prove. But the short version of his
Speaker 1: life is that he moved from Haiti to France to
Speaker 1: live with his father and his father's wife, and then
Speaker 1: eventually he left France and he moved to the United
Speaker 1: States in order to avoid serving in the Napoleonic Wars.
Speaker 1: And when he got to the US, he changed his
Speaker 1: name from genrebine to John James Audubon so that it
Speaker 1: didn't sound so freend and shoot, because there was a
Speaker 1: little bit of an anti French sentiment at the time.
Speaker 1: There was. Yeah, So after moving here in eighteen oh three,
Speaker 1: Audubon tries his hand at several different occupations and businesses,
Speaker 1: as as many men of the era, semiwealthy young men
Speaker 1: of the time. Did I believe we called that a
Speaker 1: renaissance man. That might be one of the words that
Speaker 1: you could want phrases. It kind of depends, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're like you know, usually it's more
Speaker 1: like just odd jobs. Well, yeah, a lot of different occupations.
Speaker 1: He failed that. A lot of occupations is a great
Speaker 1: way to say it, because that's what it was. Through
Speaker 1: most of his life. Audubon was a lover of nature,
Speaker 1: and he spent a great deal of time walking around
Speaker 1: and studying what he saw and it and occasionally shooting
Speaker 1: it um and he said his preference was for birds
Speaker 1: above all. Else Where he had always drawn what he
Speaker 1: saw in nature, and he continued to do that when
Speaker 1: he got to the States, though at that time it
Speaker 1: was a hobby. It wasn't as if it was an occupation.
Speaker 1: For him though, you know, like some a lot of
Speaker 1: people do with their hobbies, he traveled to see different
Speaker 1: birds in different parts of the country, so it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was really involved hobby. He likes his birds,
Speaker 1: he did. Audubon was a skilled artist. He initially did
Speaker 1: a lot of his work with charcoals and pencils. He
Speaker 1: did later learn to paint, which was how we get
Speaker 1: a lot of the images that are in the Birds
Speaker 1: of America. They were paintings originally, we should should we
Speaker 1: specify that The Birds of America is a book paintings
Speaker 1: of yes and a field guide that's further in. Okay, Sorry,
Speaker 1: you've just referred to it a couple of times when
Speaker 1: I realized, no, it's okay. The brief version is John
Speaker 1: James Audubon. He makes a giant folio book which is
Speaker 1: called The Birds of America, which is a catalog of
Speaker 1: paintings of birds that he did in this country. It's
Speaker 1: also got some other associal a text with it that
Speaker 1: he did later on. The one that I saw that was,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing at least a hundred years old, was a
Speaker 1: five volume set of just writings and no images. A lot.
Speaker 1: But if you have a copy of Birds of America
Speaker 1: laying around. Uh, please send it to us. I'll give
Speaker 1: you the post office box. At the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: we'll take it off your hands. Yeah, it would totally
Speaker 1: do that for you. We're givers like that. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: those things are worth like what nothing. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: why they should send them to us. Okay, that's all right, No,
Speaker 1: so um so he's he's doing his art. He also
Speaker 1: eventually he learns taxidermy, which is really important for him
Speaker 1: because it's the early eighteen hundreds and the only way
Speaker 1: that you can get an animal that you can paint
Speaker 1: or draw or study is by killing it, by shooting it.
Speaker 1: It's not the conservation era like it is today. And
Speaker 1: I know that that sounds very contrary to the Audubon
Speaker 1: Society that most people know today, But again, this was
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, completely different critter in the Audubon
Speaker 1: society wasn't something that started until I think nineteen o five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't think too many people don't know that
Speaker 1: that Audubon was an avid bird shooter. He loved to
Speaker 1: shoot birds, that's what he did. That's how he got
Speaker 1: his specimens. Well, it wasn't just say, even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't for specimens six, he really liked to shoot birds.
Speaker 1: And if you look at at the birds and in
Speaker 1: the Birds of America, you'll see that every one of
Speaker 1: them has a bullet hole in it. Now you're just
Speaker 1: making okay, number two being for Devon. Okay, So back
Speaker 1: to Audubon. So he goes on. He goes about living
Speaker 1: his life and painting birds, and then in eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: he started doing the paintings for what he would eventually
Speaker 1: call The Birds of America. It was you know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't a rich guy, so he couldn't just fund this
Speaker 1: project himself. So he had to get investors. But he
Speaker 1: couldn't find any investors in the States. So what he
Speaker 1: does instead is, after he exhausts the investors in the
Speaker 1: States and they won't give him any cash, he goes
Speaker 1: to Europe. He winds and dines a few people and
Speaker 1: they agreed to invest in the book. The book is
Speaker 1: published not as a single volume, but instead it is
Speaker 1: done and under a subscription basis, and it is the
Speaker 1: images and all of the stuff that's associated with it
Speaker 1: comes out between eighteen twenty seven and eighteen thirty eight. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a great way to fund it because you
Speaker 1: know it's expensive. Because here's the thing about the Birds
Speaker 1: of America. I am not exaggerated when I say it
Speaker 1: is a huge book. It is gigantic. So here's the
Speaker 1: dimensions on the images themselves. They're thirty nine by twenty
Speaker 1: six inches, which in metric is ninety nine by six centimeters.
Speaker 1: That's a big page. And I mean you could literally
Speaker 1: use it for a coffee table. You could. Um, God,
Speaker 1: what is the term. It wasn't the it wasn't the elephant.
Speaker 1: It was something like the double pack of Derm edition
Speaker 1: or something like that is what they called it. Because
Speaker 1: it was so big it was it was real. I
Speaker 1: saw that. I was like, why oh, because it's such
Speaker 1: a huge stinking book. Um. Now, the great thing about
Speaker 1: doing something that size is it allowed Audubon to present
Speaker 1: the birds that he was painting at true scale, it
Speaker 1: life size scale, so little songbirds were at their normal size.
Speaker 1: Something like the Washington's eagle was actually at scale or
Speaker 1: dang near scale, because he had so much room for it. Actually,
Speaker 1: even even that I looked that big, I think the
Speaker 1: Washington's ego might have been just a hair tooo big.
Speaker 1: I think I just realized. Actually Washington Eagle was a
Speaker 1: bad example, but there are quite a few birds. Almost
Speaker 1: all of them are at scale because he used a
Speaker 1: grid system for his his paintings and then a grid
Speaker 1: in front of what he was painting to keep everything
Speaker 1: scale proportionately. So he was trying to do it as
Speaker 1: accurately as possible, which is great. Yea. When the book
Speaker 1: was done, it had it used four hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five plates, which for anybody who doesn't know how the
Speaker 1: printing process works, to use a plate to press the
Speaker 1: black ink into the page. And so there was four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five individual images and once they were
Speaker 1: printed in black and white, then they were hand water colored.
Speaker 1: So that was how all of those were done, which
Speaker 1: is part of the reason it took so long. Were
Speaker 1: so damned expensive. Yeah, So that's that's what the Birds
Speaker 1: of America, the book itself, that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: the history on it and what Audubon was doing. He
Speaker 1: said that his intention was to literally catalog every bird
Speaker 1: in this nation if he could, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: eleven years, that's a lot of time and trying elevel
Speaker 1: in painting and hunting, literally hunting four specimens. Moving forward,
Speaker 1: that then brings us to the time that he showed
Speaker 1: the world Washington's eagle. Audubon said he observed the bird
Speaker 1: total of five times in nature and took one specimen,
Speaker 1: and he shot, He shot one, he shot, killed, and stuffed.
Speaker 1: He said that he felt the bird was noble and
Speaker 1: reflected the character of the first US president, so he
Speaker 1: named the bird after him. That's why it's got the
Speaker 1: name Washington. And here's what his writing say. It is
Speaker 1: indisputably the noblest bird of its genus that has yet
Speaker 1: been discovered in the United States. I shot it, that's
Speaker 1: not in this text. Think I trust I shall be
Speaker 1: allowed to honor with the name of one yet nobler,
Speaker 1: who is the savior of his country, and whose name
Speaker 1: will ever be dear to it. To those who may
Speaker 1: be curious to know my reason, I can only say that,
Speaker 1: as the new World gave me birth and liberty, the
Speaker 1: great man who endured ensured its independence is next to
Speaker 1: my heart. He had a nobility of mind and a
Speaker 1: generosity of soul such as here seldom possessed. He was brave,
Speaker 1: so was the eagle like it too. He was the
Speaker 1: terror of his foes at his fame, extending from pole
Speaker 1: to pole, resembles the majestic soarings of the mightiest of
Speaker 1: the feathered tribe. If America has reason to be proud
Speaker 1: of her Washington, so has she to be proud of
Speaker 1: her great Eagle. It's a long way to say. He
Speaker 1: really liked this bird. He like the president too, apparently yea, well,
Speaker 1: Washington was dead, so no, he couldn't impress Washington. Washington
Speaker 1: was long gone at this point. Could have been one
Speaker 1: of those like, no, really, I love America. That's very true.
Speaker 1: Could have been. Audubon says that he saw the eagle
Speaker 1: five times over a series of years. He saw first
Speaker 1: on the Mississippi or first on the Mississippi and Ohio
Speaker 1: rivers near Grand Tower, Illinois, then near Evansville, Indiana, Henderson, Kentucky, Clarksville, Indiana,
Speaker 1: and then Mound City, Illinois. It was the bird that
Speaker 1: he saw in Kentucky. That's the one that he shot.
Speaker 1: He said that he saw somebody had slaughtered pigs, I
Speaker 1: think earlier that day or the day before, something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was it was going after the scraps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as eagles will do. And so he happened to be
Speaker 1: there with his gun and he got himself a sample.
Speaker 1: Poor eagle, Poor eagle. I gotta say, if this thing
Speaker 1: really truly did exist and it's he might have shot
Speaker 1: one of the last existing specimens possibly could be. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so the sample, the or the snut sample, the specimen
Speaker 1: the bird that Audubon shot and then dubbed the Washington eagle.
Speaker 1: This particular bird was really big. The dimensions on this
Speaker 1: animal are that it stood three ft seven inches tall,
Speaker 1: that converts to a hundred and sixteen centimeters, and it
Speaker 1: had a wingspan of ten ft two inches, which is
Speaker 1: just about three meters. So to put that in that's big.
Speaker 1: And to put that into contact with another big bird
Speaker 1: that most people have seen, if not in person, you've
Speaker 1: seen an imagery and on the television, is the ball leagle,
Speaker 1: which is the national bird of the United States. The
Speaker 1: ball leagle on average stands somewhere between two ft four
Speaker 1: inches to three ft four inches, which is seventy two
Speaker 1: hundred and two centimeters tall, and as a typical wingspan
Speaker 1: between five ft ten inches to seven ft six inches,
Speaker 1: which converts to one point eight or two point three meters.
Speaker 1: Like that's a significant difference between those. The size of
Speaker 1: these two creatures, it's still not as big as the
Speaker 1: California condor, though you didn't bring another bird in. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it's the biggest bird ever. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: their wingspans get the average nine point eight feet, which
Speaker 1: is three meters. For those of you who are wondering, beat,
Speaker 1: I think this is an average you're right, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: about the same size as a condo. Yeah, it's about
Speaker 1: the same size, which huge, Yeah, which are absolutely big birds. Now,
Speaker 1: what's really interesting about the specimen that Audubon had is
Speaker 1: he said that it was a male bird, and when
Speaker 1: it comes to eagles, the males of the species are
Speaker 1: the smaller of the two sexes, which means that the
Speaker 1: females would have been even larger most most birds. Actually, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that typically is the way it is in uh them, Actually,
Speaker 1: with like a lot of species, Well, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say, well, I don't I can't think
Speaker 1: of what the division is, but there is certain animal
Speaker 1: kingdoms where it is the female is the larger of
Speaker 1: the two, and there are others where it is the
Speaker 1: male And I don't understand why that is. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that that is a huge, long conversation and investigation that
Speaker 1: I just don't have the brain powerful I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that. I don't. Yeah, I'm I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that's not it. Um Okay, So let's get back to
Speaker 1: the Washington eagle, because there's a couple of more things
Speaker 1: that he describes that are unusual. One is that he
Speaker 1: describes the tarsus of the bird as having uniform scaling,
Speaker 1: which tarsus is the bones and the feet. He's talking
Speaker 1: about the skin on the bird's feet, because if you
Speaker 1: look at like normal eagles, they've got some really big
Speaker 1: scales up the front of each toe, and then they're
Speaker 1: kind of their scales all over the foot, whereas if
Speaker 1: you look like a songbird, it's got kind of pebbly
Speaker 1: skin or like chickens. They they're the skin on their
Speaker 1: feet almost looked like it has rings to it. So
Speaker 1: it's a different skin type. And this uniform pattern that
Speaker 1: he describes doesn't match up with any other eagle that
Speaker 1: is known, doesn't match up with another type of bird.
Speaker 1: I have not seen that description on any bird of prey.
Speaker 1: Because if you think about it. A bird of prey
Speaker 1: uses its feet to catch living animals that are likely
Speaker 1: to thrash and fight back, so it needs some defenses there.
Speaker 1: Ok that doesn't mean that there aren't big birds that
Speaker 1: have uniformally um scaled feet, but I didn't see a
Speaker 1: whole lot on that in the bird of prey, for
Speaker 1: I mean, condors have Sorry, I'm just gonna keep going.
Speaker 1: They have that like kind of scaly. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: scavengers mostly, so they have that kind of scaly type
Speaker 1: the big scales on the little scales more like pebbly
Speaker 1: like the songbird birds. Can I mean, would you describe
Speaker 1: that as that's pebbly, right, I would, Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of pebbly. Yeah, just saying yep, continuing to say,
Speaker 1: and you're looking at the California California, which are super
Speaker 1: rare and endangered. Just going to throw that out there.
Speaker 1: Don't go playing Audubon and like shooting one. Really don't
Speaker 1: do that. I really don't do that anyway. Sorry, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good example of formulating a bird that would
Speaker 1: have the kind of feet. But they are they're scavengers,
Speaker 1: they're not really hunters. They're not they're not birds fish
Speaker 1: as a primary source of their food. Yeah, Okay. Audubon
Speaker 1: decides that the Washington eagle is what is known as
Speaker 1: a sea eagle, which puts it in the genus God.
Speaker 1: I hope I get this right as well, Hayley. A
Speaker 1: TuS is how I have phonetically written, So we're going
Speaker 1: to run with that. In that family are birds like
Speaker 1: the bald eagle. There's the white bellied sea eagle in Australia,
Speaker 1: Asian palace fish eagle, or the white tailed eagle in Eurasia.
Speaker 1: There's eight species in this family, and the commonality is
Speaker 1: that they tend to have white plumage on them, but
Speaker 1: it's not always in the same place because they're literally
Speaker 1: scattered all over the globe and they're generally the same
Speaker 1: size these birds roughly. Yeah, they're all larger birds, large
Speaker 1: birds of prey. It's definitely not play. They're not birds
Speaker 1: of play. I mean they kind of are. They probably
Speaker 1: play when they're not too busy killing things. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've reached my slaughter quota for the day. Let's
Speaker 1: play bird. Yes, I mean, you know, writing the what
Speaker 1: are they? What they what are they called? Right right
Speaker 1: in the Yeah, the plumes of hot air. Ye remember columns,
Speaker 1: the thermals, the thermals. There you go writing the thermals
Speaker 1: has to be a lot of fun. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1: That's a really long Actually, they're probably they're they're just
Speaker 1: like sitting there, like going up and up, and if
Speaker 1: they I'm really getting over, I'm not even flapping wild wings.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's what they think. Okay, So all sea
Speaker 1: eagles basically the same size. They're they're roughly all the
Speaker 1: same size within you know, within a spread. They all,
Speaker 1: as I said, they all hunt for their food. Primarily
Speaker 1: they get it out of the water. So they hunt
Speaker 1: and feed on fish. Now, if we think about bald
Speaker 1: eagles in particular, they they're semi scavengers, semi bullybirds. They
Speaker 1: don't care if they find the fish already dead or
Speaker 1: they're also pro known to chase other birds away. Like
Speaker 1: osprey will catch a fish and the bald eagles will
Speaker 1: harass them so much that they'll leave the fish behind
Speaker 1: to get away. Ye. I actually saw that happen right
Speaker 1: out here in Ross Island one time. I saw a
Speaker 1: couple of bald eagles going after an osprey. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are also really good at catching fish. Are much better
Speaker 1: than bald eagles. Yea there. I mean they'll also the
Speaker 1: other that they're like most birds of prey. They'll also
Speaker 1: eat mammals. So they are really opportunistic. If there is
Speaker 1: a meal to be had and it is easy to get,
Speaker 1: they will get it. That is their plan, that is
Speaker 1: their method. That's that's what I hear. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like in place it's like Alaska where bald eagles are thick.
Speaker 1: You can't let your catty, your dog out because they
Speaker 1: will carry it away. I actually had friends who this
Speaker 1: was twenty plus years ago, worked in a cannary and
Speaker 1: said that the place was just lousy with bald eagles
Speaker 1: around the canny. You couldn't get rid of them because
Speaker 1: they were just scavenging because we just made it way
Speaker 1: too each Yeah, oh yeah, it was easy. It was
Speaker 1: easy lunch, easy dinner. Why would you leave? So something
Speaker 1: that we should note about the description of the eagle
Speaker 1: from Audubon, then this will go because I know lot
Speaker 1: of people. Now, Devon, You've got a bunch of people thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was the California condor he was
Speaker 1: looking at. Except there's the there's a region thing going
Speaker 1: on here, because there's California condor, which you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But when Audubon first observed this bird, it was on
Speaker 1: the north Mississippi, and he was with a trapper who
Speaker 1: told him that the bird was rare, and it was
Speaker 1: known to obviously hunt fish, but also to follow hunters
Speaker 1: the scavenge. But it was mainly known to be in
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes and kind of the larger northeastern continental
Speaker 1: United States on the Mississippi, the Ohios, you know, to
Speaker 1: Kentucky obviously, where Audubon got his specimen from, Like it
Speaker 1: lived in that region, which is a much more colder
Speaker 1: climate than you would find with the California condor. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do want to keep in mind we're talking the trade,
Speaker 1: right right, I mean right some years ago. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep going back to Califor a condor.
Speaker 1: They found bones of the condor in like Florida, they
Speaker 1: found bones like up pretty far north. And again that's
Speaker 1: probably from like five hundred years ago, not two hundred.
Speaker 1: But humans have had a lot to do with the
Speaker 1: diminishment of ranges of most many creatures, almost everything really,
Speaker 1: and so I just I want to continue to frame
Speaker 1: that we are talking two hundred years ago and that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to seriously argue it's California condor because
Speaker 1: they don't look anything like eagles, but I am going
Speaker 1: to say that, like, I want to keep that in mind. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I got you totally, totally. And when we get into theories,
Speaker 1: which is going to happen shortly, Yeah, that's when we'll
Speaker 1: get into That's when we can have a lot of
Speaker 1: that discussion because that does play into a lot of
Speaker 1: the theories, which there are not that many theories, but
Speaker 1: there is a lot of stuff in them. So let's uh,
Speaker 1: there's just a little bit here that I have to
Speaker 1: go through, and then we'll get into the theories. Because
Speaker 1: so far, nothing that I've told people, for the most part,
Speaker 1: about the Washington Eagle really makes it sound much different
Speaker 1: than the Bald eagle except for maybe some coloring things.
Speaker 1: Except I haven't told you the whole story. First, Audubon
Speaker 1: was basically, as I said, the only one to officially
Speaker 1: record seeing one of these eagles, so that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Based on his accounts, though, it was unlike its cousins,
Speaker 1: and it didn't have any white plumage. Well, you said
Speaker 1: it was a male. The one that he shot was
Speaker 1: a male. Yes, I was just gonna say. Female bald
Speaker 1: eagles are brown bald eagles. No, the coloring does not
Speaker 1: depend on the sex you maybe, yeah, you're thinking the
Speaker 1: wrong bird. No, no, no, I want to. I want
Speaker 1: everybody to hear what a foul error you made. Okay,
Speaker 1: but so no so that Yeah, it kind of does.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that it doesn't have any
Speaker 1: of that white plumage. Uh. The third problem, of course,
Speaker 1: as I said, is there's no surviving specimens because the
Speaker 1: few that supposedly existed have either been lost, destroyed by
Speaker 1: time and poor storage, or maybe fires. The fourth problem
Speaker 1: is from the description that Audubon gave other than the
Speaker 1: size of the bird, hit matches a pretty well with
Speaker 1: a juvenile bald eagle, which yeah, and we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into the bald egle thing because the golden
Speaker 1: eagle I don't think is the right size, but neither
Speaker 1: is the bald eagle. Lastly, the other thing that you
Speaker 1: will see in the reading about this is the fact
Speaker 1: that Audubon did identify several birds, several new species that
Speaker 1: in fact didn't exist, so he may have possibly occasionally
Speaker 1: just kind of made it up as he went along.
Speaker 1: There's a possibility that he may have fudged it a
Speaker 1: couple of times. No, that's not that's not it doesn't work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was that time the locals brought in that that thing.
Speaker 1: It was a weird bird that had like the beaver
Speaker 1: head and everything, and and uh, they were totally punking
Speaker 1: was April fools, but he put it in the book. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Joe's made up with the Jackalopa birds. Essentially, there's what
Speaker 1: he's done. Um, it would be the beaver well done. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that is all of our story, and we should
Speaker 1: probably go ahead and get into theories. We should probably
Speaker 1: fly right into that, but we're going to take a
Speaker 1: nest for a minute and have a word from our sponsors.
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Speaker 1: We're gonna get pecking again. Oh god, Okay, do you
Speaker 1: guys really worked on this. It didn't even occur to
Speaker 1: me to build up a whole stock of bad bird
Speaker 1: metaphors bad Yeah, and you actually got results? Kidding. That's
Speaker 1: what the internet is made of, is that? So I
Speaker 1: didn't need the internet? Okay, okay, So let's get into theories.
Speaker 1: We're getting into the theory. Number one. Theory number one
Speaker 1: is the Washington Eagle wasn't real. Just no, it just
Speaker 1: wasn't it. Basically. So here's here's what it is. Is.
Speaker 1: The reasons that this theory is around is that on
Speaker 1: Upon wasn't popular with everyone. I mean, he he was popular,
Speaker 1: but he had a lot of critics. And some of
Speaker 1: those critics work his contemporaries, and some of them are
Speaker 1: modern day critics, you know, I mean, viewed through the
Speaker 1: lens of time, He's he's revered as this great man,
Speaker 1: but you know that happens to all these people at
Speaker 1: his time, he was just a regular guy who had
Speaker 1: foibles in his personality, and some people liked him and
Speaker 1: some people didn't. And the people who didn't went after
Speaker 1: him because of that, because he could self aggrandize and
Speaker 1: he could sound like he was exaggerating, and that rub
Speaker 1: people the wrong ways. Sometimes century flame wars, yes, and
Speaker 1: they were literal, you know, they're they're that writing in
Speaker 1: publication kind of flame war that we see all through history.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of guys that didn't like him. We're
Speaker 1: writing articles in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History, and this
Speaker 1: is between eighteen one and eighteen thirty five, just just
Speaker 1: slamming him, and in parts at times they would later
Speaker 1: on go to talk about Washington's eagle. They didn't like him.
Speaker 1: This is today known as the iTunes review. Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me about it. Hello. You know, so for everybody that's
Speaker 1: listening to this episode and you want to give us
Speaker 1: a low iTunes rating, please do so through Loudens Magazine
Speaker 1: of Natural History and iTunes will receive it and log
Speaker 1: it appropriately. Agreed to House dot gov and just make
Speaker 1: some threats. Okay, So, those like I said, they accused
Speaker 1: him of a lot of things, one of which was
Speaker 1: they said he was sloppy in his work, that his
Speaker 1: measurements were bad. And obviously this bird was just a
Speaker 1: juvenile bald eagle that just happened to be big, just
Speaker 1: happened to be a big juvenile. That happens. So it's
Speaker 1: funny you say that, because the juvenile bald eagle technically,
Speaker 1: in its wingspan is larger than the adult by a
Speaker 1: little bit, and it just happens to be because of
Speaker 1: the shapes of the long you know, the long wings
Speaker 1: on the long feathers on the wings that come around
Speaker 1: at the tips. They have a slight curve to him
Speaker 1: that adds just a little bit more and it makes
Speaker 1: its wingspan a little bit longer than or wider than
Speaker 1: that of the adult, but not significantly, not by the
Speaker 1: matter of feet. No, but I mean, yes, there are
Speaker 1: big and small versions of everything. I mean, we humans
Speaker 1: except their outliers there, you know, there are things that
Speaker 1: are there, are they're gonna They're always going to be
Speaker 1: birds that are bigger and birds that are smaller. And yes,
Speaker 1: it would have been extraordinary for that bird to be
Speaker 1: that big, but extraordinary things happen. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: humans that are what seven something tall, tall, what's the
Speaker 1: tallest team in that's ever existed, And then there are
Speaker 1: humans that are like three ft tall. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's a wide spectrum. You are right, as Joe said,
Speaker 1: there are outliers, and I cannot dispute that that could
Speaker 1: very well have been or it could have been that
Speaker 1: he was exposed to a little pile of radioactive plutonium
Speaker 1: and that made him grow bigger, because that's what radiation does.
Speaker 1: Eagle Man, that's why he was called Washington's Eagles, because
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good superhero name because he because he
Speaker 1: had the ruff old front of his shirt and instead
Speaker 1: of feathers. Yeah, no, this is not happening. So basically,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about the fact that this bird could
Speaker 1: have been an outlier, and they say that maybe it
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't an outlier. Actually, what they say is
Speaker 1: that he did bad measurements and that he padded things
Speaker 1: so that it looked more impressive when it was in
Speaker 1: his book, which plenty of people have done that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've there are so many examples of people making stuff
Speaker 1: up and writing it in a book and then being
Speaker 1: called out later on and people finding out, oh, that
Speaker 1: didn't happen. This isn't actually the memoir of so and so.
Speaker 1: You made all that stuff up see Oprah, not Oprah,
Speaker 1: but the person that was on Oprah one of them. Yes,
Speaker 1: for a second, let's go back to the bald eagle,
Speaker 1: and specifically I want to talk about the juvenile bald eagle,
Speaker 1: because that's what his critics are all saying. There was
Speaker 1: obviously it was a juvenile bald eagle. Is we're jbe
Speaker 1: So if you don't know, let me describe the juvenile
Speaker 1: versus the adult bald eagle, not in size but in appearance.
Speaker 1: So the adults have a white the white plumage on
Speaker 1: their head, and they have a yellow beak, and they
Speaker 1: have yellow feet. The juveniles are brown, so their head
Speaker 1: is brown, their beak is blackish blue or dark colored,
Speaker 1: and their feet are dark colored. They're dark brownish black.
Speaker 1: As they progress to maturity, they gain more of the
Speaker 1: white in their head until it's full the yellow. Because
Speaker 1: a bird's beak, it's like your fingernail, It grows out,
Speaker 1: you know, Bird's beaks are constantly growing. The yellow as
Speaker 1: they mature appears and then makes its way through the
Speaker 1: entire beak until it's continuously yellow and with their feet
Speaker 1: the scales change and molt over time, and then the
Speaker 1: yellow comes in and they're not dark. The rest of
Speaker 1: their body is typically brown, but they have white feathers
Speaker 1: randomly scattered about like that. It's forfer two as a
Speaker 1: speckled pattern, and depending on the bird, because they're all different,
Speaker 1: some of them they look like it's, um, it looks
Speaker 1: like a you know, kind of a connected dot thing.
Speaker 1: There's a little white feathers everywhere, and some there's very few,
Speaker 1: if almost none, but that's dependent upon where they are
Speaker 1: in their stage of development. Okay, okay, So that's why
Speaker 1: people say, well, it's gotta be the juvenile because of
Speaker 1: the fact that there's so much, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: the description. If you find one without the white, that's
Speaker 1: got to be the right bird. I'm kind of kind
Speaker 1: of what are you What are you thinking here? I
Speaker 1: don't know, you want you want to keep going and
Speaker 1: be okay, continue on. So we've just described what the
Speaker 1: juveniles look like in pretty good detail, and people are saying, well, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, as we said before, Audubon shot a very
Speaker 1: big one and it was a really really big one,
Speaker 1: and of course it didn't have any white feathers on it,
Speaker 1: because it just happened to be one that didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of white feathers on it. If you can,
Speaker 1: and we're going to post a photo of this online,
Speaker 1: Audubon's painting is available. One of the prints out of
Speaker 1: the book is available. There's a great high res scan
Speaker 1: of the of the page from the folio, and it's
Speaker 1: phenomenal to look at. But when you look at that bird,
Speaker 1: there's no white on it. And and I will stay
Speaker 1: I will state now that it is also very dangerous
Speaker 1: to rely on a single painting of an animal and
Speaker 1: say that is definitively what they all looked like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I started to draw conclusions from it myself, until
Speaker 1: I caught myself and realized that was the wrong thing
Speaker 1: to do. But when you look at that and you
Speaker 1: see the images of the juvenile asy, you think, well,
Speaker 1: that that could be it. But the thing is Audubon
Speaker 1: knew that the bald eagles juvenile was brown and white
Speaker 1: and the adult had the white plumage on its head.
Speaker 1: He was aware of that. He had observed them for years.
Speaker 1: In his writing, he says he talks about the juvenile
Speaker 1: sea eagles like he knew what they were. While some
Speaker 1: of his contemporaries thought they were two different birds. He
Speaker 1: had always argued that they were one. So to say
Speaker 1: that he couldn't identify it is a little weird when
Speaker 1: he kept saying, oh, no, that's that's the juvenile he
Speaker 1: gets it. So there's there's holes in the argument of
Speaker 1: his critics. I would agree with that, but but what
Speaker 1: But there's so one of the things that said in
Speaker 1: the beginning is maybe the fact that he literally just
Speaker 1: made it up. We talked about he could have just
Speaker 1: completely fabricated it. There's a really great story that substantiates
Speaker 1: possibly that he did that because he had done that before.
Speaker 1: Have either of you ever heard of Constantine Rafinesque of
Speaker 1: course the movie star? Yeah no, nothing, nothing movie star,
Speaker 1: I have not. Constantine was a French naturalist and he
Speaker 1: he is a He was very prolific in hunting for
Speaker 1: and finding and naming new species of animals implants, And
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighteen he had seen some of the work
Speaker 1: that Audubon was doing and some of his paintings and drawings,
Speaker 1: and he decided that the best thing to do was
Speaker 1: attached himself to Audubon for a while, since that guy
Speaker 1: was always going out into unexplored areas and he could
Speaker 1: tag along and find all these other unknown creatures and
Speaker 1: plants and name them and have it underneath his catalog
Speaker 1: of things that he found a name a really good
Speaker 1: buddy movie here. Well, I don't know, because Constantine was
Speaker 1: was not a not a normal guy. I mean, the
Speaker 1: best thing I've ever heard is the descript of him
Speaker 1: is Audubon got a letter of introduction when he showed up,
Speaker 1: and that a letter of introduction described him as an
Speaker 1: odd fish. He was kind of a weird guy. He's
Speaker 1: described as an erratic genius, and most people did not
Speaker 1: like him. They just couldn't take him. But Audubon seemed
Speaker 1: to kind of take a shine to him. And I
Speaker 1: think it's because the antics that this guy went through
Speaker 1: all the time. Like apparently in the first month that
Speaker 1: they were together, Constantine destroyed Audubon's violin because a bat
Speaker 1: flew in the window and he was convinced that the
Speaker 1: bat was a new species, and he was trying to
Speaker 1: swap the bat down with the violin, and obviously he
Speaker 1: hits something that was not a bat, destroyed it. Constantine
Speaker 1: happened to be rich. I do not believe that he
Speaker 1: was an exceptionally rich man. He's gonna say that could
Speaker 1: explain why struggling Audubon was like, hey, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think they were. I think they were at the same level.
Speaker 1: You know, they weren't. You know, one wasn't socio economically
Speaker 1: higher than the other. They were. They were kind of, um,
Speaker 1: what's the word I'm looking for, they were the same contemporaries.
Speaker 1: I can't think of the word I'm looking for. But
Speaker 1: they were the same thing in this that scale. Stop
Speaker 1: looking at me like that, you're laughing at me. I
Speaker 1: can't think of the word. It's also, you know, the
Speaker 1: same reason Audubon kept Constantino alive. That's why we keep
Speaker 1: you around too. I know, I know, I really that's
Speaker 1: why we keep you alive too, Constantine alive. I'm sorry, Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's get back to Constantine and Audubon. Constantine was very,
Speaker 1: very prolific in his naming. He has, to his credit
Speaker 1: named ninety four hundred species, ninety four hundred individual plants
Speaker 1: and animals that he discovered were unique and gave a
Speaker 1: name to. So the guy did this his entire life,
Speaker 1: it's pretty intense. He was also a sucker, and I
Speaker 1: say that because in the time that he spent with Audubon,
Speaker 1: Audubon decided to make him the butt of a joke.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that Audubon probably intended for that
Speaker 1: joke to go as far as it did. But what
Speaker 1: he did is in their travels, he he started describing
Speaker 1: animals that he had seen in the America's and those
Speaker 1: included which, by the way, Constantine recorded all of these
Speaker 1: and named all of these creatures. But he recorded eleven fish,
Speaker 1: nine rodents, three snails, two birds, to plants, and one
Speaker 1: mollusk that did not exist anywhere. Uh no, but there
Speaker 1: was like the big guy jumping rat, and there was
Speaker 1: a it was these fish like like it took thirty
Speaker 1: fifty years for some of these things to be the
Speaker 1: first ones to be found as not real. And oh
Speaker 1: my god, how because I mean the scales on one
Speaker 1: of the fish were described as bulletproof. Who what? Who
Speaker 1: thinks that's real? But somehow it got into the because
Speaker 1: Constantine recorded it, and I don't think Audubon expected him
Speaker 1: to actually do it. It's unfortunate for Constantine because now
Speaker 1: years later people are going through and reviewing everything that
Speaker 1: he cited to see if it's real, and especially the
Speaker 1: stuff during the time of Audubon is highly suspect. So
Speaker 1: he pulled people's legs. He made a joke and it
Speaker 1: got out of hand, and so people say, well, obviously
Speaker 1: he lied and he did this big thing. So he
Speaker 1: very well could have just been playing a joke on
Speaker 1: the world. Oh I need one more bird, I'll I'll
Speaker 1: make one up and squeeze it into the book. Whether
Speaker 1: that's all he could have been, I don't know why. Well,
Speaker 1: the only reason okay, so the reason that I can
Speaker 1: I can think of why. The Birds of America was
Speaker 1: a publication. It came out by subscription at a regular interval,
Speaker 1: and I am guessing that he had a consistent number
Speaker 1: of creatures of images in there each time. And what
Speaker 1: if he's fallen short. Oh hell, I need twenty two
Speaker 1: and I have one. I guess for me though, it's like,
Speaker 1: if you're going to make up a bird, why not
Speaker 1: just be like, that's a that's another small little brown
Speaker 1: bird that would definitely be easier to get away. It's
Speaker 1: super easy to get away. They're not nearly so noticeable,
Speaker 1: they're not how do we find it. I'll just go
Speaker 1: out in the woods and look why it went. And
Speaker 1: I didn't see it while they're small. Yeah, well but
Speaker 1: but but the exact opposite, you know, he could say,
Speaker 1: well you can't see it. Well, they're super rare, the
Speaker 1: trap of the Canadian trapper that I talked to you said,
Speaker 1: they're very rare, and you don't see them very often.
Speaker 1: So you know, no wonder you have come across one
Speaker 1: in the natural world. They're they're just super rare. Guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible. It's it was already out his way
Speaker 1: to extinction. That and that is that is something that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about. It we should talk about
Speaker 1: in the theory that we're about to go into, which
Speaker 1: is indeed the Washington's Eagle was real, but this could
Speaker 1: go either place. Really, never did anybody ever consult any
Speaker 1: the local native tribes about this thing? You think that
Speaker 1: they would have, like, especially if it had been centrist
Speaker 1: before much more numerous, you'd think, I do not I
Speaker 1: in the right. In Audubon's writing about the Washington Eagle,
Speaker 1: I only he I only saw mention of the Canadian trapper,
Speaker 1: And then one or two other um European transplants. He
Speaker 1: doesn't talk about talking to the native at all in
Speaker 1: regards to this particular bird. Yeah, you would think they
Speaker 1: would have been aware of it, you would think, And
Speaker 1: that actually is later on in the theories. It's actually
Speaker 1: something that comes up later. So let's talk about unless
Speaker 1: you guys have anything else for it didn't actually exist. No, no,
Speaker 1: not really, okay, making sure it's going to it's real. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the assessment that Audubon made that the Washington eagle was
Speaker 1: a distinct species if according to this is real. And
Speaker 1: the reason is that the reason that we don't see
Speaker 1: it anymore is we've just talked about, which is that
Speaker 1: a number of times now that it went extinct because
Speaker 1: everybody said, you very rarely saw it. You you couldn't ever,
Speaker 1: you know, once in a great while. You came across him,
Speaker 1: and he just got lucky to have a specimen to
Speaker 1: include in the Birds of America, possibly the last. And
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, there are a half dozen
Speaker 1: birds in the Birds of America, uh that are now extinct.
Speaker 1: So he was the one who recorded some birds that
Speaker 1: are no longer in existence, one of which is a
Speaker 1: really great example of how Europeans coming to this continent.
Speaker 1: May we're responsible for it. And that's the passenger pigeon.
Speaker 1: If if anybody doesn't know the story of the passenger pigeon,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting and I want to give I want
Speaker 1: to share it real fast because it's very applicable. So
Speaker 1: the passenger pigeon was it was prolific all over the
Speaker 1: North American continent from the Rocky or it's not the yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the Rockies east pretty much. They lived in the
Speaker 1: eastern half of this this continent, and they were they
Speaker 1: were amazingly prolific. They're described as flying over they being
Speaker 1: big flocks. They would dark in the sky for an
Speaker 1: entire day and only leave behind their droppings, like the
Speaker 1: birds would never stop, but they block out the sky
Speaker 1: because the flock was so huge, big old storms exactly
Speaker 1: when they were hunting, and they said you could you
Speaker 1: could kill more than six with one blast from a shotgun,
Speaker 1: uh huh shooting. They were so so thick, and they
Speaker 1: were a great food source. I mean, people loved them.
Speaker 1: Predators loved them because they came to town and it
Speaker 1: was free meat and you could just go crazy just
Speaker 1: killing these things. And they that was fine in terms
Speaker 1: of from the biological or the survival standpoint of the
Speaker 1: passenger pigeon, because they used a survival strategy called predators satiation,
Speaker 1: which is all the predators come in and they eat
Speaker 1: a bunch of you until they are full. But the
Speaker 1: population is so huge that you can lose that small
Speaker 1: percentage to satisfy the local predators, and your population doesn't
Speaker 1: stoff her. I can just imagine though, if you know,
Speaker 1: if you want of the one of the pigeons and
Speaker 1: the briefings, and you're going like, excuse me, why why
Speaker 1: do I love the jokes? Is the pigeon and the briefing?
Speaker 1: Because I immediately thought of a World War two pigeon
Speaker 1: with a little metal helmet. They're all sitting there and
Speaker 1: this guy's got his PowerPoint, excuse me? And who gets
Speaker 1: to be who gets to be the goat here? Uh?
Speaker 1: Really do? Yeah? But but the thing is with um
Speaker 1: So this theory or this practice of predator satiation, the
Speaker 1: passenger pigeon isn't the only creature that doesn't. The cicadas,
Speaker 1: you know, the ones that come out every you know,
Speaker 1: a dozen or set thirteen or seventeen years or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, there are so many of them that in
Speaker 1: a night, every predator in the area is stuffed full,
Speaker 1: and there are still just gods and gods and gods
Speaker 1: of them around. I'm pretty sure rabbits. I'm kidding. No,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. Okay. So the point is, though, is that
Speaker 1: it worked well, and they survive, fived, and they thrived,
Speaker 1: except that when Europeans came to this country a couple
Speaker 1: of things happened. One, we were netting them, we were
Speaker 1: shooting them, we were destroying their nesting grounds. We were
Speaker 1: consuming them at a faster rate than they could reproduce.
Speaker 1: There were actually guys who they were hunting clubs, and
Speaker 1: they would get a telegraph to say where the flock was.
Speaker 1: They would hop on a train so that they go
Speaker 1: there and start hunting and shooting and killing them, and
Speaker 1: they would follow the flock using the train lines. So
Speaker 1: suddenly they were using technology to completely outpace the rate
Speaker 1: at which these things could reproduce and naturally survive. And
Speaker 1: I God, I think the last passenger pigeon, I think
Speaker 1: it died in the late eight hundreds. If I remember
Speaker 1: wild or in the zoom that it was in, it
Speaker 1: was in captivity. It was I was just looking at
Speaker 1: it like night. She was like it was nineteen. It
Speaker 1: was in the tens or twenties, but but it was
Speaker 1: by that time there was so much damage done to
Speaker 1: the population they couldn't revive. Okay, so now think of
Speaker 1: the story of the passenger pigeon, and then let's think
Speaker 1: about the Washington eagle, which is already a bird that
Speaker 1: maybe in decline because of Europeans coming to this country,
Speaker 1: and we are now we're disturbing their hunting grounds, were
Speaker 1: disturbing their nesting grounds because unlike say a bald eagle,
Speaker 1: which nests in a tree. According to Audubon, these birds
Speaker 1: nested on the ground. That so hunters and foresters and
Speaker 1: the animals that we bring with us, that that get
Speaker 1: loose and go wild, go eat their eggs and destroy
Speaker 1: their young. And you can see this recipe for disaster
Speaker 1: for a what I would consider possibly a rather niche
Speaker 1: species of birds of prey. Suddenly who screwed the whole
Speaker 1: thing up showing up on the Although you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, extinction is a part of the whole evolution process,
Speaker 1: it might have been that they weren't particularly adaptable, and frankly,
Speaker 1: you know, if I were an ego, I would prefer
Speaker 1: to put my nest up high in a tree rather
Speaker 1: than having it somewhere on the ground. I think that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, obviously they want the most sensible. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. It seems like if they
Speaker 1: were that big and the they were kind of hunting
Speaker 1: into that not as much, you know, not the coasts not.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like really more rivers and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's possibly they had actually adapted to eat more mammals.
Speaker 1: And so if you put your nest on the ground
Speaker 1: so that you're young, like you just kill something and
Speaker 1: kind of drag it over to the nest so you're young,
Speaker 1: just kind of hop out of the nest and they
Speaker 1: can eat the meat off of whatever instead of having
Speaker 1: to fly it up to them and regurds to you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe I don't, but again, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not great. Yeah. Well, okay, let me let me
Speaker 1: clarify this. When I say they made their nests in
Speaker 1: the ground, Joe actually said it properly, which is it's
Speaker 1: on cliffs. It's not like they're just in the middle
Speaker 1: of a field. Yeah, but you can still drag something
Speaker 1: like over to it. But well, eagles birds typically most
Speaker 1: of the birds of that genus, can only carry something
Speaker 1: that is half or less of their body weight. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking like rabbits and stuff like deer. Well, but but
Speaker 1: what but I'm getting at is that I don't know
Speaker 1: that they would necessarily whether it was in a tree
Speaker 1: or on a cliff, it would matter because they would
Speaker 1: fly in and bring it to the nest. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, bald eagle doesn't drag a rabbit corpse up
Speaker 1: a tree. That's true, No, I know. I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: more like for the like, I don't know, you can't
Speaker 1: necessarily fit a rabbit carcass in a nest. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen a bald I'm just saying, like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what their nests look like, the giant you know,
Speaker 1: the bald eagles. Yes, I'm just saying I don't know
Speaker 1: what the Washington eagles nests look like. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: how it would have been something equivalent to the size
Speaker 1: of a bald eagle nest, which is a really big nest. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so let's keep going here. Um so, remember I talked
Speaker 1: about all those critics that that Audubon had, uh, this
Speaker 1: is this is something to substantiate that he was telling
Speaker 1: the truth. There was for many many years he had
Speaker 1: not only in the birds that he drew or painted,
Speaker 1: but he would also paint the flora and the fauna
Speaker 1: that was around them that he had seen in the
Speaker 1: region or the area. Well, one of the things that
Speaker 1: he had in one of his drawings was the yellow
Speaker 1: water lily, which everybody said, that plant doesn't exist. Man,
Speaker 1: you need to take that out. You didn't discover that.
Speaker 1: Cut it out. That's not real. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six that that plant was quote unquote rediscovered
Speaker 1: in the everclades as being a real thick. So again
Speaker 1: he's he's getting criticized, and he doesn't back down because
Speaker 1: he saw it. And this is another example of oh
Speaker 1: well look you were actually right. But still I mean,
Speaker 1: they've never found any bones. They have not found any
Speaker 1: bones that we can attribute specifically to the Washington eagle
Speaker 1: that we know. Um. Yeah. And and the thing is
Speaker 1: is people have said, well, maybe they they mixed in
Speaker 1: with the with the bald eagle population. Maybe they had
Speaker 1: they were able to cross breed. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: things though, that I find that makes that probably not plausible.
Speaker 1: Is one other physical description of the Washington eagle, which is,
Speaker 1: I believe you pronounced this the sare or the sear.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which, but if you look at birds,
Speaker 1: they have that kind of fleshy bit. Some birds have
Speaker 1: that fleshy bit at the top of their beak and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the cuticle on your hand or
Speaker 1: on your fingernails. Well, the the Washington eagles were described,
Speaker 1: it doesn't The sair, the seer, whichever it is, doesn't
Speaker 1: match up to what is seen on bald eagles in
Speaker 1: any stage of their development. So again that's one more
Speaker 1: thing that it's like, well, if he's done all these
Speaker 1: other things that have been found out to be real,
Speaker 1: I have a hard time saying that maybe that he
Speaker 1: made it up. Doesn't match up to other species, other birds,
Speaker 1: other birds have that kind of feature. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: if I remember right, the bald eagle, it's on its beak.
Speaker 1: It's more of kind of a smooth strip of skin,
Speaker 1: kind of like what you see on like literally your cuticles,
Speaker 1: whereas if you look at some parrots, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a bulbous growth or um. What does it? Chickens have
Speaker 1: it on their their the wattles and stuff. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of bulbous and fleshy. The way he described it,
Speaker 1: it was more of that bulbous growth rather than just
Speaker 1: flatien really close up, so maybe that it had an infection. Well,
Speaker 1: but he did see he did see them close up,
Speaker 1: because he did. That's how he knew that they nested
Speaker 1: on the ground is that at one point he observed
Speaker 1: a mated pair with chicks. So he saw them from
Speaker 1: you know, not too far of a distance. So he
Speaker 1: didn't kill the last one. He well, I think he
Speaker 1: saw those ones. He came back with his rifle the
Speaker 1: next day the weather was so bad and they were gone,
Speaker 1: so eventually he had to get the one he got
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. So but we can say if they were real,
Speaker 1: if they were real, he probably didn't kill the last
Speaker 1: one because there were chicks. Right. Good, Okay, we have
Speaker 1: our final theory, which is the thunderbird. Yep, exactly. I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: the thunderbird is considered a cryptid. But what the heck,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about it, I mean, why not? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know what the thunderbird is.
Speaker 1: According to the Internet, it is and I quote, a
Speaker 1: legendary creature. In certain North American indigenous people's history and culture.
Speaker 1: It is considered a supernatural being of power and strength.
Speaker 1: It is especially important and frequently depicted in the art, songs,
Speaker 1: and oral histories of many Native American tribes from the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest to the East Coast to the Great Lakes,
Speaker 1: in the Great Plates, so all over the continent, is
Speaker 1: what that's saying. End quote. Was somewhere in there, so
Speaker 1: in in In contemporary American accounts, the thunderbird is described
Speaker 1: as being more of a bat like or pterodactyl like creature.
Speaker 1: But if we strip away that great late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds reporting that is out there, and instead
Speaker 1: we think about the Washington's eagle, this might be the answer.
Speaker 1: Because the thunderbird was rarely seen. It wasn't around all
Speaker 1: the time. It was really the big and it's scared
Speaker 1: the crap out of people when it showed up. Well,
Speaker 1: something big enough to carry you away probably, or it
Speaker 1: looked like it could be big. I mean, you see
Speaker 1: something with a ten foot wingspan coming swooping down and
Speaker 1: you're in your canoe, I would be scared. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would belief put a little lake water in the canoe.
Speaker 1: Definitely want to like at least grab the kids and
Speaker 1: you know, make sure they don't get carried away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a kind of bird that in
Speaker 1: prehistory would have been able to take away small children. Well,
Speaker 1: my understanding is, like, was it Australia, New Zealand They
Speaker 1: had an enormous eagle down there that was like a
Speaker 1: mix This thing look like a little runt. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: it was called, but it was freaking huge. Was this
Speaker 1: in recent history or in prehistory? Uh? Kind of prehistory?
Speaker 1: Because I've read a lot about different birds, so I
Speaker 1: can't keep them all straight now, Yeah, I know. But
Speaker 1: and anyway, and you know, it's definitely would be frightening. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so it's it's possible that these birds were what
Speaker 1: the native cultures referred to as the thunderbird, and indeed
Speaker 1: the species was already dwindling. And I like this because
Speaker 1: this links up an historical record of something and then
Speaker 1: the cultural record of something like that. Really enjoy that
Speaker 1: you do find. Now here's the problem with the thunderbird,
Speaker 1: and and this always comes up when you look at
Speaker 1: something that is considered a cryptid is in contemporary today,
Speaker 1: you know, in the last fifty to a hundred years,
Speaker 1: in the descriptions of the thunderbird that you see, they
Speaker 1: feel outlandish to me because there's the whole pterodactyl angle.
Speaker 1: But then there's people who say, I saw this giant
Speaker 1: eagle show up and it flew away with a small
Speaker 1: deer in its talents, and when it was standing and looked,
Speaker 1: it must have been ten ft tall. Okay, that to
Speaker 1: me sounds too fantastic. And these were always a very
Speaker 1: far flung rural places, you know, the middle of no where,
Speaker 1: Alaska or all of it? Did he mean all of it?
Speaker 1: In the middle of the you know, the Great Lakes
Speaker 1: regions and in Canada and stuff like that, like these
Speaker 1: these sparsely inhabited places. But like I saw this giant bird,
Speaker 1: and did I know the birds in this area? But
Speaker 1: if we if we look at this and say, you know,
Speaker 1: when whenever Audubon was cataloging these was kind of the
Speaker 1: end of the accepted time when they existed, right, I
Speaker 1: think I'm willing to say probably this bird was ta
Speaker 1: end of the species exactly. They you know, that those
Speaker 1: hatchlings may have been the very last hatchlings ever. I
Speaker 1: you know, so that discards all of the crazy stuff
Speaker 1: that's really more contemporary of our time, and I kind
Speaker 1: of buy it. I don't know, I mean, I like
Speaker 1: you like that, you know, full circle kind of. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of reports, not a lot, but there are.
Speaker 1: There's there's historic context for a large bird of the
Speaker 1: same description of the one that Audubon had. The only
Speaker 1: thing that I'll come back to, though, is the lack
Speaker 1: of any kind of fossil records or or you would, yeah,
Speaker 1: the difficulty. I now, I am by no means an
Speaker 1: expert on this stuff, but the one thing that I
Speaker 1: do know about bird bones is that the majority of
Speaker 1: them tend to be hollow, so they don't preserve as
Speaker 1: well as a solid, dense bone of that you and
Speaker 1: I have, which I think probably impedes the ability to
Speaker 1: find them as readily. It's just like snakes sometimes are
Speaker 1: super hard to find because they're made of cartilage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: readily being the operative operative word there. I mean, you
Speaker 1: would you would expect that if these things existed, somebody
Speaker 1: would have found one once, you know, But maybe they
Speaker 1: did and they just didn't know. Maybe maybe they did
Speaker 1: and they've named it something else and nobody has connected.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't, you know, the dot didn't get connected.
Speaker 1: I didn't look through and try and find these random
Speaker 1: bird skeletons. Just I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1: It might just be a fluke to that. The ones
Speaker 1: that have been found have been found by not by
Speaker 1: experts or people who were really looking for him. They
Speaker 1: just said it's a bird carcass, you know, and they
Speaker 1: just you know, walked on just some bird carcass because
Speaker 1: obviously it would be kind of scattered anyway, could by
Speaker 1: predators or scavengers, or they were mistaken for bald eagles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the difficulties. You can't you can't get
Speaker 1: a sense as readily or as easily of the wingspan
Speaker 1: of a bird once it's dead and there's just a
Speaker 1: skeleton left because the feathers have gone. And that is
Speaker 1: one of the things that helps them achieve that giant wing.
Speaker 1: To me, it is that if they have feathers that
Speaker 1: are six inches long versus feathers that are I don't know,
Speaker 1: fifteen inches long, that adds a significant part, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's for lofty power and flight. So it's
Speaker 1: it's tough. Yeah, totally. Yea. Frankly, not everybody who sees
Speaker 1: a rotting bird carcass laying around, you know, it's going
Speaker 1: to pick it up and spread the wings out to
Speaker 1: check those check out the wingspans. And there's always that too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think rotbl Devin, I think were you talking
Speaker 1: more of like old bones than around, not a new
Speaker 1: carcass preserved bones, because I'm just assuming that, you know,
Speaker 1: later than nine, there haven't been these things. They haven't existed.
Speaker 1: That's my assumption, at least probably not Joe, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's your thoughts on it, Joe. I still like the idea.
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea that they were real and
Speaker 1: they're extinct, like that they were real, not that they
Speaker 1: went extinct. Yeah, yeah, I like that they were real.
Speaker 1: That it's too bad they want extinct. It's a shame.
Speaker 1: But you know, seriously, I mean it makes sense that
Speaker 1: they were not a very adaptable species. They were kind
Speaker 1: of on the brink anyway. And then people were moving
Speaker 1: into the Great Lakes area, which is apparently they're stomping grounds.
Speaker 1: People were flopping grounds. O good one yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: not at all outside the realm of possibility. I think that,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there would have been, and by that
Speaker 1: time there's a significant amount of river traffic that's gonna
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about it. If they primarily hunt
Speaker 1: in the lakes and the rivers, in the in the streams,
Speaker 1: that's going to cause a problem. So you can see
Speaker 1: how this could very easily be a small disruption that
Speaker 1: could echo through I'm in agreement. I think we're all
Speaker 1: in agreement here. I I would prefer to think that
Speaker 1: they were real and that they went extinct, or and
Speaker 1: that possibly they were in the historical record through Native
Speaker 1: American culture. Although I still have a little niggling in
Speaker 1: the back of my brain because of the prank that
Speaker 1: Audubon pulled and and jerking uh Constantine's legs, So you know,
Speaker 1: that's it's like it's one thing to like, you know,
Speaker 1: destroy his credibility, but putting a little prank on him,
Speaker 1: destroying her own different things, putting them in your you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think did he put any of those ones
Speaker 1: that he made it for Constantine? Did he put in
Speaker 1: any of his so like it's a step further than that,
Speaker 1: but it's also you know that's that's fifteen twenty years later.
Speaker 1: You know, you get desperate. People do funny things when
Speaker 1: they're desperate, speaking of things that were done out of desperation.
Speaker 1: And this is a terrible fact. So all of these
Speaker 1: plates that Audubon had for all of the birds that
Speaker 1: are in the book, after he passed away, he had
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's and dimension. He passed away and his wife was
Speaker 1: desperate for money, and she started selling those plates for
Speaker 1: scrap metal just to get money. So I think, uh,
Speaker 1: it's in the low one hundreds of them still exists.
Speaker 1: The remainder of them. She needed money and so she
Speaker 1: old them and they were melted down. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things in hitory like, oh well, plus those
Speaker 1: the birds of American books. I mean, I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of those were cut up, just just a frame
Speaker 1: and hang on the walls some of those bays and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I mean that I don't want it. Maybe fifty
Speaker 1: exists still. I don't name the number, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, jas high number. All I know is that
Speaker 1: when I went to the Rare book room and I
Speaker 1: asked about it, I was told that, oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: can look at the books of the writings. But if
Speaker 1: you want to look at the actual book, you're gonna
Speaker 1: need to make an appointment, which means I would have
Speaker 1: to meet with somebody, probably get you know, go through
Speaker 1: a little lesson of what to do, and then put
Speaker 1: on the white gloves to even be allowed to touch it.
Speaker 1: And even then hopefully they would watch you like, oh, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know they believe me. The gal that Phoebe at
Speaker 1: the library, she was not but five or eight feet
Speaker 1: away the entire time that I was looking through the
Speaker 1: book I was reading. Yeah, they're are definitely valuable. So
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's sad that those things are gone,
Speaker 1: Like it's sad, but you know, it's not at all
Speaker 1: unknown for people to cut pages out of books, especially
Speaker 1: like maps and plays and stuff like that. It's not
Speaker 1: at all unknown. And sadly they weren't always framed. They
Speaker 1: have a lot of times we're just hung which makes
Speaker 1: them degrade even faster. But we are way off of that.
Speaker 1: I think we've finished up with the story here. We're
Speaker 1: just we're complaining about what a bunch of bad preservation
Speaker 1: as we all are. Instead, let's talk about the great
Speaker 1: things that I know everybody listens to this podcast for
Speaker 1: which is the things we talked about at the very yet.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, like our our website, because we have
Speaker 1: we have a website where we're gonna have the links
Speaker 1: to this story as well as every story that we've
Speaker 1: talked about before. That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find the show just about anywhere. So if
Speaker 1: you use iTunes, you can subscribe and review and leave
Speaker 1: a rating. If you're using any of the other streaming platforms,
Speaker 1: whether that be Stitcher or Google Play or any of
Speaker 1: the other various ones that are out there, do subscribe
Speaker 1: if you're able to review on there, please do. We
Speaker 1: appreciate that that's how other people find us. We're on
Speaker 1: social media, so we have a subreddit, We have the
Speaker 1: Twitter account. The Twitter account is Thinking Sideways where Devon
Speaker 1: puts out funny stories and pictures and screen caps are
Speaker 1: text message conversations. Uh. And we also have the Facebook
Speaker 1: page and the Facebook group. The pages where you can
Speaker 1: read some of the fun stuff we find on the internet.
Speaker 1: The group is where you're gonna get a chance to
Speaker 1: actually go in and have discussions about episodes with other listeners. Last,
Speaker 1: we have merchandise, or next, I should say, we have
Speaker 1: merchandise that is also on the website, so shirts, stickers, mugs,
Speaker 1: all those good things. There's links for those in the
Speaker 1: right hand panel. And the last thing that I was
Speaker 1: going to talk about is emails. So you're able to
Speaker 1: send us an email if you have a story suggestion,
Speaker 1: you have a question, you want to talk about an episode,
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be. That email address is thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. So yes, that's a
Speaker 1: message fan mail. We like fan mail, especially me. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally thought he was gonna say feather mail and
Speaker 1: you I was really expecting another bird pun in there. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that is all that I have so far and
Speaker 1: for this episode, So I guess if that's all we've got,
Speaker 1: the birds of a feather doesn't work in this one.
Speaker 1: We will talk to you guys next week. Tend to
Speaker 1: fly on out of here. No bird pounds for me, Bye, everybody, Caca, caca,
Speaker 1: What is about the Western Steve