Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for
Speaker 1: every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. How is
Speaker 1: it you guys were in Hawaii for so long? You're
Speaker 1: both like still, I was thinking exact same thing. We
Speaker 1: have full fucking wet suits in our faces, are in
Speaker 1: the water, all right? Yeah, Plus you weren't there. We
Speaker 1: weren't there, Jay dicking around on the beat, Steve and
Speaker 1: I were standing out doing the cooking yesterday or just
Speaker 1: like came to the conclusion that the sun over there
Speaker 1: is just an evil evil yea, yeah, like they're something
Speaker 1: about it that just like simultaneously cakes salt onto you,
Speaker 1: sucks the moisture out of you, and the sun that
Speaker 1: makes you want to shower right away. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you got like a dorsal tan you'd come up? Is
Speaker 1: that right? Except for I had I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of coverage on my head anymore, so full full
Speaker 1: hood just for the sun. Yeah, I can tell you
Speaker 1: sufficient stories to curl your hair, Brody, let's hear him.
Speaker 1: Come on, wait, we are recording. We should start with that,
Speaker 1: start with this, let's star with this. Okay, joined today? Uh,
Speaker 1: Drew Landum, who man, We've been trying to get you
Speaker 1: on for a long time, but we got kind of like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're aware of this, we got
Speaker 1: waylaid by COVID. What what was that? Oh? So you
Speaker 1: know he's over now, not not quite over it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's been a while, but glad to
Speaker 1: finally be out year. Yeah, we're talking about it a
Speaker 1: long time ago and originally came from we were reading
Speaker 1: your your book, which now it's like a two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen memoir. So I was reading a little bit late.
Speaker 1: But Julianna A. Burder In ornithologist, professional professor of Wildlife
Speaker 1: Ecology at Clemson University, author and poet, and uh, is
Speaker 1: this your this is your most recent book, the Home Place. No,
Speaker 1: there's a book of poetry, got it called Sparrow windvy
Speaker 1: Field Guide The Birds and Lesser Beasts. So that came
Speaker 1: out two thousand twenty one. And I also got a
Speaker 1: little book of poetry on a place called Edisto Island
Speaker 1: that you might be familiar with down on the coast
Speaker 1: of South Carolina, with two fellow poets. We call ourselves
Speaker 1: the pluf Mud Poets, so like a school of poetry. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the three of us. And then working on
Speaker 1: about three other books, so excellent. I got some stuff
Speaker 1: going on his two thousand six team memoir Um, which
Speaker 1: we read and we're gonna try to have Drew on
Speaker 1: and then one thing let do. Another is uh the
Speaker 1: Home Place Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna dig it on that. We had to.
Speaker 1: I had to cut Cal and Drew off because they
Speaker 1: started talking about what's up with quail in the South um,
Speaker 1: and I got really interested. So we're gonna return to
Speaker 1: that in a minute. And it also I want to
Speaker 1: point out explain to people your necklace, which is the
Speaker 1: coolest necklace I've seen a long time. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's a raven skull. It's a miniature raven skull that's
Speaker 1: carved out of white tailed deer antler. So ravens are
Speaker 1: kind of, I don't know, totem sort of for me,
Speaker 1: you know, large black beings that like to play, all right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's what I did. A couple of a
Speaker 1: couple of things to watch out for if you're in
Speaker 1: a in a viewing mood. Uh. Dark Cam Dinners with
Speaker 1: Jean Paul Bourgeois is back for season two. Follow him
Speaker 1: and his crew as they dive deep into their duck
Speaker 1: season in Louisiana, getting after great duck hunting and cooking
Speaker 1: up some badass meals at the camp along the way.
Speaker 1: And then we have I'm working on an episode. We're
Speaker 1: in the editing process on an episode we do with
Speaker 1: John Paul Don Louisiana, which is a hell of a
Speaker 1: good time and a lot of fun. I went crayfishing too,
Speaker 1: So stay tuned for all that. Cal Cal's got something
Speaker 1: to plug. Oh, we've been talking a lot about our
Speaker 1: block management access appreciation program that is tied into i
Speaker 1: would say, our overall access pillar here at on the
Speaker 1: conservation side of Meat Eater. Uh so it falls in
Speaker 1: there with our land access initiative. But we purchased a
Speaker 1: forty six steel chainsaws, forty six visa check cards, randomly
Speaker 1: drew forty six participating landowners in Montana's private land public
Speaker 1: access program which is called block management, and we showed
Speaker 1: up on a bunch of folks doore steps and just
Speaker 1: said thank you on behalf of hunters for being part
Speaker 1: of the program. There's about seven million acres enrolled, seven
Speaker 1: million private acres enrolled, some of which gives or provides
Speaker 1: access to a lot of landlocked public land as well.
Speaker 1: And it's it is a great program. Every state has
Speaker 1: one like it. And you can hear one of the
Speaker 1: most fun projects I think Phil and I have got
Speaker 1: to do, which was listened to a bunch of landowners
Speaker 1: candidly talking about the program and and having a little
Speaker 1: conversation with me while on the road dropping off these
Speaker 1: thank you packages. Um. And that's on Col's Weeken review
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to that just to get
Speaker 1: an idea of you know, what we've been doing over here.
Speaker 1: Episode one. I need to figure out if you dropped
Speaker 1: off any gifts that the b m A. I want
Speaker 1: to antelope on that exactly on to throw out of that.
Speaker 1: And there's a big coffee big covied in there that
Speaker 1: said if you volunteer to drop things off, do not
Speaker 1: ask for hunting access. This is the last time these
Speaker 1: landowners are gonna see a hunter. Well, I got you
Speaker 1: and not be asked for something. This was a thank
Speaker 1: you mission only and it was It was great. Lots
Speaker 1: of good interactions, lots of good feedback on the program
Speaker 1: and and uh just gave a good perspective that you
Speaker 1: don't get every day. On the other side of the fence.
Speaker 1: Cal's we Can Review you can you can find anywhere. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this right now, use the same
Speaker 1: platform and switch over to Cal's Weeken review and here
Speaker 1: uh Cal's weekly show also Sabretooth um on YouTube on
Speaker 1: a YouTube channel Sabretooth with Kevin Gillespie. Go check out
Speaker 1: there um where he cooks up a scimitar horned orcs.
Speaker 1: And that is an animal we covered on an episode
Speaker 1: of our own show called Cuddled the Scimitar. Is that
Speaker 1: what we called that show? Yeah, we did, And uh, Steve,
Speaker 1: there's it's a cute photo floating out there of me
Speaker 1: cuddling a simitar hornworks. Then they killed an eight No, no,
Speaker 1: not yet, not yet. I mean maybe it'll be a
Speaker 1: ship back to uh Chad. Maybe it's got strong genes,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's a very cute photo. H Our Campfire
Speaker 1: Stories is out right now, the second installing the Campfire Stories.
Speaker 1: And so we're already beating people's doors down, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you, you folks, you listeners. We're starting to
Speaker 1: collect stufford for three, volume three, so we had most
Speaker 1: recently we released It's Kicking Ass. Who's Burnet Brown? We're
Speaker 1: beating Burnet Brown. I don't know who it is. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how many listeners of this podcast who Burnet Brown?
Speaker 1: But are a lot of Americans know who Bernie Brown? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know when you send out that it's a
Speaker 1: it's a woman. I'm gonna venture to say that if
Speaker 1: you're the in a relationship not listening to Burnee Brown,
Speaker 1: you've been told to listen to ye. So our audio
Speaker 1: book was whooping her audio book? Is that you're telling me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's good, like to hear that. Um. When it came out,
Speaker 1: it was like it was, you know, like in the trending.
Speaker 1: It hit all the top top super tops and we're
Speaker 1: out looking for new ones. Now I'm onto a hot
Speaker 1: lead from I don't want to spoil it. I'm on
Speaker 1: a hot lead from someone who's been in this room
Speaker 1: who was I don't want to tell too much of
Speaker 1: the story, because then we're going to start guessing it's
Speaker 1: a little teaser. OK, let's say had front row seats too.
Speaker 1: He had as he was worked for a helicopter logging operation.
Speaker 1: Oh I can't possibly imagine was present for the rotors
Speaker 1: coming off of the helicopter above him, present but not
Speaker 1: responsible for saying he felt a bunch of lug nuts
Speaker 1: in his pocket and he's like, don't laugh matter, Wait
Speaker 1: these thing is the lug nuts thing? We don't have
Speaker 1: lug nuts, isn't Christy? No? Do we have a guest
Speaker 1: on who was saying like, no one ever, no one
Speaker 1: knows what lug nuts are, And like if you know,
Speaker 1: if you know what lug nuts are, you're like a
Speaker 1: real You're like an independent, self sufficient human, and if
Speaker 1: you don't, you're like a millennial. I've had a close
Speaker 1: call with some lug nuts when I was a fishing guide.
Speaker 1: People who didn't like fishing guides loosen the lug nuts
Speaker 1: on the boat boat trailer's way. That's like, that's like
Speaker 1: really happened to me twice. Yeah, I've seen that one
Speaker 1: where they pull the pin on the book and leave
Speaker 1: the hitch in the pickup and then when you go
Speaker 1: pull away, punch inside to this exact point over trout Man,
Speaker 1: you're on a gangster. Yeah, a buddy of mine who's
Speaker 1: the He loves to spearfish striper down in California and
Speaker 1: the rivers, and people who love to you know, target
Speaker 1: those things with the giant, super expensive swim baits don't
Speaker 1: like that. And he's had people pull the pin on
Speaker 1: on his boat trailer. So when he goes back and
Speaker 1: in there, and as you like to point out, kids
Speaker 1: love playing on boat ramps and stuff, so it's like
Speaker 1: super dangerous and this guy's a big family guy. But uh,
Speaker 1: last week he was diving and found fully set up
Speaker 1: boat on the trailer totally submerged in the river. Really yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: she said. He said he swam down there and got
Speaker 1: a picture of the VIN number and started posting. The
Speaker 1: person not know that it's down there. Maybe they just
Speaker 1: couldn't get yeah yeah. Uh. In our hunt for stories,
Speaker 1: we got a guy submitted one that Karan and I
Speaker 1: decided um is best just read. Here goes fast Bear.
Speaker 1: What Bear was just heard about the close calls campfire
Speaker 1: stories audiobooks. He goes on, I'm reading, I'm reading them.
Speaker 1: I want to share a close call that happened in
Speaker 1: our deer hunting party that I often share as it
Speaker 1: is important for others to hear of the dangers involved
Speaker 1: and shooting that running game, not knowing your background, shooting
Speaker 1: above your abilities, target fixation, and sometimes a total disregard
Speaker 1: for safety. Once the buck shows up, blow is the
Speaker 1: brief version. That's the best intro ever right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Maybe See's maybe sixty or seventeen
Speaker 1: years old, says he can give us more details if
Speaker 1: we need them. Our hunting party had come to the
Speaker 1: end of a deer drive, and as you're just stepping
Speaker 1: out of the woods, a buck that had held tight
Speaker 1: to the last few feet of the drive decided it
Speaker 1: was time to vacate the woods at a dead run.
Speaker 1: He did this in full view of the entire party,
Speaker 1: which consisted of two posters in a box and approximately
Speaker 1: six drivers, so aid Ish shooters. We'd called those pushers
Speaker 1: and sitters. What does Seth call him watchers and staying?
Speaker 1: We called him drivers and posters. Ours would be drivers
Speaker 1: and blockers in South Dakota. You know what, pushers and blockers.
Speaker 1: I think that's what we call them pushers. Rand us
Speaker 1: some pushers out in the wooden So eight shooters back
Speaker 1: to quoting. Everyone fired, myself included, until we were empty.
Speaker 1: The deer was untouched. However, three quarters a mile down
Speaker 1: range was a farm. As we left the hunting area,
Speaker 1: we passed the farm and there was a man in
Speaker 1: his bathrobe standing outside with a pistol. Two of our
Speaker 1: party stopped and asked if he was okay. He said
Speaker 1: someone shot him and revealed a bruise on his arm.
Speaker 1: Upon investigation, it was determined that a bullet from the
Speaker 1: hunting party had passed through a thicket of trees, reached
Speaker 1: his house, passed through two walls of the house, and
Speaker 1: struck him in the arm while he was in bed sleeping.
Speaker 1: He worked nights because because right away I wanted to
Speaker 1: I wanted uh. I looked down on him because he
Speaker 1: was sleeping in the the middle of the day. He worked nights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally excusable. Upon searching the man's bed, the bullet was
Speaker 1: discovered where it had torn the blankets when it struck him.
Speaker 1: The man calmed down and later said he thought his
Speaker 1: ex wife was trying to kill him. We all knew
Speaker 1: the man and his family and they have never spoken
Speaker 1: a bad word or exhibited any bad blood towards our
Speaker 1: hunting party. Why I don't know. Why didn't we pick
Speaker 1: that one for the next books? To you, that's an
Speaker 1: exercise of paint that. There's a lot of morals in
Speaker 1: that story. One take it easy. That comes to shooting
Speaker 1: your guns and to wow the forgiveness. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: how we have the blood. It's all, it's all good.
Speaker 1: Shot me in my bed. You know. We have the
Speaker 1: longest one setting story ever on a T shirt. Lemight
Speaker 1: be a good T shirt thank me in a series
Speaker 1: of T shirts that are various stories. I mean, did
Speaker 1: anybody offer to patch the dry wall? Or was a
Speaker 1: guy like well? One more details you gotta call them.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Yeah, that might be our
Speaker 1: next our next story. It would be a whole line
Speaker 1: of T shirts called story t shirts. Because we have
Speaker 1: one about the sexual depravity of turkeys. I had to
Speaker 1: check in and see how well that's selling. Uh. Speaking
Speaker 1: of which, go to the Mediator store and check out that.
Speaker 1: You don't you don't know. You don't have any updates
Speaker 1: on whether people wanted the turkey story short. I gotta
Speaker 1: get those updates, we can instart. I'm gonna put that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a picture it on Instagram. Um. We
Speaker 1: covered Alaska's fire season and we're pointing out like how
Speaker 1: it will only get worse right as fire season kicks up,
Speaker 1: and a firefighter who's been working up there, UM pointed
Speaker 1: out that it's a different fuel model up there, and
Speaker 1: the time frames are different, so their fire season starts
Speaker 1: early and ends early, so their fire season is made
Speaker 1: to August Um and he says partly due to the
Speaker 1: sun being out twenty seven although the length of the
Speaker 1: season is lengthening and record acreage is burning more and more.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the outdoor advocacy, uh Man, so much feedback,
Speaker 1: I can't even get into it. All on whether you
Speaker 1: say this is a good question for Drew. If I
Speaker 1: said to you, I saw two deer's or two bucks
Speaker 1: where I saw a two buck or I saw two
Speaker 1: dough tonight, what do you think about? All? That depends
Speaker 1: on where you're from. You know, let's say where you're from.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say two deer, and then you see two bucks.
Speaker 1: See two bucks? Bucks not too? Buck does too. If
Speaker 1: I'm saying two buck, that's like you know, too buck,
Speaker 1: that's like some sort of dance or something. To buck.
Speaker 1: Two bucks is two male deer. They I'll say, like
Speaker 1: like they do in Pennsylvania. Two buck, No, no, no, nope,
Speaker 1: and uh one dough two does got it? One of
Speaker 1: the guys that wrote in and thought that it sounded
Speaker 1: like a doctor's seuss book. He thinks we should clear
Speaker 1: it up in order to make a doctor's seusee book
Speaker 1: called uh one. It's all set to one fish to
Speaker 1: one dear too, dear, dear there, dear here. Steve shoots
Speaker 1: it's a miss. Brodie's next makes a hip and he
Speaker 1: goes on, say just spit balling. Uh a guy from
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania where we were kind of based on road in
Speaker 1: like saying like he says someone for someone to say
Speaker 1: seeing a few buck doesn't strike me as an odd
Speaker 1: thing to say, and in most cases Mr Webster agrees.
Speaker 1: So Webster Dictionary well accept deer and also DearS will
Speaker 1: except bucks or buck. Okay, but he points out some exceptions.
Speaker 1: I mean, the ones goes on shrimp, beaver, doc turkey.
Speaker 1: The exceptions that Webster does not include is you cannot
Speaker 1: apparently say mooses and you cannot say gooses where you
Speaker 1: can you can can you can say gooses. That's multiple
Speaker 1: species of geese. That's a thing you do to somebody else,
Speaker 1: Like he always gooses what you say geese, you don't
Speaker 1: say me. I mean, it's like two different It's a
Speaker 1: weird comparison. That is, is there a term for when
Speaker 1: a writer chooses to use a word improperly like that,
Speaker 1: like to like in a turn of phrase or a
Speaker 1: regional colloquialism, just be like they're a colloquial writer. Yes,
Speaker 1: Steve just gotten an argument with Pat Dirk. Pat Dirk
Speaker 1: and wrote in arguing about the hell's he arguing about
Speaker 1: white tailed the versus white tail that you're supposed like
Speaker 1: in his land, you're supposed to in his mind. And
Speaker 1: he gets frustrated with our editors that like in the
Speaker 1: old days it was white dash tailed deer, and he's
Speaker 1: pained by the fact that white tails one word, is
Speaker 1: now a thing. He prefers the old hyphen aated like
Speaker 1: white tailed deer, which makes it seem like you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, reading what's his name? Isaac Walton credit Heffelfinger
Speaker 1: agreed with him. Yeah, helf Flinger has got a lot
Speaker 1: of stupid things. I mean, but his whole thing about
Speaker 1: not a lot. He's got a couple of stupid things.
Speaker 1: The cows thing and the white tailed thing are stupid
Speaker 1: things that helfl Finger believes him right, God bless him.
Speaker 1: I love him, the smartest guy I know. But he's
Speaker 1: wrong on cows, and he's wrong one. I would bet
Speaker 1: they're the same way about like green winged teal blue
Speaker 1: winged teal versus you know, green wings and blue wings.
Speaker 1: Which is I told him, I've been fighting with editors
Speaker 1: my entire career about this thing, and there's nothing to me.
Speaker 1: At a glance looks goofier than white dash tailed deer.
Speaker 1: It's like they're white tails. And I told Pat he's
Speaker 1: probably still lamenting the loss of thee and thou in
Speaker 1: popular in popular vernacular. And I told him this, there's
Speaker 1: to school thoughts. There's there's two, Like dictionaries take two forms.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've I've discussed this. You have like
Speaker 1: a descriptive approach to language, and you have a prescriptive
Speaker 1: approach to language. Prescriptive would be like you're saying how
Speaker 1: it should be done, you're prescribing its use. A descriptive approaches,
Speaker 1: you're capturing its use. M hmm. Right. There's also a
Speaker 1: matter of efficiency, right, like white tails. But it's like
Speaker 1: at a point, like like usage proper, you should should
Speaker 1: serve the users. I feel hence that we've moved away
Speaker 1: from the in doubt, it's like it should serve the user.
Speaker 1: So I just like like stuff like that. I don't
Speaker 1: have any I don't have any like sympathy for that.
Speaker 1: Sure is a writer DF thoughts on. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a matter of It's kind of like accent to me.
Speaker 1: So I always want to feel the accent. I want
Speaker 1: to know where someone's from. So you know, to move,
Speaker 1: for example, diction or a conversation into some unrealistic lea
Speaker 1: stilted place takes away from the action, It takes away
Speaker 1: from the environment. So you know, I'm all about keeping
Speaker 1: colloquialisms and so to understand, I mean, I like old
Speaker 1: duck names. For example, right, as an old duck name,
Speaker 1: I mean spooney okay, right, you know, um so and
Speaker 1: you think or summer duck for wood duck, Yes, summer duck,
Speaker 1: I mean because in South Carolina historically, I mean that
Speaker 1: was about the only duck we were gonna have in
Speaker 1: the summertime. I mean, now we got you know, fulvius
Speaker 1: tree ducks and and black bellied whistling ducks that are around,
Speaker 1: but summer duck. So that was gonna I mean that
Speaker 1: said enough that you knew that that's gonna be a
Speaker 1: duck that hangs around in the summer. You're not saying
Speaker 1: a sponsor, you know the Latin name for that bird. Um.
Speaker 1: But so you have to keep the action real for
Speaker 1: a nonfiction um writer, yeah, you want to you want
Speaker 1: to keep that there and for and for a fiction writer. Really,
Speaker 1: I stop believing. I stopped reading when someone is sort
Speaker 1: of out of context for a place. So if if
Speaker 1: if they haven't done their work, and you know, you've
Speaker 1: got someone from Pennsylvania saying something that's something something that
Speaker 1: someone from South Carolina would say, then you know I
Speaker 1: kind of pushed that. Yeah, so that's where I come down.
Speaker 1: I'll take this opportunity to once again plug the works
Speaker 1: of Karmick McCarthy, who more than anyone learns like the
Speaker 1: language he's talking about. There you go, I mean, do
Speaker 1: your homework, like you went to the Southwest to start
Speaker 1: writing about the Southwest, and holy sh it, or like
Speaker 1: when Andy Prude started writing out of Wyoming, I mean
Speaker 1: she got where she knew it better than you. Buddy
Speaker 1: man Um tells that talking about oh yeah, the lead episode,
Speaker 1: let me do an abbreviated version. There's a guy that
Speaker 1: hunts muzzloader only areas and in some states that actually
Speaker 1: spells out like you have to use a lead projectile
Speaker 1: with a muzzleloader. And he's like, what's a fellow to do?
Speaker 1: And you'd be like, well, like I've I've hunted with
Speaker 1: my muzzleloader, um with Federals all copper muzzleloader animal but
Speaker 1: it's sabboted and there's no true to bore. I believe
Speaker 1: that's correct. So the it's wrapped, the projectile is wrapped
Speaker 1: in a plastic sheath. So what actually, So let's say
Speaker 1: you let's say you're shooting a fifty caliber muzzleloader. The
Speaker 1: projectile is actually, what do you guys know, not fifty,
Speaker 1: it's like thirty six or some ship like that, and
Speaker 1: it's wrapped in it's wrapped in a it's basically wrapped
Speaker 1: in a wadding. Okay, like you know in the old days,
Speaker 1: you take like a little bit of take some bear
Speaker 1: grease and put it on some linen and wrap your
Speaker 1: ball in it. What that does is that bites the
Speaker 1: that that that helps bite the lands and grooves inside
Speaker 1: the barrel holds, helps bite the rifling and gives it
Speaker 1: a snug fit so gases don't escape around the edge.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted, if you were, if you were
Speaker 1: like desirous to shoot all copper things for your muzzleoader
Speaker 1: is going to be savoted in a plastic sheet, and
Speaker 1: that plastic bites the lands and the grooves and throws
Speaker 1: a spin on it, and then when it comes out
Speaker 1: the muzzle, it sheds that plastic. And so some states
Speaker 1: require true to bore, like when they spell it like
Speaker 1: what exactly is a muzzleloader? It requires a true to
Speaker 1: borer projectile. And so there's no copper true to Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I don't think so there's no copper true
Speaker 1: to bore muzzleloader projectile because it's not gonna. I think
Speaker 1: it's like, it's not it's too hard, it doesn't bite.
Speaker 1: My wrong, I don't think I'm wrong. I wouldn't know.
Speaker 1: That's what he wrote in about uh speaking of healf
Speaker 1: of finger, and that's just that's not because l hef
Speaker 1: a sounds like helfle finger because helf of fingers is
Speaker 1: uh helfle fingers always nippled deep in the whole jaguar conversation.
Speaker 1: Tell Us, tell us the jaguar news bro. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: does Spencer say it? Jaguar? I say jaguar. There's some jaguars.
Speaker 1: There's a famous jaguar down in uh down southern Arizona
Speaker 1: known as l hef a uh who was believed for
Speaker 1: several years to be the only jaguar that was in
Speaker 1: the United States and just a bad looking Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the two thousand fifteen is the last time they saw him.
Speaker 1: I think they may have believed he was dead. Um.
Speaker 1: But in any case, like he just disappeared in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen, So that was seven years ago. Um,
Speaker 1: L half a just popped up across the border in Mexico.
Speaker 1: Um still alive at twelve years old. Um. Pretty, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty cool story. It's like it I'm gonna bring
Speaker 1: up something that always gets people riled up as ship
Speaker 1: um if when debating when debating the border wall, Okay,
Speaker 1: I brought us up a hundred times. I'm gonna bring
Speaker 1: it up again when debating the border wall, like a
Speaker 1: normal I can't think of how to approach this subject.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm not I'm not scared approach. I's gonna
Speaker 1: approach it. When debating the border wall, you would think
Speaker 1: that people would be like, I want to hear all
Speaker 1: the sides to it. Right aside to the debate around
Speaker 1: the border wall is what it means for the freedom
Speaker 1: of movement of large land mammals. Okay, birds, no problem, Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of birds, no problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: googled turkeys. Probably not great. But it's it's a thing
Speaker 1: to factor, right. But people get mad that you bring
Speaker 1: it up because they're like, well, your job hasn't been
Speaker 1: taken by it, right. It's like, well, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: just entering in a thing to consider, the same way
Speaker 1: if you're sitting there with your like my wife and
Speaker 1: I right now are kicking around what we might do
Speaker 1: for Christmas. It just so happens that airline tickets are
Speaker 1: very expensive right now, and we have a family of five.
Speaker 1: So if we're saying we want to go to ax
Speaker 1: for Christmas, and then someone says, however, let's bear in
Speaker 1: mind plane tickets are very expensive, is it? Then do
Speaker 1: you then say like, well, you just hate vacations or
Speaker 1: is it No, I'm just making sure I factor everything
Speaker 1: in and making my decision about how I feel about
Speaker 1: us going on the vacation and the same spirit. Building
Speaker 1: an impenetrable wall across a couple of thousand miles of
Speaker 1: while they've have will have implications. But this is interesting
Speaker 1: because this thing is moving back and forth. That's right, Um,
Speaker 1: were the people to be fair, he may have I mean,
Speaker 1: that wall hasn't been he might have found his spot
Speaker 1: right and and people move back and forth. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting that that he right, that he that he has
Speaker 1: his way of doing it, and not even being captured
Speaker 1: by in like and not even just getting picked up
Speaker 1: by electronic intercepts. Yeah, they they ideed him, I think
Speaker 1: with I don't know if it was trail camp pictures
Speaker 1: or whatever, but someone got some images of him and
Speaker 1: they ideed him by you know, they basically like fingerprint
Speaker 1: jaguars with their markings, and that's how they idd him
Speaker 1: and found out he's still alive out there, and so
Speaker 1: twelve years old. Um, I'm imagining that's an ancient my understandings,
Speaker 1: you're at the end of the round, you're at the
Speaker 1: end of the line. Um, just from just from like
Speaker 1: working at work in South America ten eleven twelve. Their teeth,
Speaker 1: their teeth are cooked, and then they usually wind up
Speaker 1: chewing on someone's dog in their backyard. They can't get
Speaker 1: any you know, they can't get any to eat. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know what you're talking about. The fingerprinting on jaguars
Speaker 1: is remember a few years ago one turned up in
Speaker 1: a on the Mexico side of the border. One pictures
Speaker 1: turned up on Facebook. Um, the person with the jaguars
Speaker 1: not identifiable, but it was like a jaguar, a dead
Speaker 1: jaguar shot and the floral I think they call it
Speaker 1: was rosettes they call him on there. Yeah, they're the
Speaker 1: rosettes are diagnostic and they actually in that jaguar had
Speaker 1: spent time in Arizona. So there. You know, I think
Speaker 1: the question of whether they're moving back and forth has
Speaker 1: clearly been settled. But you know, I wonder if l
Speaker 1: haf A left any offspring in in the US. If
Speaker 1: you're interested in the jaguar debate in this country, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to like talk about as quickly as possibles,
Speaker 1: like as they look at jaguar recovery and jaguar protection.
Speaker 1: There's a spirited debate about what function historically did West Texas,
Speaker 1: southern New Mexico, in southern Arizona, Like what function did
Speaker 1: they actually play in the in the well being of jaguars?
Speaker 1: And some people are like, there's enough evidence that's just
Speaker 1: jazz that it was like there was a thinly dispersed, viable,
Speaker 1: reproducing population of jaguars in those states, and recovery would
Speaker 1: mean that you had a thinly dispersed, reproducing, viable population
Speaker 1: of jaguars, or it would be that now and then
Speaker 1: one showed up. Yeah, and it was never core habit.
Speaker 1: But either way, it was like the northern edge of
Speaker 1: their territory right like they weren't there wasn't ever a
Speaker 1: lot of them. That was as far as they went.
Speaker 1: You know, sure, I think to brodyes earlier comment, it
Speaker 1: would provide some context people too, to um think about
Speaker 1: the dynamics of these cat populations, because like, did l
Speaker 1: f A leave any kids behind? I would have Heffelfinger's
Speaker 1: book read l haf A how many kids he left behind?
Speaker 1: And how many eight along the way? That's right? Uh,
Speaker 1: Sean hit us with um you had an assignment. Yep.
Speaker 1: We listed out a ton of Duck reports to do,
Speaker 1: like eight eight different subject matters to cover. Well. Quackitty quick,
Speaker 1: don't talk back, that's funny, go out, sorry, go on. Um.
Speaker 1: One of one of those subjects being what led to
Speaker 1: the explosion of snow goose populations. And we've kind of
Speaker 1: discussed in the Duck Report before. Tell people what we mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if your dad was a goose hunter, right, there
Speaker 1: was no like you know, insane like no plugs needed,
Speaker 1: electric electronic callers allowed bag limits of fifty snow geese
Speaker 1: a day hunting them during turkey season. Yeah, none of
Speaker 1: that was happening. And all a lot of it comes
Speaker 1: back to human influence and human impact on the environment
Speaker 1: and agriculture. Right. Uh, when you came and hunted with
Speaker 1: me in South Dakota the first time we did podcast
Speaker 1: that was Hunting the Anthroposyne and titles. Man, he's a
Speaker 1: good title. That was a good one. The next the
Speaker 1: next title it'll already be out, I think, but it's
Speaker 1: um throw had little use for you. Mm hmm. That's
Speaker 1: a title later so so we but we're hunting flooded
Speaker 1: beans right and flooded corn and like how that benefits
Speaker 1: ducks and how ducks thrive in that environment. Snow Geese
Speaker 1: are another example of winners in the spread of agriculture
Speaker 1: and the explosion of grain agriculture across the Midwest and
Speaker 1: the West. Um. You know, you go back to like
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds and snow geese were this and there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of you know, old historical records that
Speaker 1: the Fish and Wildlife Service collected and compiled in their
Speaker 1: argument for what we now call the Light Goose Spring
Speaker 1: Conservation Order. But a hundred years ago, snow geese were
Speaker 1: this small population of birds that nested on the tundra
Speaker 1: and then end up winnering in a sliver of habitat
Speaker 1: in coastal Texas and Louisiana. Fast forward to the nineties,
Speaker 1: thirties and forties, as we see small grain kind of
Speaker 1: explode across the plains and places like Kansas and Iowa,
Speaker 1: draining wetlands and creating you know, pretty much a food
Speaker 1: source for those snow geese define small grain wheat, barley,
Speaker 1: and then now of course corn. But in the you know,
Speaker 1: in that twenties to forties, and in addition to that,
Speaker 1: in Texas and Louisiana. You see a lot of those
Speaker 1: coastal brackish marshes get drained and turned into rice fields.
Speaker 1: And what happens is snow geese respond positively to that. Uh,
Speaker 1: their population starts exploding because now as they make this
Speaker 1: crazy trek, right, which we discussed in the A Dometer
Speaker 1: Duck Report where we talked about how much, you know,
Speaker 1: the average snow goose flies twenty and a half miles
Speaker 1: per day its whole life, which is just wild to me.
Speaker 1: That's incredible, man, that's so much so so now that
Speaker 1: they fly all this time and spend so much time traveling,
Speaker 1: now they actually have a food source that helps them
Speaker 1: be healthy along the whole way. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: in in the sixties and seventies, guy named Dr Rockwell
Speaker 1: who helped me with this and helped me with an
Speaker 1: article I wrote. He started researching snow geese on La
Speaker 1: Pruce Bay in in on the edge of the Hudson
Speaker 1: Bay in Canada, and he pretty much what what he
Speaker 1: found and what he argued for starting actually all the
Speaker 1: way back in seventies was these snow geese every year
Speaker 1: are more and more healthy as they come back north
Speaker 1: on their spring migration, and it coincides beautifully with more
Speaker 1: and more food across the Midwest as they as they
Speaker 1: come back north. So you get these new spots that
Speaker 1: they kind of stop and hit along the way uh
Speaker 1: Squaw Creek which is now called Los Bluffs uh in Missouri,
Speaker 1: Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota, etcetera. Where
Speaker 1: you have this perfect collision of habitat where you have
Speaker 1: a good water source, you know, a consistent water source
Speaker 1: every year that they can stop at, surrounded by food
Speaker 1: and freeze out lake here in Montana, Yep, exactly. And
Speaker 1: you know, I remember you could call when we used
Speaker 1: to go up there and hunt that you could call
Speaker 1: a hotline and the hot line would tell you that
Speaker 1: there's twenty thousand snow geese an estimated twenty you're here.
Speaker 1: Then you call a few days later to be like
Speaker 1: an estimated twenty six thousand or here, and just like
Speaker 1: decide if you're gonna go based off the number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they used to have that on sand Lake National Wildlife
Speaker 1: Refuge in South Dakota too. I remember one time that
Speaker 1: they estimated there was two point two million snow gees
Speaker 1: sitting on that You're kidding which just so many in
Speaker 1: one place, so so long story short. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: for example, with Dr Rockwell's research, he watched during his
Speaker 1: time living up there on the tundra researching snows, he
Speaker 1: watched that Hudson Bay population go from fifteen hundred nesting
Speaker 1: pairs two over five hundred thousand nesting pairs during his
Speaker 1: time of research there. And that's just not in his life,
Speaker 1: that's during his career, right and now, So so what
Speaker 1: we had then in the nineties is guys like him
Speaker 1: making an argument for these snow gees are extremely productive,
Speaker 1: egg culture is benefiting them. We got to do something.
Speaker 1: And when they took the gloves off and said, all right, hunters,
Speaker 1: um have at it. Shoot as many snow geese as
Speaker 1: you can. Adding you know, no plugs, use electronic calls,
Speaker 1: all things that are like unheard of in waterfall management,
Speaker 1: and you know, give credit where credit to do on that,
Speaker 1: like Duck's Unlimited was huge in hunters getting that opportunity
Speaker 1: because frankly, there was a lot of discussion around poisoning
Speaker 1: them and which is hard to think about as we
Speaker 1: you know, we look back on like poisoning of bears
Speaker 1: and wolves across their whole native range and decimation of that.
Speaker 1: We see it as like, oh, we would never do
Speaker 1: that again. But only thirty years ago it was like
Speaker 1: on the table two poison snow geese. Did I say
Speaker 1: that I ever bragged? You belt the vial which is
Speaker 1: probably still let my mom's house that we had a
Speaker 1: glass vial of what my dad swore up and down
Speaker 1: was it was like a white powder and he said,
Speaker 1: if you put that and mix it with corn and
Speaker 1: put it out, it'll kill the geese right off. No,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard that, But what is it? Do you
Speaker 1: know what the chemicals? Just said? I sat on the
Speaker 1: window sill in the garage and no, like, we never
Speaker 1: touched it, but my dad's like, that's what it is,
Speaker 1: and he'd got that, yeah, and he was gonna someday
Speaker 1: mix up with some bread and put it on the
Speaker 1: beach just to see what happened. But like, like I said,
Speaker 1: I guarantee that thing is still sitting there. I need
Speaker 1: to go grab. So anyway, what has it been effective? No, No,
Speaker 1: it hasn't. Many they're just too productive and they fly
Speaker 1: around in such large flocks. You know. The hunter impact
Speaker 1: on snow geese has been single jet percentile. And you
Speaker 1: know the thing is, I mean, we've got an episode
Speaker 1: of duck Lore that's out snow goose hunting with Kevin Gillespie,
Speaker 1: and you know you'll have snows fly over you that
Speaker 1: and you kill two, you kill four. Like there's so
Speaker 1: many eyes. They live to be so old. They see
Speaker 1: so many decoy spreads. You know, we're putting out a
Speaker 1: thousand decoys with dozens of speakers mimicking snow goose sounds
Speaker 1: a great hide and like they just they just know
Speaker 1: they are the hardest bird to hunt, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to see that they nature does a
Speaker 1: lot better job of canning snow goose populations with spring
Speaker 1: storms on the tundra than hunters could ever, you know,
Speaker 1: dream of doing. Is there any speculation that their population
Speaker 1: could like crash because there's like they there is no
Speaker 1: usable nesting you know that that was originally the speculation.
Speaker 1: It was degrading Arctic habitat, right, That was the argument
Speaker 1: behind the spring like goose conservation order. Was there so
Speaker 1: negatively impacting their tundra habitat that we got to preserve
Speaker 1: the tundra. What we've seen instead is that as they
Speaker 1: degrade certain areas. They tend to just disperse and find
Speaker 1: new areas right that they they hop around to premium habitat,
Speaker 1: and they've actually moved away from a lot of the
Speaker 1: coastal habitat and they've moved to more interior nesting in
Speaker 1: some places. Another wrinkle I've heard of in this which
Speaker 1: could change the dialogue a little bit is as there
Speaker 1: is a reduction in sea ice in an escalation in
Speaker 1: snow geese populations, that polar bears are becoming increasingly reliant
Speaker 1: on snow geese nesting colonies. Yeah, there's well, there's and
Speaker 1: there's so many to buy it. Do you know about that?
Speaker 1: I do, doctor, I do. Dr Rockwell was actually talking
Speaker 1: to me about how they're having a hard time knowing
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on on the tundra with snow goose
Speaker 1: populations because there is so many bears moving with these
Speaker 1: snow goose colonies, and that it's like dangerous to have
Speaker 1: researchers on the ground because there's now spots where there
Speaker 1: is a there are spots where there is all three
Speaker 1: bears colliding around snow goose habitat. Yes, that'd be cool
Speaker 1: to see. You have one stop shopping right there? No
Speaker 1: ship with a wild to see a black bear, but
Speaker 1: grizzly and a polar bear like wandering around a snow
Speaker 1: goose colony. Grizzly bear and a polar bear walk into
Speaker 1: a bar. Well they man, yeah, that's a fun one.
Speaker 1: Uh oh. If you want to learn more about duck Lawer,
Speaker 1: go back and check out our episode called Test My Meat.
Speaker 1: They tell a little backstory on that, and also we're
Speaker 1: speaking to Test my Meat. We solicited it where people
Speaker 1: were sold to send us the toughest meat they've ever encountered.
Speaker 1: We got in our freezer and we're not well, need
Speaker 1: to follow my instruction. Karin's very disappointed people's listening abilities.
Speaker 1: She's like become like a critic of the American education system. However,
Speaker 1: very explicit details that were not followed in many cases.
Speaker 1: But we have a lot of samples in the freezer
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get Instead of doing it on the podcast,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna fire up our tender our meat
Speaker 1: testing tenderness testing machine to do a video about everybody
Speaker 1: can see how one guys need to do that. Geriatric
Speaker 1: cow I shot last year's rules Brodie are you ready,
Speaker 1: Drew Ready while we do this, Callahan is gonna bartend
Speaker 1: for us. We covered on the show that they're making
Speaker 1: a yeah, green crab whiskey. They're they're taking green crabs
Speaker 1: and making whiskey out of them, sort of. Who's the
Speaker 1: outfit Tamworth Distilling in New Hampshire and they make a
Speaker 1: beaver caster product. We're gonna have to ask them about that,
Speaker 1: but yeahs not true. Maybe they do, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but damn it's like it's beaver It's a whiskey with
Speaker 1: infused with beaver cast? Is that? Is that what we're
Speaker 1: trying right now? That's what we're trying. That's what we're drinking.
Speaker 1: The green crab was cast story um flavored whiskey. I
Speaker 1: didn't think we'd be on a meat eater podcast and
Speaker 1: not get around to the beaver cast. So we're doing
Speaker 1: the beaver caster first and then we're gonna have But
Speaker 1: thank you to the listeners who wrote in because I
Speaker 1: said that we probably couldn't get this. You know how
Speaker 1: early we're talking about euphemisms. I'll tell you when I
Speaker 1: stole from Charles Portis who uh Charles Porters who wrote
Speaker 1: True Grit and someone says of Rooster Cogburn that he
Speaker 1: likes to pull a cork. I I and I stole
Speaker 1: that from that book, and that's what I used when
Speaker 1: I'm talking about someone who drinks a tad too much,
Speaker 1: like this Friday. Here's a sound here's a sound effect
Speaker 1: that I might sell that sound effect. Someone, you want
Speaker 1: to put a drop of that on your tongue and
Speaker 1: see if you can detect any if you come to
Speaker 1: the right place. Because I got a nose for being
Speaker 1: so yeah that I smell that. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: M zero zero. It smells like whiskey, to taste like whiskey.
Speaker 1: Taste like whiskey. I could be hundreds of yards away
Speaker 1: from a beaver lodge and I'll smell the cab beaver
Speaker 1: castor is a powerful smell. Man. Don't you have a
Speaker 1: whiff of that in your little shot? I just got it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know how I got it. Drink your drink, suck
Speaker 1: it dry, and then and then get your nose about
Speaker 1: two three inches away from the mouth and take a whiff.
Speaker 1: And I just hit the caster. It's very subtlest story,
Speaker 1: whiskey man, that's pretty tasty. It's not bad. Steve is
Speaker 1: doing some motion where he puts his nose up in
Speaker 1: the area. Really really bougie. What's the other one? The
Speaker 1: crab flavor? Okay, so crab Trapper, right, this is the one.
Speaker 1: I was kind of giving a hard time having never
Speaker 1: tasted it based off the fact that it's a They're
Speaker 1: They're descriptor was a better tasting fireball boy? What the
Speaker 1: world needs? And it comes packed and what I thought
Speaker 1: was a suet cage, but then realized, I think it
Speaker 1: might be it comes in a little crab trap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a suet cage. Do they got
Speaker 1: an origin story? I'm trying my my trick. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: take a little bit. It was the last time anyone
Speaker 1: was drinking on here hot buttered drum. It was a
Speaker 1: really good plan for this upcoming Christmas. This is the
Speaker 1: what's this? This is crab Trapper right here? Trapper? That
Speaker 1: one's different. That's different. I just never hear all the
Speaker 1: slow beers were all made in the same factory. Brody
Speaker 1: just made a face like he busted into his dad's
Speaker 1: liquor cab, not when he was supposed to be sick
Speaker 1: at school. From school. I give him credit for going
Speaker 1: after those. Actually that's some Yeah, that's some marine going
Speaker 1: on in there. Yeah, yeah, it's there. Yeah, it's there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's Briannie. It's sort of like crabbing left
Speaker 1: out in the sun. Brianie isn't quite what Brianie's giving
Speaker 1: it some credit. Yes, passed, Brianie. It smells good. Shot
Speaker 1: it on the caster for sure. Now I thought that
Speaker 1: you don't want many Let's try something that. Boy, are
Speaker 1: we going to try the Tara was wonder if they
Speaker 1: made one Tara gland off box. This that is the
Speaker 1: Tarsa gandingas with Old Bay or something right right right, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. Yes, there's Old Bay seasonings in there.
Speaker 1: See I'm like part Chinese. Something about this is dipping
Speaker 1: into that fermented funky like we have a thing called,
Speaker 1: you know, stinky tofu. It doesn't sound appetizing, but it is. Anybody,
Speaker 1: what's your face telling us right now? And I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna catch a buzz from this, That's what he's telling you.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna you're not gonna drink enough, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a deterrent from pulling a court so that
Speaker 1: sound effect reverse it? What does it sound like when
Speaker 1: you reverse it, we'll find out. Wait, now he's that's good.
Speaker 1: Here's whoa Is that the tar one or they crab one? Okay?
Speaker 1: And that neither? Is that back? What you think about that?
Speaker 1: I'm ready to start the interview now. If anybody would
Speaker 1: like to try the dear one, just pass your glass.
Speaker 1: I need to end with that. I'm more of a beat.
Speaker 1: What's it called beaver trapper? The beaver that was good?
Speaker 1: That's really good. So that's something I've been americanizing for
Speaker 1: far too lo, probably out of old cartoons. It was
Speaker 1: always old day. But here it is spelled out in
Speaker 1: front of me, and it's e au space d E space.
Speaker 1: So they went with crab trapper for green crab flavored whiskey,
Speaker 1: and they didn't go with beaver trapper. We have a
Speaker 1: seasoning called beaver trapper though, but they did over to
Speaker 1: musque adproof castoreum flavored whiskey, which I thought was quite nice.
Speaker 1: Crab on have to go with a boil or something.
Speaker 1: What's there was from being a burder in the ornithologist,
Speaker 1: and like, how do you define a burder? And in
Speaker 1: that answer me this, how do you become a burder?
Speaker 1: Of mammals. Why is there no equivalent? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a matter of dedication. It's a matter of obsession
Speaker 1: between the ornithologist is the professional right that can Maybe
Speaker 1: you're studying taxonomy, maybe you're thinking about behavior, Maybe you
Speaker 1: think about conservation and culture like I do so ornithologists.
Speaker 1: Typically you're pushing towards that realm of scientific study of
Speaker 1: the of the creature. The birder is the you know,
Speaker 1: the hobbyist, the officionado, somebody's out there following and and
Speaker 1: birder bird watcher, you know, sort of interchangeable, even though
Speaker 1: I'd like to think about them kind of in different ways.
Speaker 1: You know, the bird watcher maybe as someone who um
Speaker 1: is a little less um avid in terms of following
Speaker 1: birds and going after the rarity and traveling all over
Speaker 1: the world for it may be satisfied to be like
Speaker 1: a lot of us had to be during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: to sit in the backyard and let the world come
Speaker 1: to you on wings. So lots of ornithologists are birders,
Speaker 1: but some of them aren't, right um. But it's just
Speaker 1: a matter if it's sort of uh, you know, degrees
Speaker 1: of separation in terms of those people who are thinking
Speaker 1: about birds from a hobby perspective. They want to see
Speaker 1: those birds as many of them as they can, uh,
Speaker 1: as many different species. So lots of birders have life lists.
Speaker 1: Do you keep a lifeless not anymore? You know you've
Speaker 1: walked away from it. Yeah, I mean I know every
Speaker 1: bird that I've seen, but um to me. For me, now,
Speaker 1: it's really about sort of the connection with the place
Speaker 1: as well as the bird, right. So you know, I
Speaker 1: was just up in Denali National Park up at Camptonally
Speaker 1: and you know, lots of the birds that I see
Speaker 1: in the wintertime, for example, a white crowned sparrow. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a bird in South Carolina that is relatively local,
Speaker 1: and you hear them sing sort of one plaintive mournful song,
Speaker 1: and you sort of see them in this way in
Speaker 1: this landscape in the southern landscape. Well, you go up
Speaker 1: there and those birds are singing you know, seven or
Speaker 1: eight different variations of songs, right and um and and
Speaker 1: so you get to see the bird at the other
Speaker 1: half of its life. So that's that's that's watching to me.
Speaker 1: It I wasn't so interested, Yeah, I wanted to see
Speaker 1: lots of different birds up there there are things that
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen that I wanted to see, or that
Speaker 1: I wanted to see in the context of not being
Speaker 1: outside of the range as a rarity, but being in
Speaker 1: their place and seeing them comfortable in their place. So
Speaker 1: that was watching to me. That was absorbing the birds
Speaker 1: in a way. What's what is the what is the number?
Speaker 1: I mean if if you can make a list, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to tell you. I wouldn't. This would
Speaker 1: be a great trivia question for Spencer. How high does
Speaker 1: the list go? They are roughly ten thousand birds species
Speaker 1: in the world roughly, Yeah, roughly ten thousands. Why is
Speaker 1: it not? Why is it not specific? Because of like
Speaker 1: taxonomic lumping and splitting I mean ornithology and and the
Speaker 1: ability to to to split hairs with feathers in this
Speaker 1: case um birds that every year. You know, there are
Speaker 1: species that sort of morph in and out of one another.
Speaker 1: So the splitting, you know, sometimes gives birders a larger
Speaker 1: lifeless Yeah, I've got a question for you there. So
Speaker 1: you said ten thousand, So in that ten thousand, are
Speaker 1: there like from your perspective, are there five different wild
Speaker 1: turkeys there as there one? Well, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: going by the biological species concept, and those birds can
Speaker 1: interbreed and produce viable young. That's one species. But as
Speaker 1: a birder, as a as a well now as a birder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna list. I mean, and those birds
Speaker 1: have different behaviors, right, So understanding that behavior and you
Speaker 1: think about how the different habitats have created or attributed
Speaker 1: some different character to those birds. So you know you
Speaker 1: can't argue that in Eastern is like a ghoul's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and you're gonna if you're a hunter, you're
Speaker 1: gonna hunt those birds differently. I was. I was impressed
Speaker 1: the first, you know, in my first sort of observations
Speaker 1: of of of Miriam's in in Nebraska. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were everywhere right, they just didn't seem wary like Eastern's.
Speaker 1: And and people would tell me, they'd say, they'd say, well,
Speaker 1: because I was interested in hunting Miriams, they said, well,
Speaker 1: that's easy. You know, they're sort of like they treated
Speaker 1: him like you were gonna go out and hunt pigeons. There.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a whole lot of to me, seemingly value
Speaker 1: placed upon what that bird was from um hunting standpoint. Now,
Speaker 1: as a birder, you know, to see those birds and
Speaker 1: to see those white tipped fittail feathers and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff in the way the bird was behaving in
Speaker 1: that habitat and those sandhills, you know, that made a
Speaker 1: difference to me. But from a conservation and and and
Speaker 1: you have to think from really an organizational standpoint, and
Speaker 1: those people concerned with the conservation of wild turkeys, then
Speaker 1: you know, if you split, then there's the opportunity to
Speaker 1: think about turkeys in a different way. You know. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the you know, any species that we
Speaker 1: go after as birders, and we think about you're thinking
Speaker 1: about diversity. You're thinking about seeing all of these birds
Speaker 1: and all their permutations. And well sometimes you know, as
Speaker 1: the AOS gets together and their taxonomic committee is thinking
Speaker 1: about these birds that the the bird gods. The American
Speaker 1: Ornithological Society, and you're a member board member, you have
Speaker 1: some role there. Not Now you don't know, no, I've
Speaker 1: I've I've deboarded myself for the most part. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's their arguments every year about um discussions. I
Speaker 1: guess I should say about who these birds are, what
Speaker 1: they are and see you keep hearing me say who
Speaker 1: birds are, because I'm thinking about them maybe in a
Speaker 1: different way than a lot of folks think about them.
Speaker 1: So when it comes down to a species that someone
Speaker 1: has noticed some differences or um in behavior perhaps or
Speaker 1: in occurrence of that bird in a given place or
Speaker 1: a given range, then they begin to think about splitting them.
Speaker 1: So I think about birds a bird that you know,
Speaker 1: winter wrens that are now Pacific rins, and then in
Speaker 1: Europe they wren so um and a Lucian wren, So
Speaker 1: that bird was once one species. But then it's sort
Speaker 1: of like the roll of the taxonomic dice, you know,
Speaker 1: and you come up and you got you know, and
Speaker 1: you roll double sixes. There you go, you got more
Speaker 1: birds on your list. You know. One that one of
Speaker 1: the an occurrence I'm sure you're familiar with it that
Speaker 1: I've followed because it kind of happened with a bird
Speaker 1: I was in rested in and in my lifetime was
Speaker 1: when the blue grouse, right, Yeah, when the blue grouse
Speaker 1: ceased to exist and was broken into the dusky and sody, right,
Speaker 1: and it was like there was like genuine things. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of them likes to have a different pattern of
Speaker 1: how it does its call in the spring, one generally
Speaker 1: wants to do it on the ground, One generally wants
Speaker 1: to do it in a tree. Differences in uh, what
Speaker 1: do you call that? On a bird? When you got
Speaker 1: that eyebrow? All right, bro, that puffs up and ship
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about? Like differences there and
Speaker 1: all these behavioral differences. And then you see it and
Speaker 1: now you you see it like reflected in the hunting regulations,
Speaker 1: and it was it was the outfit you're talking about.
Speaker 1: The American Ornithological Society said, hey, we got it wrong.
Speaker 1: There's one that lives in the coastal ranges, there's one
Speaker 1: of the interior ranges, and ain't the same thing, you know,
Speaker 1: And and those opportunities to split out and to to
Speaker 1: recognize those birds for who they are are, and in
Speaker 1: some ways, you know, the science allows you to kind
Speaker 1: of de objectify the birds. So it's a you know,
Speaker 1: it's an exercise that frustrates some people, especially when they
Speaker 1: lose species. If you are interested in maximizing the number
Speaker 1: of things on your list, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they get lumped down into one or two, then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, um, some people don't like that. It's a thing.
Speaker 1: Sure is there a number against all birders are measured? Right?
Speaker 1: So are there benchmark type of numbers out there that
Speaker 1: it's like you're not gonna be taken seriously until you
Speaker 1: hit just here's here's the thing. I you know, and
Speaker 1: people bird watchers, birders keep lists down to I mean
Speaker 1: to the patch. You know when I say the patch,
Speaker 1: that place maybe that they go constantly. I've got a
Speaker 1: place in uh in South Carolina, Townville, for example. It's
Speaker 1: mostly itszagg fields ponds, farm ponds, a budding forests, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of diversity out there, and we see
Speaker 1: quite a few species that you would expect to only
Speaker 1: see in the West or the Midwest. So you can
Speaker 1: go out there and you can, um, certain times you
Speaker 1: have a fair chance and in a big flock of
Speaker 1: winning Eastern metal larks if the birds are singing or
Speaker 1: if you've got a spoting so if you can figure
Speaker 1: them out, you might pick out a couple of Western
Speaker 1: metal arks, you know. Um, And so you know the
Speaker 1: list out there and that expense, you know, if you
Speaker 1: can get two hundred, two hundred and fifty birds out
Speaker 1: in that patch, in that localized area that might be
Speaker 1: sort of a benchmark. But birding has become extraordinarily competitive.
Speaker 1: I mean, so you have these big years, these big days.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's yeah, like they there's like a very
Speaker 1: popular book about and then they did a movie right year.
Speaker 1: So if I'm understanding this correctly, it's not necessarily just
Speaker 1: one long list, it's a here's the list that I
Speaker 1: acquired during one day in this region. He's being invasive
Speaker 1: because he doesn't want to tell you you can do that.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want you know you can do that. Might
Speaker 1: know what is my number? My number, like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't have it. You know, I don't have I
Speaker 1: don't have a number. As much as some days, I'll
Speaker 1: go out right now say this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: sparrow day, and I want to see as many of
Speaker 1: the sparrows that one might expect to see in this
Speaker 1: place in that day, and so it might just be
Speaker 1: a sparrow day for me. Let me, let me put
Speaker 1: it to you this way. I'm not gonna ask you anymore. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's one last final question. There's nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: Let's say you met a competitive, like the worst type
Speaker 1: of competitive burder okay, and they're just gonna they gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, and they hit you with a number like
Speaker 1: my lifeless number one that the top end is around
Speaker 1: ten thousand. They heat with the number like I have
Speaker 1: in my life. With all the money I've spent, I've
Speaker 1: seen x birds. What would the number need to be
Speaker 1: for you to say, holy ship? Three four thousand birds?
Speaker 1: I mean in North America, So think about round up
Speaker 1: you say North America thousand or a thousand birds and
Speaker 1: our birds species. But but really, you know, you've got
Speaker 1: these kids, You've got really young people who have seen
Speaker 1: two or three thousand birds. You know, they're out there
Speaker 1: that aggressively searching for the species. So they're chasing um.
Speaker 1: They are are really thinking about the ways to maximize
Speaker 1: the number of birds they see. They're traveling to foreign countries.
Speaker 1: Here's the one. Maybe you'll answer this one. How many
Speaker 1: countries have you been to? Uh? Roughly? I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: about ten, you know, and mostly though taking students to
Speaker 1: those to to to those places. So you know, I
Speaker 1: have a I have a bucket list of places I
Speaker 1: want to go. But you've been have you been to
Speaker 1: like all kind of eco regions in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: I haven't been to ant Antarctica. I haven't been there yet.
Speaker 1: I would not have thought that. I don't know why
Speaker 1: that it would be young people getting overly ambitious about it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's picture. It's well, you know, you go,
Speaker 1: for example, if you go to a bird festival, like
Speaker 1: the biggest week in American birding up in northwest Ohio
Speaker 1: and the Black Swamp up there in Toledo near Toledo.
Speaker 1: You go there in the springtime and you've got birds,
Speaker 1: migratory birds, warblers, thrushes, tanagers that are piling up on
Speaker 1: the edge of erie. And those birds are just piling
Speaker 1: up in There are boardwalks through that and so um
Speaker 1: kim cough in the in the black Swamp bird of observatory.
Speaker 1: They are doing science there to sort of keep track
Speaker 1: of some of those birds. But you have hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people coming into you ever been in Oregon, Ohio? Well,
Speaker 1: now it's you know, the interesting thing you drive into
Speaker 1: You drive out of Toledo, I don't know, maybe uh
Speaker 1: forty minutes something like that, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're in all this sagg land in northwest Ohio. You've
Speaker 1: got the lake right there, You've got the forest, and
Speaker 1: those birds pile up and people, all of those people
Speaker 1: come up there, and a lot of those people, you've
Speaker 1: got kids who are carrying around camera lenses that are
Speaker 1: almost as long as they are tall. Kids. Kids, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about twelve year olds mhm. Right and there, and
Speaker 1: they're they're identifying birds in ways I mean, their their
Speaker 1: sense of hearing and seeing and the way they notice.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can remember being down at Laguna Um
Speaker 1: actually not Laguna Atascosa, but it was a park in
Speaker 1: South Texas, and um, this bird called uh paraki. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a night jar um, like a whipper will.
Speaker 1: There's this one spot where you go to see them.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you've ever seen like out here'd
Speaker 1: be a poor will. You know you almost step on
Speaker 1: those birds. You can't see them. They're that well camouflaged.
Speaker 1: So here these parakeys are in the daytime, they're in
Speaker 1: a thicket. They're really super hard to see. And you're lucky,
Speaker 1: you know, you look long enough, long enough. It's like
Speaker 1: looking for a rattlesnake in a in a brush pile
Speaker 1: and suddenly you see this bird and you see this
Speaker 1: one bird, and I'm standing there and I see the one,
Speaker 1: then I see two. Then eventually I see maybe three
Speaker 1: or four of these birds. And I'm really thinking, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got this, I got the I got the visual
Speaker 1: down this. This kid steps up next to me, maybe
Speaker 1: nine or ten years old, see's twelve, seriously, and so
Speaker 1: this is this is like this is like a roost,
Speaker 1: and so you know, they're seeing things and and and
Speaker 1: and birding is such a great opportunity to give people
Speaker 1: at cess, you know, to nature in that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of the reason that I don't kill more deer
Speaker 1: is because I'm out there bird watching. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, and and so I'm looking to see
Speaker 1: I'm at this different level with these birds and able
Speaker 1: to to see them. So, you know, I have a
Speaker 1: deer stand. I try to keep a list on the
Speaker 1: deer stand. I'm not a great turkey hunter. Why because
Speaker 1: warblers are coming back through the woods during the spring season.
Speaker 1: So I'm being anything but still watching these other birds
Speaker 1: instead of watching for the bird. So um that opportunity
Speaker 1: in all sorts of places to see them. And I
Speaker 1: think the numbers bear out that during the pandemic even
Speaker 1: more of them got into into birding. It's almost you know,
Speaker 1: if you think about that old our son used to
Speaker 1: have a you know, he had a Pokadex, right, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Pokadex is so pokemon. You know that, you know, people
Speaker 1: going out looking for these these fictional creatures in these habitats,
Speaker 1: and I mean you've got a lot of adults still
Speaker 1: doing that. But you know, I think it would take us.
Speaker 1: It takes a slight tweak if you start sort of
Speaker 1: characterizing these birds with the superpowers that the Pokemon have.
Speaker 1: So the migratory ability of a yellow warbler, um, the
Speaker 1: singing ability of a wood thrush. I mean, this bird
Speaker 1: is singing, try harmonics. So I think that's not a
Speaker 1: big leap that brings people into birding in a way
Speaker 1: to say, wow, you know, these are pretty fantastic creatures
Speaker 1: and I can see them. They're real. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't have to, um, I don't have to contrive them.
Speaker 1: You mentioned kids, Did you like we're birds something you
Speaker 1: were super interested in as a kid. Oh geez, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah got early, yeah, because you know they were flying
Speaker 1: and I tried, but you know, too much jelly cake
Speaker 1: and gravity kind of um kept that from happening, but
Speaker 1: probably I would maybe when I was six or seven
Speaker 1: years old. You know, I was interested in birds because
Speaker 1: they were they were sort of a vehicle for me
Speaker 1: to to visit the rest of the world. And I
Speaker 1: always I would climb my grandmother's pecan tree, um and
Speaker 1: uh and you'd get this this this bird's yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: she can. I know, I know, tomato, tomato or whatever,
Speaker 1: but you know it was it gave me a chance
Speaker 1: to to see from a bird's eye view. But I
Speaker 1: wasn't just satisfied with that. I wanted to fly, So
Speaker 1: then I began to, you know, do things like build
Speaker 1: wings out of cardboard boxes and make parachutes out of
Speaker 1: trash bags and trying to be Merry Poppins all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And none of that stuff worked. But
Speaker 1: birds didn't fail at that, right, You'd see them doing
Speaker 1: this thing that you wanted to do. And then my grandmother,
Speaker 1: she's the first person I ever saw in my mouth.
Speaker 1: She I saw her feedbirds. And no, she didn't have
Speaker 1: sunflower seed, she didn't have millet, she didn't have all
Speaker 1: this stuff. What she did have were bags of grits
Speaker 1: and she would take a handful of grits and throw
Speaker 1: them out in the yard. In her backyard when what
Speaker 1: she calls snowbirds junkos would come down in the wintertime,
Speaker 1: so there'd be this flock of junkos and other sparrows.
Speaker 1: And now I think, you know, my, my, my birder
Speaker 1: brain sort of reverts and I'm like, man, I wish
Speaker 1: I had just looked more carefully. If I had known
Speaker 1: about the sparrows back then, maybe there was something that
Speaker 1: was showing up in her backyard that wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: show up. But seeing her appreciation for those birds, I
Speaker 1: think was was part of the of of of my
Speaker 1: origin in that way. But flight, you know, you watch
Speaker 1: a you watch a redtail hawk sore and you're like,
Speaker 1: how does that happen? It looks like it's hung up
Speaker 1: there by a string. You know, you watch a peregrine
Speaker 1: falcon dive and uh, I mean, and that's that's super,
Speaker 1: that's super. That's that's beyond our ability. Even if you
Speaker 1: put on one of those squirrel suits, you know you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to do that. So all
Speaker 1: of that to me was fascinating enough that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a bird. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a bird, so that it's been a lifelong, lifelong thing
Speaker 1: for me and the fascination, so to go from watching
Speaker 1: birds too, you know, having it sort of is my
Speaker 1: official hobby, but then being able to be a professional,
Speaker 1: to be an ornithologist man, you know, it's living a dream.
Speaker 1: Is there a group of birds that you found yourself
Speaker 1: being partial to and falling in love with more than
Speaker 1: the rest for some reason? Yeah, that, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's that that changes. But sparrows in part um because
Speaker 1: they're they're they're brown, they're nondescript, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times people sort of overlook them, right, So there's some
Speaker 1: allegories to human behavior and social what what goes on
Speaker 1: socially with us, But they are when you take the
Speaker 1: time to look at a sparrow, you begin to see
Speaker 1: these colors on its back. You see these vermiculations, You
Speaker 1: see differences that really bring out this subtle beauty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the duck hunter version for me would be it's easy
Speaker 1: to right away fall in love with wood duck, but
Speaker 1: then you eventually get to falling in love with how
Speaker 1: beautiful a god wall is Seeing those fine reds. During
Speaker 1: the time you were doing research uh, you just work
Speaker 1: with bluebirds. Yeah, remember how I mean everybody knows this
Speaker 1: is where there um uh you know they're like a
Speaker 1: symbol of monogamy right allegedly. Yeah. I don't know, like
Speaker 1: I don't know what specifically you worked up. I know
Speaker 1: you you looked at like reproductive behavior. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The study was was looking at the Dr Patty Gwatty,
Speaker 1: Patricia A. Derek Gowatty, um, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the first eco feminists and and and someone who had
Speaker 1: interests and in sort of trying to figure out if
Speaker 1: that whole idea of monogamy in passerines was, um, whether
Speaker 1: she could verify that, um, if you will, by the science.
Speaker 1: And so what we do is, um, she'd send out
Speaker 1: a crew of us, all male, um, to watch bluebirds
Speaker 1: at the box. Now that there was and I say
Speaker 1: all male in terms of the crew that was working. Um,
Speaker 1: there may have been a woman or two, but you
Speaker 1: know in my crew was all male. She'd send us up,
Speaker 1: but not by design, I think. So you think it
Speaker 1: was by design? Yeah, because um, here Patty is challenging
Speaker 1: at least at that time the known science, or at
Speaker 1: least challenging assumption. And so to be out these true
Speaker 1: to each other, that these birds mate for life, and
Speaker 1: here's a here's a female scientist doing this work, challenging
Speaker 1: this convention. So I think it's pretty smart to have
Speaker 1: your observers sort of on the other side of the table.
Speaker 1: And you know, we see some of this with current
Speaker 1: research that is shown. You know, the assumption was that
Speaker 1: for the most part, male birds were doing most of
Speaker 1: the singing. Well, guess who the researchers were that were
Speaker 1: coming up with that most primarily male. When you put
Speaker 1: female researchers out in the field, they're beginning to find
Speaker 1: that you have non males singing. So you know, to
Speaker 1: sort of shuffle stuff around, you know, it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's important. So we'd watch these boxes and you know,
Speaker 1: you'd see, uh, male at a box, and we would
Speaker 1: band these birds. Most of these birds were uniquely banded
Speaker 1: and been captured and banded, and you'd see a female
Speaker 1: at the box. And because most birds aren't banded, people
Speaker 1: are seeing those birds and they're assuming, oh, there's the father,
Speaker 1: there's the mother, there's a happy family brewing inside that box. Well,
Speaker 1: when you begin to look at the behavior of the birds,
Speaker 1: you would see interactions between different birds that would come
Speaker 1: into the territory. So you would see a male, for example,
Speaker 1: that might do a wing wave and warrible, or that
Speaker 1: would um in some sort of agonistic behavior go at
Speaker 1: another bird, another male, and you say, oh, he's defending home.
Speaker 1: He's defending that female. You know, that's sort of the
Speaker 1: easy assumption. You'd see that one female and most you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the way we thought about birds for
Speaker 1: most of of of ornithology is that that demure female
Speaker 1: is being defended by that male. Well, you begin to
Speaker 1: really do these and by the way, you see some
Speaker 1: of the most violent fights, some of the most aggression
Speaker 1: between females and on On a occasion, you find a
Speaker 1: dead bluebird and you you know, and inspect it and
Speaker 1: right in the back of the head, you know it
Speaker 1: would would yeah, I mean it would have been another
Speaker 1: female pecked in. Yeah. Oh yeah, So you know that
Speaker 1: would happen on occasion. But then to look at the
Speaker 1: nestlings and do the genetic study on those birds in
Speaker 1: the nest, you begin to find out that those birds,
Speaker 1: those young are coming from different birds than the birds
Speaker 1: that are tending the nest sometimes or that there so
Speaker 1: you know, I started in hindsight. You know, years later
Speaker 1: I started calling it the the Mari Povich Bluebird Project
Speaker 1: because it was like the who's your daddy kind of
Speaker 1: but you know, the question is also who's your mama? Right,
Speaker 1: because you begin to make assumptions about seeing single birds
Speaker 1: in a nest box, and those assumptions were erroneous. So
Speaker 1: we have a hummingbird eater and a hummingbird shows up.
Speaker 1: My kids like name them like hummingbird or whatever, humming
Speaker 1: Then one day there's two, so they're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: must be a male and the female. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: what went on at that hummingbird nest to fit into
Speaker 1: like a very strict paradigm of that being a couple, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they were somewhere rearing young and just they made
Speaker 1: this whole working for them that very much resembled what
Speaker 1: they see you going on inside their house. There you know, there,
Speaker 1: there you go, and then you know the next step.
Speaker 1: You know, people are thinking, well, the male chooses a mate,
Speaker 1: and you know then they go on to to have
Speaker 1: this family. Well, one of the most important things I
Speaker 1: think from her work and then this other work, other
Speaker 1: subsequent work has been female choice, that these females are choosing,
Speaker 1: that females are storing sperm, that they're making decisions. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a female choice and these birds they're making decisions
Speaker 1: about who is you know, who's parenting a brood. So
Speaker 1: all of that was I mean it was for me
Speaker 1: at the time, you know, being a field technician, being
Speaker 1: out there watching it and seeing watching it unfold was
Speaker 1: was this huge revelation and it it flew in the
Speaker 1: face of assumption, which you know for a scientist, you know,
Speaker 1: that's like finding gold, right when you're able to find
Speaker 1: something outside of of the norm. So the blue bird
Speaker 1: of happiness, well, maybe happiness doesn't just mean um being
Speaker 1: with that one what that one bird, so to speak,
Speaker 1: Maybe it means making the best decisions. You know, you're
Speaker 1: not just making it based upon the blueness of the male.
Speaker 1: You know, that was one of the you know, the
Speaker 1: bluer males are more successful than less blue males or
Speaker 1: those kinds of things. Man, you'd find sometimes in a
Speaker 1: couple of boxes, you would find two adult females tending
Speaker 1: a nest, and you would find nest stumping like you
Speaker 1: find in wood ducks for example. Okay, so beginning to
Speaker 1: think about why things like that happen and to move
Speaker 1: past the convention that we have set off as human
Speaker 1: Two female bluebirds at the same box contending do they
Speaker 1: each have eggs? Yeah, and it's and it's not like
Speaker 1: there's not like a resident male. Then uh, there's a
Speaker 1: male that might be there, right, but but but that
Speaker 1: paternity is uncertain, So that whole idea of uncertain paternity.
Speaker 1: Are you the daddy? The question might not be yes
Speaker 1: or no, but the best answer is maybe, because the
Speaker 1: assumption was yeah, you are. You've got to be to
Speaker 1: be investing time here in this nest. So the two
Speaker 1: females that had the two females that had a single nest,
Speaker 1: and they each contributed eggs to the nest for probably
Speaker 1: contributing eggs from many males. Yeah, from you that I mean,
Speaker 1: that happens. You know, you don't know for sure unless
Speaker 1: you're doing those analyzes. So but again you're flying in
Speaker 1: the face of convention with that. And and that's cool
Speaker 1: stuff and it's and it's not just the ornithology. So
Speaker 1: then you can begin to think about what, you know,
Speaker 1: what are the assumptions that we're making about mating patterns,
Speaker 1: not just in passerines, but it then opens this whole
Speaker 1: world up to think about female choice, you know, because
Speaker 1: the you know, what we're thinking when we're in the
Speaker 1: white tail woods is what this buck is making it
Speaker 1: and not that buck. That that buck is is tending
Speaker 1: that buck might not be making the ultimate decision. So
Speaker 1: you know those so you begin to think about beyond
Speaker 1: birds two mammals. You know, you were asking, well, who
Speaker 1: are these you know, who's what's the mammalian equivalent of
Speaker 1: a birder? Well, you know, in some instances it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a hunter who's out watching behavior, who's
Speaker 1: seeing all of these animals and being able to say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's going what's going on with this? How are our females?
Speaker 1: How are does making decisions? Or how are bucks making decisions?
Speaker 1: Who's the choosier sex? So that was the sort of
Speaker 1: the box that opened with that research. And that's when
Speaker 1: you know, I'd be out there and I'd see all
Speaker 1: kinds of birds. I mean, i'd see Bible links, I'd
Speaker 1: see metal larks, I'd see a scissor tail flycatcher or
Speaker 1: two on occasion, which at that time was pretty rare
Speaker 1: in South Carolina. So between these box checks there were
Speaker 1: these opportunities to bird, but then being an ornithologist and
Speaker 1: shifting from ornithologists to birdwatcher, from ornithologists to birdwatcher. After
Speaker 1: a while, these things began to sort of blur. The
Speaker 1: lines began to blur, and for me, that's where the
Speaker 1: excitement occurs when you can blur those lines between the two.
Speaker 1: In ornithology, probably more than any other um kind of
Speaker 1: taxonomic sort of following, has the most volunteers. It depends
Speaker 1: on all of these people who are out there gathering
Speaker 1: all this data um in, putting a lot of it
Speaker 1: into E bird doing Christmas bird counts, doing all these things.
Speaker 1: That data is what we ultimately have the best data
Speaker 1: that we have to say anything about global or or
Speaker 1: or continental trends and birds. So it depends a lot
Speaker 1: on those people getting out there who nobody's paying as
Speaker 1: a professional ornithologist to do ornithology, and they are probably
Speaker 1: not calling themselves ornithologists, but ornithologists ultimately depend on birders,
Speaker 1: bird watchers, bird lovers, bird of doors, bird ists. They
Speaker 1: ultimately depend on those people to pull the data back.
Speaker 1: They're not gurd or Twitter right like you go connecting
Speaker 1: a bunch of different ways, and then it's the Citizens
Speaker 1: Science Rise, which is super cool. You get people, uh
Speaker 1: some ownership by getting their data collected. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that you know that that that that crowdsourced science that's
Speaker 1: out there to to put ten thousand people on the ground.
Speaker 1: I'm try to pay those people, right, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. But the satisfaction from from a
Speaker 1: lot of them derived to know that a little bit
Speaker 1: of what they do that gets in goes a long
Speaker 1: way to help bird conservation. So you know, you you're
Speaker 1: asking about favorite birds, the most intensively studied birds, the
Speaker 1: most intensively studied birds that we know the most about
Speaker 1: a waterfowl, you know, and because we need to, they
Speaker 1: need to. The scientists are feeding that data to managers
Speaker 1: who are then setting limits adaptive harvest, adaptive adaptive harvest management.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things when I blur the
Speaker 1: lines with as I'm teaching ornithology, I tell birders, if
Speaker 1: you really want to know your waterfowl, if you want
Speaker 1: to begin to know and understand gestalt and how to
Speaker 1: identify these birds on the wing from what gestalt it's
Speaker 1: a feeling sort of so a feelings not being able
Speaker 1: to see all the field marks, but an impression of
Speaker 1: the bird, an impression that gives you, um uh, the
Speaker 1: the identification ultimately, so how the bird is flying it.
Speaker 1: I'm glad it's a word for that, because it's like
Speaker 1: the people that are good at it's like they shout
Speaker 1: it out there, like, oh, give me a couple of minutes,
Speaker 1: like what are you even looking at in in bad weather?
Speaker 1: You know, in duck weather, which is typically bad weather
Speaker 1: at distances right, and you're not not like now binoculars,
Speaker 1: not being able to stand up out of that blind
Speaker 1: and look, and they're telling you to know how a
Speaker 1: wedgeon moved to know that. We had this conversation where
Speaker 1: when when I was hunting in the Mississippi Delta, we
Speaker 1: had this conversation where like, in a lot of the
Speaker 1: places I grew up hunting and hunting now would be like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's mallards and couple of pintails, or it's
Speaker 1: like there's some teal and woodies right, but down there
Speaker 1: I was eleven twelve things and I just get where
Speaker 1: I lose it all. But then people that grow up
Speaker 1: with that are shouting stuff out like there's no possible
Speaker 1: way you can know. Then it gets closer, like how
Speaker 1: did that guy do that? And what happens? What happens
Speaker 1: if you call that waterfowl or a burder? Does anybody
Speaker 1: ever do that? It doesn't happen. But right, that is
Speaker 1: an interesting thing though, right because if if you're hunter
Speaker 1: making some of these claims, all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 1: biased information versus um you know, a random observation taken
Speaker 1: from somebody as credible as a burder, which is something
Speaker 1: I've run into in the past, and it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Like in like we we talked about, Um, I was
Speaker 1: at a fishing game meeting lots of people talking about
Speaker 1: how there were no more wolves and there's this this
Speaker 1: idea of putting some money into a general fund to
Speaker 1: do more wolf control work in Idaho, and half the
Speaker 1: room there was like, well, there's no wolves to begin
Speaker 1: if all the wolves are gone, before you can hunt wolves.
Speaker 1: We used see wolves all the time, and now that
Speaker 1: you can hunt wolves, we've never seen them. Um. And
Speaker 1: that was like, uh, generally, well taken observation from the
Speaker 1: general recreation crowd. But when I stood up and identified
Speaker 1: myself as a hunter, said well, I run into wolf
Speaker 1: sign all the time. I've seen a few wolves, but
Speaker 1: I've seen plenty of sign. That is a biased opinion
Speaker 1: because I'm there wanting to take elk out of the woods. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's not taken into consideration that I'm also where
Speaker 1: the wolves are. Yeah. Um. And so when you have
Speaker 1: a quote consumptive user making a report, oftentimes I've seen
Speaker 1: it where those reports are discounted. I just had this
Speaker 1: conversation with I'll just talk about him, you know, he's
Speaker 1: not here. I had this conversation with Lauren where one
Speaker 1: of our camera guys is telling Happy Birthday. He was
Speaker 1: snowbeling in a mountain range that I didn't know head links,
Speaker 1: and he's sang I saw links in that mountain range,
Speaker 1: And then I spent ten minutes trying to convince him
Speaker 1: that he was looking at a bobcat, to which he
Speaker 1: got a little frustrated. Right. Yeah, it's just like you like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of you know, when it comes to
Speaker 1: the observational, you know, there's absolutely yeah, everybody's not taking
Speaker 1: everybody at faith value. But if cal had said that,
Speaker 1: you'd have been like, no, ship. Yeah, because he's a
Speaker 1: camera guy who doesn't hunt. Yeah, yeah, I did to
Speaker 1: him what I don't like people doing to me. In
Speaker 1: some in some states, I don't know about Montana, but
Speaker 1: in some states, water flowers have to pass proficiency tests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially states where you have like, uh, for example, Oregon,
Speaker 1: right where you have the dusky goose. That's like there's
Speaker 1: very few of them. They're in a very specific place.
Speaker 1: You got to know exactly how to identify them on
Speaker 1: the wing. Yeah, it looks mostly like a snow goose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like very different until it's not. And then the
Speaker 1: thing is, if that bird is in your bag, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna as a as a water fowler, you're
Speaker 1: gonna pay a penalty, a severe penalty for that. Birders
Speaker 1: don't pay severe penalties for misidentifying a bird with binoculars.
Speaker 1: I mean other other other than losing credits, other other
Speaker 1: than that, you know, and and in the community, that
Speaker 1: can be a strong thing, and it can also be
Speaker 1: a to turn it to bring in other people forward
Speaker 1: in birding. You know, if somebody is so fanatical that
Speaker 1: they're going to criticize somebody because they misidentified a house
Speaker 1: finch is a purple finch, and then they're suddenly persona
Speaker 1: on gratta because they misidentified that one bird that yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not cool, you know, so that that's and those
Speaker 1: are some of the blurred lines that you get in
Speaker 1: in this thing that we do. And of course people
Speaker 1: run across the gamut. Most most birders are perfectly fine,
Speaker 1: really nice, you know, people who want to involve others.
Speaker 1: But then you run into those folks that that's the pressure,
Speaker 1: right that they want to positively and everybody wants to
Speaker 1: positively identify these things. Yeah, but I run into, you know,
Speaker 1: situations where um, I've got to out counsel people on
Speaker 1: an identification that that probably was not an ivy bill
Speaker 1: woodpecker at your feeder, and and you know, and and
Speaker 1: and the way that we do that is not me
Speaker 1: discounting who they are as a person because they misidentified
Speaker 1: that bird, but really to you know, to have a
Speaker 1: conversation about it, So what what did you see? And
Speaker 1: and and I'll tell you nine times out of ten
Speaker 1: people come around and they you can hear that, you
Speaker 1: can hear the change, and they're calling the you marks
Speaker 1: and they're saying, oh, well, yeah, you know that that
Speaker 1: probably was affiliated. Boom, there you go. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: say affiliated, you know, instead appiliated. You kind of screwed
Speaker 1: up on pecans. Yeah, well so I made up for it, right,
Speaker 1: I wanna I want to do a bunch of quick
Speaker 1: hit things. Yeah, so I'm gonna hit you with something.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hit you with some things, and then because
Speaker 1: I want to get I want to burn through some stuff. Cool.
Speaker 1: One of our guys who's not here, um, had this
Speaker 1: one for you. How are you for the camp robber?
Speaker 1: Like whiskey? How do they find when you kill an
Speaker 1: elk in the mountains? How do they know within thirty seconds?
Speaker 1: They're always watching. It's visual. It's not smell, probably not,
Speaker 1: even though we you know, we know that some birds
Speaker 1: have more in a more acute sense of smell than
Speaker 1: we thought. But you know, think about how those birds
Speaker 1: just appear out of nowhere, and there's a network. They're
Speaker 1: also watching other things, right, so they're they're also watching.
Speaker 1: But they're usually the first ones, from my understanding, get
Speaker 1: to I think about, you know, up in Denali again,
Speaker 1: here I get into camp and suddenly here are you know,
Speaker 1: here for whiskey jacks. There they are. I didn't see
Speaker 1: whiskey jacks. Again, Those two weeks I was up there,
Speaker 1: I didn't see them. And so they're always watching. But
Speaker 1: like in the case of coming to a hunter's kill,
Speaker 1: like are they watching the person? They like, I see
Speaker 1: them come and check on you, whether you've killed something
Speaker 1: or not. That there's like a learning process there, like
Speaker 1: that guy, something good might happen. It's you know, and
Speaker 1: and this is again sort of the fluid, the beautifully
Speaker 1: fluid nature of the science is that we're learning. So
Speaker 1: we can't keep up with what birds know, how they learned.
Speaker 1: So you know, Jay's or crow cousins m hm, you know,
Speaker 1: as we know and sort of how we measure. We say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they're extremely intelligent, but we don't know the stat you know,
Speaker 1: how they learn, how fast they learn, you know, being
Speaker 1: able to track a hunter, to say, or to think
Speaker 1: about you as a predator. Right, so we know that
Speaker 1: some birds follow predators, you know, with that whole idea
Speaker 1: of benefiting from the kill. What's to keep a whiskey
Speaker 1: jack from seeing you that way? So you know, again,
Speaker 1: to to loosen the bounds of convention and sort of
Speaker 1: think about um. Part of it is is ego on
Speaker 1: our part, hubris to to think, well, yeah, we're the
Speaker 1: only ones who can do that. Yeah, and um, and
Speaker 1: to to not project our measures of intelligence on other creatures.
Speaker 1: I I do make sure that they know I'm providing. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm fully talking to them on throwing send you high
Speaker 1: up in trees i'd were. I want to let them
Speaker 1: know that if they were to come across a bunch
Speaker 1: of elk kind of day when they're not talking, they
Speaker 1: can let me know. And it's gonna one win. We
Speaker 1: all went those things, those things and magpies, like magpies
Speaker 1: can really choke down a lot of fat man. Well,
Speaker 1: well think I mean if and and I don't have
Speaker 1: specific examples, but if you think about indigenous culture and
Speaker 1: you think about, um, what people have known for a
Speaker 1: very long time how to watch birds to perhaps put
Speaker 1: them on game, but also in terms of what you're
Speaker 1: doing saying showing appreciation to that bird, and what that
Speaker 1: bird learns or what what any of these things are?
Speaker 1: You know. It's again why I get to this point
Speaker 1: of talking about birds oftentimes more as who's than what
Speaker 1: you know, to try to give some sort of credit for, um,
Speaker 1: what we don't know about them. You know, Uh, I
Speaker 1: make assumptions like everybody else on on certain birds that
Speaker 1: maybe this shrike, this loggerhead shrike that I'm seeing, this
Speaker 1: butcher bird that you know, I've kind of fallen in
Speaker 1: love with because they're they're such cool birds. They code
Speaker 1: switch right there, passerins um but they're also raptorial and
Speaker 1: what they in terms of what they do, their feet
Speaker 1: aren't strong enough to to carry prey and hold it,
Speaker 1: so they impale their prey on thorns and barbed wire
Speaker 1: fences and that kind of thing. That's that's that's super cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why but you know, to watch that bird I'm seeing,
Speaker 1: I've seen what I think. I haven't marked the bird,
Speaker 1: I haven't banded it, but for like three four years,
Speaker 1: this bird that hangs out in the same corner of
Speaker 1: one of my patches, and so I make certain assumptions,
Speaker 1: poetic assumptions maybe about this bird and who it is.
Speaker 1: And man, I've written this bird letters right because it's
Speaker 1: for me. It's uh, you know, it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: like a kind of worsh to be able to have
Speaker 1: a relationship with a creature in that way, across those boundaries,
Speaker 1: and so I can respect it for what it does,
Speaker 1: who it is, what it is, and I don't know
Speaker 1: what that bird's thinking of me at all, but it
Speaker 1: gives me this sort of deeper move into this place
Speaker 1: of of of of being a bird watcher, of being
Speaker 1: a bird adorer. So you know, that's the way that
Speaker 1: I try to I mean, it's it's it's the same way,
Speaker 1: and sitting in a deer stand and watching and sometimes
Speaker 1: getting so caught up that I'm not taking a shot
Speaker 1: where I'm thinking about those animals in sort of these
Speaker 1: different ways, so all of it is kind of line
Speaker 1: blurring for me. And ornithology is a birding is a
Speaker 1: perfect way to sort of get into that, into that space.
Speaker 1: So you know, I talked to to it to my my, My,
Speaker 1: my mentor. She's still my mentor Petty Gawaddy from time
Speaker 1: to time, you know, and I thank her all the
Speaker 1: time for that. She taught me how to be a scientist,
Speaker 1: you know, that whole idea of getting out there and
Speaker 1: objectively gathering the data and being rigorous. I mean it
Speaker 1: was hard work. But then also for her helping me
Speaker 1: understand how you begin to make the linkages between you know,
Speaker 1: science and perhaps even policy, because every every policy begins
Speaker 1: with with one person's agenda, and so it's blurry and
Speaker 1: and birds are the way that I go through life, blurry,
Speaker 1: a dig who they are, and I sometimes still wish
Speaker 1: I was a bird. So there's that. Uh, here's the
Speaker 1: next one. In fifty years, you handle us however you want.
Speaker 1: In fifty years, are people hunting bob white quail in
Speaker 1: the American South? Yeah, because they've raised them in pins
Speaker 1: and they're putting them out. Oh that's what that's what,
Speaker 1: that's what it's gonna take. I don't think that's I
Speaker 1: think it would take. Let me put it this way. Uh,
Speaker 1: we aren't approaching it the right way. I don't think. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, to have a put and take fishery as
Speaker 1: it were, sort of put and take huntery here is
Speaker 1: is basically what it is. And um, you gotta look
Speaker 1: at the ethic of the hunter. If we're talking about
Speaker 1: hunter conservationists, then we got a chance. If we're talking
Speaker 1: about people who just want to go in, put a kernel,
Speaker 1: a corn on a hook and get a trout, then
Speaker 1: probably not. What is what like what in your view
Speaker 1: is driving or drove the decline? Or is it the
Speaker 1: same like death by a thousand cuts kind of thing?
Speaker 1: I think it's death by a thousand cuts, Steve, But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it is UM is cultural.
Speaker 1: You know, when you look at the loss of the
Speaker 1: small family farm UM, when you look at clean farming
Speaker 1: ditch to ditch, when you think about UM, what we
Speaker 1: lost in that in terms of of this edge habitat,
Speaker 1: of these patches, this patchwork quilt across landscapes that UM
Speaker 1: as you know, agriculture became more UM efficient than you
Speaker 1: know people are are farming road to row. You can't
Speaker 1: lose a single lynch of that of that field. And
Speaker 1: so those ditches that used to grow up in weedy
Speaker 1: tangles and briars and ragweed, all that stuff, you lose that. Well,
Speaker 1: then you compound that with something like red imported fire
Speaker 1: ants UM that and to see that that's a that's horrific.
Speaker 1: To see fire ants on a nest of hatching bi
Speaker 1: white quail eggs, that's and and to see those you know,
Speaker 1: those those those chicks can't even some of they can't
Speaker 1: even get out of the shell before they're being eaten alive.
Speaker 1: So you've got that, You've got in some of these landscapes,
Speaker 1: proliferation of of of edge predators but what we discount
Speaker 1: in terms of edge predators, of proliferation of of outdoor
Speaker 1: cats um that are killing billions and billions of birds,
Speaker 1: so you know, keep fluffy inside. So all of those
Speaker 1: things do compound it. But then again, you know, I say,
Speaker 1: where effort is spread out, where all your eggs aren't
Speaker 1: in one basket. You know, this isn't again any theory
Speaker 1: that I can prove, But I think that network, those
Speaker 1: patches of small farms were an opportunity to mitigate damage
Speaker 1: large scale UM. And so culturally, you just don't see
Speaker 1: those small family farms. You don't, you don't, you don't
Speaker 1: see them. And I think that's a part of the issue.
Speaker 1: And I also think, you know, it's been burned into
Speaker 1: our minds now over the last few decades of quail
Speaker 1: declined that the only place that quail are going to
Speaker 1: get saved is in those large ten thousand acre landholdings
Speaker 1: where they're doing fantastic management. But they're doing management at
Speaker 1: a scale of both ecology and economy that a ford
Speaker 1: or a forty acre landholder landholder is not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to accomplished. So that's a to me, that's a
Speaker 1: cultural issue. UM of of how we think about and
Speaker 1: how our mindset has changed about what quail are. So
Speaker 1: it used to be, you know, Bob white partridges. Now
Speaker 1: as a gentleman, Bob, you know, and you might be
Speaker 1: out there with a fifty dollar um shotgun after these
Speaker 1: birds with dogs that have got bloodlines that have gone
Speaker 1: on forever, um eaten lunch in the middle of these
Speaker 1: piney woods on you know, fine linen and um and boneware.
Speaker 1: And then you get back out there to the next
Speaker 1: group of quail. Well, people who are doing that, you know,
Speaker 1: they want to push covees. And so we have to
Speaker 1: ask ourselves a question, Um, do we want quail just
Speaker 1: for hunting, for killing or do we want the experience
Speaker 1: of having those birds on landscapes and ways that is
Speaker 1: good for the bird and good for the And I
Speaker 1: think we can I think we can do that. I
Speaker 1: think we can do that. I mean I, you know,
Speaker 1: on on my piece of land and um in ninety
Speaker 1: six in Greenwood County, South Carolina. Man, I remember I
Speaker 1: was actually coming out of the field one day and
Speaker 1: something all of a sudden, I'd stopped at the gate
Speaker 1: and all these things start running around my feet and
Speaker 1: their button quail you know, they're these little, these little
Speaker 1: bumblebee quail rather and to have quail reproducing on that property,
Speaker 1: to me was like having some endangered species on it
Speaker 1: um that they in that setting, within that within that setting,
Speaker 1: and to know that, you know, that's land that's been
Speaker 1: in my family for generations and now I have the
Speaker 1: responsibility of steward ing it. That bob white quail have
Speaker 1: become for me one of the things that I want
Speaker 1: to manage for. So how do I do that on
Speaker 1: that acreage? I mean, I'm not rich. How do I
Speaker 1: how do I get it burned? How do I keep
Speaker 1: the timber thin? You know? How do I keep chickasaw
Speaker 1: plumb um uh as as part of that landscape? All
Speaker 1: of that is something that I think about. And it's
Speaker 1: not just thinking about hearing that bird whistle, just thinking
Speaker 1: about what the rest of that land can be because
Speaker 1: of that bird. Uh You just mentioned your family's parcel
Speaker 1: and I'm a little I'm a little hazy on some
Speaker 1: of the details from your book, but explain how, Like
Speaker 1: I remember your family came as slaves to the area
Speaker 1: where you still reside in the seventeen nineties. Yeah, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like what was the what was the pathway from that
Speaker 1: from being there on the landscape as a slave to
Speaker 1: you guys having family farms? Did you go did your
Speaker 1: did your ancestors go through like share cropping and into
Speaker 1: into landownership down the road and far an aggregate culture
Speaker 1: because you like you grew up on a family farm. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's one of the mysteries. And and um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that that frequently happens, especially with
Speaker 1: descendants of enslaved in black families, is those records sort
Speaker 1: of get muddled. From all I can tell, I have
Speaker 1: never heard any of my family talk about sharecropping, and
Speaker 1: so when we came into this land, they may have, right, Um,
Speaker 1: but my recollection and thinking about um, the land and
Speaker 1: the research that I've been able to do, is that
Speaker 1: it came into our possession, at least the land that
Speaker 1: we were on, probably when my grandfather got back from
Speaker 1: World War One. So and he came back from World
Speaker 1: War One in um in nineteen eight late nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineteen, so who was in and he became
Speaker 1: a farmer, Yes, yeah, yeah, he you know, he was
Speaker 1: farming the land. And you know, amazingly when I look
Speaker 1: at what Edgefield was politically and and and how black
Speaker 1: folks were being treated that My grandfather became a successful farmer,
Speaker 1: had a successful during the Depression egg and milk business,
Speaker 1: and was receiving farm made I found some of his
Speaker 1: old maps. It was receiving Farm Service Agency assistance in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, so you know, it speaks to this stewardship. Um,
Speaker 1: but when that land came actually if it came into
Speaker 1: possession before that. Now there are stories, um that sort
Speaker 1: of circulated around the family about well he that somehow
Speaker 1: he came back from World War One and had gold
Speaker 1: or these other things. I don't know, they're interesting stories
Speaker 1: to consider. But what I want to know is I
Speaker 1: really had a gold, mean, like found it earlier. They
Speaker 1: came back somehow came back from from World War One,
Speaker 1: you know, bearing gold. You know who knows. I remember
Speaker 1: my you know, my brother used to wander around the woods.
Speaker 1: I mean he sort of became obsessed, seriously, he became
Speaker 1: obsessed with it, you know, and and he'd go yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that he that he yeah that he was going
Speaker 1: out looking for looking for this goal. But um, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that sort of eats at me
Speaker 1: is wanting to know that history more completely. And it's
Speaker 1: and it's not like waiting in some library somewhere. It's gone, no, no,
Speaker 1: And and that's what's happened in the South with a
Speaker 1: lot of um, with a lot of history, especially a
Speaker 1: lot of Black history. A lot of it's been burned,
Speaker 1: got burned up in in courthouses burning down. And it's
Speaker 1: and it's always interesting to me how courthouses were the
Speaker 1: first things to burn down. Um, But yeah, it's and
Speaker 1: so you have to sort of stitch together this history
Speaker 1: from this one. So I go from you know, this
Speaker 1: this paternal ancestor of of coming in about seventeen ninety, right,
Speaker 1: and then picking up when I do you know, and
Speaker 1: I belonged to some of these ancestry groups and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, picking up ancestors in the eighteen thirties, right,
Speaker 1: So what was happening between seventeen ninety and eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: and then an ancestor that was brought in on an
Speaker 1: illegal importation slavery importation became illegal I think eighteen o five,
Speaker 1: eighteen o seven, something like that. So then breeding plantations
Speaker 1: wrapped up because the production of of enslaved depended upon
Speaker 1: domestic production. That sounds sick to even talk about, but
Speaker 1: it was sixty years before the abolition of slavery that
Speaker 1: they made that you couldn't import slaves. Yeah yeah. So
Speaker 1: so then there's an ancestor that comes into jack Al Island,
Speaker 1: Georgia in eighteen fifty seven on a converted yacht. And
Speaker 1: you've you've heard about the the the the ship that
Speaker 1: was found in the slave ship that was found down
Speaker 1: and um in Alabama. Those were bets. People were playing
Speaker 1: games with this stuff. So because the bet was, well,
Speaker 1: we can beat the embargo. So this ancestor that comes
Speaker 1: in in eighteen fifty seven from the Congo, her name
Speaker 1: was Lucy. She came into Jekyl Island, Georgia, and she
Speaker 1: was three years old. So how does she fit into
Speaker 1: my mento my family's history? You know, how did did
Speaker 1: Harry have children? This enslave man who was brought south
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety by the Lannam brothers. And then the
Speaker 1: interesting part of that, those Lannam brothers, they were good
Speaker 1: friends with that guy over in Augusta who is you know,
Speaker 1: was going to prolong enslaved meant Eli Whitney. So that
Speaker 1: those stories, so you know, when you have those kind
Speaker 1: of stories wrapped up in your history, you're trying to
Speaker 1: you lost me Eli Whitney. Yeah, that's the guy that
Speaker 1: invented the cotton jay exactly. But how does that? How
Speaker 1: did that? I'm not argument where that I don't really understand.
Speaker 1: But that was the way it Wasn't then that make
Speaker 1: because that increased production? Yeah, because he found a way
Speaker 1: to pull the seeds out of cost, so then you
Speaker 1: could get you could you can handle more of it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got y. Yeah, some some historians say that that
Speaker 1: prolonged it right about fifty years. Got it. It just
Speaker 1: made it, made like more, made more profitable and drove
Speaker 1: more exactly. So so those are bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: this quilt, you know that that you try to stitch together,
Speaker 1: um and and the land for me, is that is
Speaker 1: really that template that I'm trying to I guess that
Speaker 1: that back batting on the quilt. If we're gonna stay
Speaker 1: with that analogy that you put these pieces on and
Speaker 1: trying to find how these all these pieces fit together,
Speaker 1: and some of it can never be known. When you
Speaker 1: said the Landham brothers, yeah, like the Landams JOSIAHS. Landham
Speaker 1: and his brother who came south from the mid Atlantic,
Speaker 1: most likely around Prince George's County, Maryland. Um they came south,
Speaker 1: there was a great sell off of enslaved around the
Speaker 1: mid Atlantic because they had been farming primarily what tobacco,
Speaker 1: and tobacco burns up soil, and some of these founding
Speaker 1: fathers were going broke and so they began There was
Speaker 1: this huge sell off of enslaved around seventeen nineties south,
Speaker 1: especially to the Deep South of cotton production, sugarcane production
Speaker 1: down in places like Louisiana, but also to breeding plantations
Speaker 1: and so Harry, uh, you know, I have to check
Speaker 1: myself sometimes when I say it. Harry was in in
Speaker 1: some ways fortunate in that he didn't end up deep
Speaker 1: deeper south, right, that he ended up um in South
Speaker 1: Carolina in the Piedmont that's productive for cotton, but it's
Speaker 1: not nearly as productive as the Black Belt of Alabama
Speaker 1: because of those soils. So in in thinking about sort,
Speaker 1: you know where fortune you know, what what is that
Speaker 1: saying fortune favors the brave or whatever? Um? You know, fortune?
Speaker 1: You know, I can't Yeah, fortune favors the bowl. But
Speaker 1: but here's a case where you know fortune favored um,
Speaker 1: you know poor soils, because to to be put further,
Speaker 1: to be put deeper into hell um, into the deep
Speaker 1: deep South, where you were getting maybe ten bales of
Speaker 1: cotton per acre, where is only in South Carolina maybe
Speaker 1: you're only getting two bales of cotton per acre, that
Speaker 1: was a that was a that was a difference in
Speaker 1: in life, or to be down in those sugarcane plantations
Speaker 1: down in Louisiana, or to be somebody's breeding stock as
Speaker 1: a human being. So I think about all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: and I'm always connecting it to land um. And then
Speaker 1: I'm always connecting that to birds because birds are sort
Speaker 1: of the conduit for me to think about history, because
Speaker 1: I think about some of the birds that I see
Speaker 1: at present, and I'm wondering what those birds ancestors are,
Speaker 1: what they flew over, and likewise that my ancestors, we're
Speaker 1: watching birds, that birds were inspirations for them because the
Speaker 1: birds were flying free, and that maybe we held that
Speaker 1: in common, that they wanted to be free as birds,
Speaker 1: and that I wanted to be a bird and free.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's a convergence there, and all the
Speaker 1: time and watching birds. So yeah, it's um, it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'm listing sort of different kinds of
Speaker 1: things these days, but um, those birds are are stitching
Speaker 1: together time and landscapes for me in ways that UM,
Speaker 1: A few other things can. In your career, you made
Speaker 1: a conscious uh I hope on not on or you
Speaker 1: might put a different way, but you made a conscious
Speaker 1: switch from like hard science. You can put it how
Speaker 1: you want to put a button, like from hard science
Speaker 1: to sort of culture people interpretive work. That is that
Speaker 1: how you describe it. Yeah, you know, I'll always be
Speaker 1: a scientist, always be a naturalist, to always be an ornithologist.
Speaker 1: But part of what I wanted to do was to
Speaker 1: be able to move that science into the masses because
Speaker 1: you think about um and and you know, I always
Speaker 1: call the science that we do the scripture. Really, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's critically important, um to not deny good
Speaker 1: science and that data that tells us what's going on,
Speaker 1: that gives us some idea of the patterns that are
Speaker 1: out there. But then what good is it if you've
Speaker 1: got nine hundred pages of of data and people don't
Speaker 1: bother to read any of it. So sometimes it's important
Speaker 1: to be able to take reams of data and get
Speaker 1: them down to a digestible a digestible portion. I mean,
Speaker 1: you read different reports. But if if if our attention
Speaker 1: span is what we can see or pay attention to
Speaker 1: during a traffic light stop, then people aren't gonna people
Speaker 1: aren't gonna read those realms of data. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to move to a place of really being able to
Speaker 1: sort of um, get those to paint pictures with creative
Speaker 1: writing that moves people to think about the science, to
Speaker 1: think about what's going on out there, so then maybe
Speaker 1: they feel something about it. My my, you know, for
Speaker 1: most science, the um the objective is not to get
Speaker 1: people to feel something about it, but to think about it, right,
Speaker 1: so to think. Then you know, the science probably doesn't care.
Speaker 1: It doesn't care whether you feel something about it or not.
Speaker 1: My whole idea is to ark the other way, you know,
Speaker 1: to get you to feel something about it, so then
Speaker 1: you think about it, and if you feel something about it,
Speaker 1: think about it. Feel think, feel think feel think feel think.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a spark, you know, maybe you get a
Speaker 1: spark from that reaction back and forth, and you do
Speaker 1: something about it, not just damn read about it, but
Speaker 1: do something about it. So that's the you know, that's
Speaker 1: the transition that I've I've willingly made because you know,
Speaker 1: you stand in front of a classroom of of of
Speaker 1: nineteen and twenty year olds and as you know, an
Speaker 1: Aldo Liabel Leopold talked about, you know, the danger of
Speaker 1: being an ecologist was living in a world of wounds
Speaker 1: and and um Man that was like a quolt factory.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's but very prescient, right way
Speaker 1: ahead of his time in so many ways. But if
Speaker 1: you're in front of a classroom and you're teaching, you're
Speaker 1: doing this teaching, doing this teaching, and these students and
Speaker 1: you could see them, I could see them and they
Speaker 1: were just like their faces are like, well, what the
Speaker 1: all am I supposed to do with all this? You're
Speaker 1: just feed them this day to day after day after
Speaker 1: day of how things are going south and there's not
Speaker 1: gonna be anything left for you to deal with. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you've got to infuse some hope
Speaker 1: so that people have some motivation for doing something rather
Speaker 1: than just sticking their heads in the sand and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, fuck it, I'm not it's not for me.
Speaker 1: Let me go over in this department and do this.
Speaker 1: So that whole idea of moving the science to a
Speaker 1: place where I get you here, then I can get
Speaker 1: you here. And I mean, you know, marketers know that,
Speaker 1: um and and it's it's it's not too in any
Speaker 1: way diminish or deny the science, but to give it
Speaker 1: an opportunity to dwell in heart as well as head.
Speaker 1: And you can do. I mean, you know, the whole
Speaker 1: idea of a picture worth a thousand words. You know,
Speaker 1: I look at this wall here and I can I mean,
Speaker 1: there's science all over that wall. Now, um, is it
Speaker 1: gonna pass peer of view? Certain peer view, It's gonna pass.
Speaker 1: Others are gonna decry it is something else. So, but
Speaker 1: I think it's important for us as scientists, especially as
Speaker 1: conservation scientists. It always bothers me when I hear people say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not an advocate, you know, I'm a scientist. Well,
Speaker 1: conservation to me means that you have to be an advocate.
Speaker 1: I don't see the separation. And I don't think being
Speaker 1: a scientist means that you can't be an advocate. Sure,
Speaker 1: you gather your objective data gatherer, that's your job to
Speaker 1: gather data objectively, to report that data objectively, but then
Speaker 1: damn it, do something about it. You know, if their declines,
Speaker 1: what do you do about those declines? Do you just
Speaker 1: say there as declines and then report the next decline,
Speaker 1: and report the next decline, and report the next decline.
Speaker 1: Well it's a little hypocritical, right, It's like, how many
Speaker 1: folks do you know that go out and get that
Speaker 1: grant to go study and gather data on something they
Speaker 1: don't give a shit about. Oh happens all the time, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, oh, sure it does, certainly it does. I mean,
Speaker 1: and then we're on these these two and four year
Speaker 1: grant cycles, and so I think, um that that that
Speaker 1: where we are as scientists, as conservationists. Okay, so let
Speaker 1: me let me let me paint a picture here, so
Speaker 1: a bridge, you know, think about how so many people
Speaker 1: came into some sort of knowing about climate change. How
Speaker 1: did that happen? Well, it was all about drowning polar bears.
Speaker 1: It's all about drowning polar bears. Now, certain sets of
Speaker 1: people care about drowning polar bears. I mean, now, let
Speaker 1: me say I love polar bears. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: take anything away from polar bears. I want them to
Speaker 1: be fine, not trying to exactly. But also that same
Speaker 1: climate that's melting the polar ice caps is also impacting
Speaker 1: the way people breathe, especially people of color who have
Speaker 1: of these these asthmatic conditions, for example, at almost a
Speaker 1: tenfold rate of white kids. But people weren't talking or kids,
Speaker 1: or white kids from Appalachia who have a hard time breathing.
Speaker 1: But nobody was talking about that. They were talking about
Speaker 1: climate change in polar bears, climate changing polar bears. Why
Speaker 1: not arc that, Okay, arct that science outside into sociology
Speaker 1: begin to tell the stories evocatively of how polar bears
Speaker 1: are drowning and rising seas, but people in the Lord
Speaker 1: ninth ward are also drowning in those rising seas. There's
Speaker 1: this connection between the great White bear and black black people.
Speaker 1: So and thinking about that kind of connection, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to get that into peer review in Journal
Speaker 1: of Wildlife Management. I mean really, and and that's not
Speaker 1: the play spoard. So where does that work go? Where
Speaker 1: do I put that work? I'm gonna put that work
Speaker 1: somewhere where it reaches the masses. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the experiments that now I've never done it, but it's
Speaker 1: one of those things I'm gonna a I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: good money that if I published an article I don't
Speaker 1: know on painted bunning productivity in the um coastal plane
Speaker 1: of South Carolina, cal report on it. There you go.
Speaker 1: So it would be a calciby, It would be a
Speaker 1: calibli so so so so so there it is in
Speaker 1: the journal, and I tie it back to feral cats. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: good for you. But if you're the cat. But if
Speaker 1: you do that, you tied it to feral cats, right,
Speaker 1: and you've shown in this you know, in this journal
Speaker 1: article that you know whatever the the impacts are. So
Speaker 1: there's the there's the journal. Put that on the table
Speaker 1: at the dentist office, right that same article. Put it
Speaker 1: in the journal, put it in South Carolina Wildlife. And
Speaker 1: maybe you know you've you've been patient enough as a photographer.
Speaker 1: You've got you know, a tabby with a with a
Speaker 1: male painted Bunning in its jaws. And it's a eight
Speaker 1: hundred word essay. What gets ready, yeah, what gets read?
Speaker 1: Same data, same data, there's no statistical analysis presented. Really, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there's the results are presented in that in that
Speaker 1: South Carolina Wildlife magazine. But that's the challenge, right to
Speaker 1: how how do we get that science done? And from
Speaker 1: a conservation standpoint, um, I think, yeah, we gotta chase,
Speaker 1: we gotta chase grant dollars. But to me, the you know,
Speaker 1: the the proof and the pudding. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's not just how many articles you've published,
Speaker 1: but what you've done for conservation beyond that, beyond those words,
Speaker 1: how do those words come into impact? And so sometimes
Speaker 1: those words come into impact and that scientist continues that
Speaker 1: work beyond the four year cycle. And that's where you
Speaker 1: see the love come out in the science when people
Speaker 1: dedicate their lives to a question, you know, and they're
Speaker 1: really working to push that into connect with the managers
Speaker 1: on the ground that they haven't separated that science in
Speaker 1: a way. So it's say, well, now I'm done with it.
Speaker 1: It's up to you. So to stay connected with it.
Speaker 1: I think it's important. It's no different than you know,
Speaker 1: some commanders staying in connection with with his her their troops.
Speaker 1: To stay in connection with that science in some way
Speaker 1: to move it forward adaptive research and management. That's a cycle.
Speaker 1: And somewhere in that cycle of adaptive research and management.
Speaker 1: I think is loving care. I mean, that's just mean,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I can't see conservation existing without loving care.
Speaker 1: That's just part of it. Uh. That wasn't a quickie.
Speaker 1: I know that was a soapbox. But I do have
Speaker 1: one that I gotta hit is migration. Bird migration, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the most compelling thing about how birds migrate that
Speaker 1: we know are of research? The most compelling thing is
Speaker 1: that you know, to me, is is thinking about one
Speaker 1: thinking about a orbler that weighs as much as uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a half handful of paper clips, that that
Speaker 1: bird launches off of the Yucatan, and that that bird
Speaker 1: chooses to fly across the Gulf of Mexico some six
Speaker 1: hundred miles to the to the to the Gulf coast
Speaker 1: and nirs of Louisiana. And I have seen some of
Speaker 1: these birds when they're coming ashore, like in in Texas,
Speaker 1: I've seen a Baltimore oriole barely above the waves. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know that some of these birds get taken out
Speaker 1: by fish, right, And so to me that that's uh,
Speaker 1: this this this heroic story that's compelling, But the science
Speaker 1: of it again, is how birds do it. The the
Speaker 1: physiology to be able to flap NonStop for all those hours.
Speaker 1: And if you want to really get it some kids,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're ever talking about it in school,
Speaker 1: you know, tell kids this and they're like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: not such a big deal. And you say, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: give I don't know, twenty dollars whatever amount of money
Speaker 1: to anybody who can keep their arms going like this
Speaker 1: for the next hour. Nobody can do that and a
Speaker 1: bird and a bird does it for a day. So
Speaker 1: you know that the capacity of birds to do what
Speaker 1: they do in migration is amazing to me. That you know,
Speaker 1: we're our understanding of how they find their way in part,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a multiplicity of things, by star compass,
Speaker 1: by polarized light, some birds, by smell um, by orienting
Speaker 1: to um, to the Earth's compass. All of that is
Speaker 1: extraordinarily compelling. And that it's happening for songbirds, for example,
Speaker 1: in other birds too, but songbirds, we think of this
Speaker 1: is happening at night, right, you know, you know, we've
Speaker 1: got our thumbs in our mouths and snoring, and these
Speaker 1: birds are passing overhead. And then in the morning you
Speaker 1: wake up and there they are. And then I've never
Speaker 1: seen a migrating cute, not once. And seeing that, and
Speaker 1: and that that's the thing. That's the thing, something like
Speaker 1: you know, you think about rails and how sora just
Speaker 1: show up in the weirdest places. They'll show up in
Speaker 1: you know, downtown Greenville, South Carolina. And you see and
Speaker 1: you see a sare, it's like you gotta force it
Speaker 1: to fly. But here these birds are flying hundreds or
Speaker 1: thousands of miles. A black reel, I mean a black reel.
Speaker 1: It looks, you know, almost like a you know, a
Speaker 1: baby chick, like a and and and here this bird
Speaker 1: is making its way through wetlands, we presume to some
Speaker 1: to some choice place. So I'm I'm always enthralled by
Speaker 1: what we know, but I'm also very inspired by what
Speaker 1: we don't know, and then what we can never know,
Speaker 1: because there's some of that stuff we can never know.
Speaker 1: How that bird makes that decision, what goes off in
Speaker 1: its brain to say, you know, and I'm sure somebody said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, when tail wins reached a certain speed, you know,
Speaker 1: when when the daylight or or or hours daylight hours,
Speaker 1: or at a certain lumen um it's this time of
Speaker 1: year the bird has this fat condition, then the probability
Speaker 1: of it rising in migratory behavior or to exhibit zukunru
Speaker 1: is this. Yeah, that data is out there, but then
Speaker 1: there's the part of this bird's brain we can't get into,
Speaker 1: and we can't we can't know what that feels like
Speaker 1: to be a bird. And we can know they do
Speaker 1: those things on a population level, but ultimately they're individuals, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that one bird, you know, for for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, there was a scarlet tanager that would show up.
Speaker 1: And notice I'm saying a scarlet tanager. I would say
Speaker 1: some scarlet tanagers. But this this bird that shows up
Speaker 1: and it would sing from the top of this red
Speaker 1: mulberry tree and it would sing into the sun. And
Speaker 1: I've I've watched this bird and imagine, you know, this
Speaker 1: bird is making a transition from the Peruvian Amazon to
Speaker 1: the piedmonta South Carolina. You know, Andre and sitting and
Speaker 1: you guys were talking about jaguars, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: probably looking down at jaguars. It's had to dodge forest falcons.
Speaker 1: At some point it's passed by a harpy eagle maybe
Speaker 1: And now it's here in my yard. Yeah, that's going like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, remember what power lines are, Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this other cat down there. It's more likely to
Speaker 1: take me out in that jaguar. Hey, what's the what's
Speaker 1: the latest thinking on whether you're a good or evil?
Speaker 1: If you have a bird feeder, Well, I must be
Speaker 1: evil because I have bird feeders. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, I think you have to be well certainly
Speaker 1: when if you have like avian flu right um, or
Speaker 1: you have zoo sees that you notice around your feeder,
Speaker 1: or you get advisories diseases, you know, if if if
Speaker 1: birds are being impacted by some of these being densely
Speaker 1: packed at feeders. Yeah, and clean and clean your feeder.
Speaker 1: You know, you shouldn't have so much gunk in your
Speaker 1: feeder that you can't tell what's in there other than
Speaker 1: sort of the mossy stuff that's growing on the outside
Speaker 1: of it that's also growing the inside. So um, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna have feeders, you have to be a responsible
Speaker 1: feeder keeper. Clean your feeders on the regular, clean the
Speaker 1: watering sources on the regular. Um. I don't feed a
Speaker 1: whole lot in the summertime because those birds are going
Speaker 1: out and getting the protein that they need from soft
Speaker 1: bodied insects and the like for um for their nestlings.
Speaker 1: So I'll ramp it up in the fall. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, I really love feeding birds um in transit um.
Speaker 1: Part of it is in my head. In my head,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you know, as part of this patchwork of
Speaker 1: this miraculous deal with migration, I want to be a
Speaker 1: I want to be a positive in that. So UM.
Speaker 1: I certainly don't think it an evil, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's a I think it's a positive that people
Speaker 1: can do. It brings wildlife to them, it brings them closer.
Speaker 1: But I think you have to think about how you
Speaker 1: do it. Like anything, You've got to be responsible with it.
Speaker 1: Don't just throw stuff out there and expect things to
Speaker 1: go well if you don't tend to it, because things
Speaker 1: can go sideways. You had years ago when when krit
Speaker 1: and I were first talking about having you down, we
Speaker 1: found a thing you've done where it was like it
Speaker 1: was sort of the nine rules yeah, of being of
Speaker 1: being a black birder or nine rules for birding while black.
Speaker 1: And when I watched the video, like, you know, it
Speaker 1: was funny, right, it was. It was like it was
Speaker 1: like funny, Um, you got it, like the delivery was
Speaker 1: fun right. But I read interviews with you about when
Speaker 1: you compiled those and it definitely wasn't always funny games. No,
Speaker 1: you know when when when that was when you were
Speaker 1: in space? Right, yeah, you know it's it's I remember
Speaker 1: getting the email from the editor who said, you know,
Speaker 1: would you write something towards this And she didn't say
Speaker 1: nine rules or anything like that. I said sure, and
Speaker 1: she said, you know, if you can get back to
Speaker 1: me in a couple of weeks, I'll be fine. I
Speaker 1: had the draft back to her in a little over
Speaker 1: an hour. Because I mean I'd lived, right, I'd lived
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But you know, my dad used to
Speaker 1: have a saying he'd say, um, he said, that's laughable
Speaker 1: but not funny and um. And so I remember I
Speaker 1: got a question at yeah yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: Um he yeah. So it's at a film festival and
Speaker 1: someone and you could hear this, you know, you could
Speaker 1: hear the laughter come up, and then you hear you
Speaker 1: go down right, and you could almost hear the uncertainty
Speaker 1: and laughter, and somebody just asked, they said, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was funny, but then I had I laughed, but
Speaker 1: then I wasn't sure whether I should be laughing. And
Speaker 1: you know, for satire, I think, which is what this is.
Speaker 1: The The importance is that you know you laugh, then
Speaker 1: you think about why you laugh. Then you got to
Speaker 1: think about why you think about why you laugh. So
Speaker 1: on those levels, you know, to get people to some
Speaker 1: point of sort of arcing head because then again, what
Speaker 1: you're doing is you're arking head to heart, you know,
Speaker 1: because you're feeling some kind of way about what you
Speaker 1: see here, and maybe something catches in your throat and
Speaker 1: maybe it's funny, but then you're like, wait, but that's
Speaker 1: not funny because then maybe in your mind with the
Speaker 1: whole thing about bearing a hoodie, that was I was
Speaker 1: gonna have you hit a couple. That was one of
Speaker 1: the ones I remembers if you got a hood on,
Speaker 1: you you got a hoodie on. But then that was
Speaker 1: don't pull the hood That was that was connected to
Speaker 1: Trayvon Mark, right, And so for people because some people
Speaker 1: aren't gonna they're not watching that, and they might say, well,
Speaker 1: why would you say that? Well, and then you know,
Speaker 1: I had somebody tell me and I had seen it,
Speaker 1: and I don't know whether it happens here or not,
Speaker 1: but you know, you go to certain stores and it
Speaker 1: will tell you you cannot come in the store with
Speaker 1: a hoodie on. Oh yeah, you know, um, no hoodies allowed.
Speaker 1: I've I've seen that. So in thinking about that, or
Speaker 1: saying um or, or thinking about being confused as the
Speaker 1: other black birder, you know, to be called to be
Speaker 1: called somebody else because um, maybe it's only two of
Speaker 1: you there, and people haven't taken enough time to notice
Speaker 1: that you actually are, in fact different that one person's
Speaker 1: five ten, the other person six to that one person
Speaker 1: weighs a lot and the other person ways not so much.
Speaker 1: You know, notice, because you're noticing all of these variations
Speaker 1: and birds, you can do it. You can do it,
Speaker 1: I promise. So thinking about those things wasn't hard, man.
Speaker 1: I was feeling all of them. Um, I had lived
Speaker 1: most of them. And so when I was asked about
Speaker 1: doing it, you know, that just flew out of my hands.
Speaker 1: And then this very courageous um conservation organization out of
Speaker 1: Seattle bird Note. Those people went to the next level
Speaker 1: and and and and bird Note is great in promoting
Speaker 1: the science of um of in promoting ornithology, the science
Speaker 1: of bird conservation and all of that, but they're also
Speaker 1: great at arcing, and so they were brave enough and
Speaker 1: they said, you know, would you consider doing a film?
Speaker 1: And UM And the day that the weekend that we
Speaker 1: were supposed to do the film, I was traveling up
Speaker 1: in the mid Atlantic and the producer actually had the
Speaker 1: date wrong originally, so we started a day late. But
Speaker 1: most of that stuff, those nine rules one take because well,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the call for people who want to
Speaker 1: find it on YouTube. UM nine rules for the blackbird watcher. Here,
Speaker 1: let's just let's listen to one. You know, they're essential
Speaker 1: tools for birding. They're your binoculars, your spotting scope, your
Speaker 1: field guy. And if you're black, you're gonna need probably
Speaker 1: two or three forms of I D. When I meet
Speaker 1: another black birder, it's like encountering an ivorybuild woodpecker, an
Speaker 1: endangered species extinction looms? Did you do the list? Was
Speaker 1: it before or after the very high profile case where
Speaker 1: the gentleman in the Central Park I believe it was
Speaker 1: got he had like a woman was in the had
Speaker 1: a dog in a leash area, off the leash, and
Speaker 1: he asked her to put a leash on the dog,
Speaker 1: or go to this part of the park where you
Speaker 1: could have your dog unleashed. That she called the cops.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say it was a dog leash issue.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a birding issue. And he had he had
Speaker 1: his binoculars, his birding. Yeah, yeah, and he recorded the
Speaker 1: whole thing. And then yeah, and then her I think
Speaker 1: her life kind of came apart after that. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: got it back and her dog, so she's all right, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know that was that was some of that nine
Speaker 1: rules sort of in effect, you know, and how you
Speaker 1: approach people. You you know, the skin you're in in
Speaker 1: this country matters, and so where you are matters. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a Southerner and um and and and
Speaker 1: we've got a bitter history in the South of course.
Speaker 1: But then you know, um, anything can jump off anywhere.
Speaker 1: And so when that happened to Christian, I was actually, um,
Speaker 1: I put a little up at my little mountain place
Speaker 1: and and I remember coming back into cell reception and
Speaker 1: my phone was blowing up. You know, if people wanting
Speaker 1: to know about you know, birding, wild black and what's
Speaker 1: this about? And this and that and and so nine
Speaker 1: rules was sort of revived at that point because people
Speaker 1: are like, so, what is it like to live this way? Well,
Speaker 1: but so so that's so you've already done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's yeah, that's really funny that that that was.
Speaker 1: But but it was, honestly and that that was my
Speaker 1: whole thing. I'm like, wait, this has been out since
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, but all of a sudden, here it
Speaker 1: is again. So it was one of those things you know,
Speaker 1: I tell you know, you tell folks well, and folks
Speaker 1: would say, well, it can't be that series. Come on,
Speaker 1: you're just birding. You're not gonna well some people are
Speaker 1: just jogging and get shot. Right. So and in thinking
Speaker 1: about what, um, how those things intersect that again, Steve,
Speaker 1: is where I come to this point of not leaving
Speaker 1: the science, but really wanting to try to make a
Speaker 1: difference in how we go about doing what we do, um,
Speaker 1: whether it's as a hobby of birding or whether it's conservation,
Speaker 1: so that people become aware that it. Unfortunately, it does
Speaker 1: make a difference who you are racially in this country.
Speaker 1: So you know, my first search project I had to
Speaker 1: give up because well I didn't have to give it up.
Speaker 1: But then I did have to give it up. And
Speaker 1: I say it that way because people have said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're a real scientist, you'll go into you know,
Speaker 1: this valley of the shadow of Death where these white
Speaker 1: supremacists are deciding they're going to make it a homeland.
Speaker 1: So I had to make the decision, well, am I
Speaker 1: gonna press that or am I going to leave that
Speaker 1: research project behind? Because I care about my life more
Speaker 1: than I do gathering data in this place. So I
Speaker 1: made the decision to move my research project really to
Speaker 1: take up a whole new research project in a place
Speaker 1: where I felt safer and that kind of stuff happens.
Speaker 1: So in bringing that to light, you know, it's sure
Speaker 1: they're science, their sociology that can be done, their behavioral
Speaker 1: science that can be done, assessments that can be done
Speaker 1: on that. But to have people understand that, I got
Speaker 1: to think about that, right, um, I think is part
Speaker 1: of I see it as part of my mission to
Speaker 1: move the science that I do in a direction that
Speaker 1: has people feel about it and think about it. Do you, uh,
Speaker 1: do you find yourself telling people that something to the
Speaker 1: equivalent of like you should you're not interested in nature,
Speaker 1: You're not interested in birds. You're not a burder, but
Speaker 1: you should be one. Oh no, oh god, no, I know,
Speaker 1: you know it. Maybe it's boulders, maybe it's butterflies, maybe
Speaker 1: it's blue crabs. I don't know. But if it's something
Speaker 1: that gets you connected to nature, well, look, first of all,
Speaker 1: I try to get people understand where their food comes from. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's the first science you ought to be concerned about.
Speaker 1: And um. I don't try to force, ever force people
Speaker 1: into loving what I love, but to to have some
Speaker 1: appreciation for a connection to nature I think is important connection.
Speaker 1: And when I say nature is connection to air, connection
Speaker 1: to soil, connection to water. So if they understand that
Speaker 1: there's this connection that their water just doesn't magically come
Speaker 1: out of someplace that makes it clean, then then we're
Speaker 1: gonna have an issue. So to get them to that point,
Speaker 1: you know, I listened to a report, um, a few
Speaker 1: weeks back, and it was some incredibly disturbing percentage of
Speaker 1: children who think that bacon comes from plants. Yeah, right, um,
Speaker 1: and and and to and to me, that's that's disturbing.
Speaker 1: Or to talk to you know, and to talk to
Speaker 1: really intelligent students, really intelligent high school students I was had.
Speaker 1: They were in a camp. I was doing science camp
Speaker 1: and I was teaching an ecology course. And when I
Speaker 1: teach my ecology courses, you come into Marvin Gays ecology.
Speaker 1: Of course, they didn't know Marvin was young, but um,
Speaker 1: you know there one of the one of the students
Speaker 1: was in there was eating a candy bar and then
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to eat there, but I really didn't care,
Speaker 1: but it was an opportunity. He was eating the candy
Speaker 1: bar and he was kind of smacking it. So so
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, you want to eat this candy bar,
Speaker 1: I want you to tell me what where the ingredients
Speaker 1: came from in that candy bar. The main ingredients came
Speaker 1: from in the candy bar, and I will buy everybody
Speaker 1: in this class their choice of candy tomorrow. And he
Speaker 1: sort of rocks backs, really arrogant, and he's eating I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a pay day or something. I said,
Speaker 1: so where the peanuts come from? Oh? And he just man,
Speaker 1: he leans way back and he's like, Okay, everybody, get
Speaker 1: your list together because y'all all y'all getting candy bars tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And he tells me, of course that these peanuts came
Speaker 1: off a peanut tree. I'm like, really a peanut tree.
Speaker 1: So he had no idea that these were looking. I
Speaker 1: didn't expect him that there was but that these things
Speaker 1: came out of the ground, or that people think that
Speaker 1: potatoes come off of potato trees. That's the thing growing
Speaker 1: up in New York City. Pay but but but then,
Speaker 1: but you're disconnected from it, right and you know, marketing
Speaker 1: is going to show you a laze coming out of
Speaker 1: the ground. They just they just they just care that
Speaker 1: you eat the chip. So um. But but then that
Speaker 1: people don't know again where there. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things that I try to do when people ask why
Speaker 1: I hunt, Um, you know, that's a whole foods market
Speaker 1: and and so to to go to that level and
Speaker 1: think about you know, you don't have to hunt, but
Speaker 1: you need to know that your meat blinked before it
Speaker 1: became a burger. And if you have and if you
Speaker 1: have that idea, if you know that, then it does
Speaker 1: give you a different appreciation for life. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the things that it's always funny to me is how
Speaker 1: you know you get challenged. Um. Sometimes one of the
Speaker 1: times that I got booted to presentation was that there
Speaker 1: was I had a picture of me with this, with
Speaker 1: this little buck that I had killed, and I had
Speaker 1: written a poem about it. It's called Elegy for a
Speaker 1: Gut Pile and well and and it's and it's about
Speaker 1: being elbow deep in an animal right and license to
Speaker 1: ever t shirt. Hell, we can talk, we can talk, um,
Speaker 1: But that that whole idea. This was happening after Michael
Speaker 1: Ferguson's death. And so here I am in this, in
Speaker 1: this gut pile, um feel dressing this deer, and I
Speaker 1: just I was overcome with still. First of all, this
Speaker 1: was a weird thing. When I after I had shot
Speaker 1: this this animal, I went down to it um on
Speaker 1: this side slope, and I had never seen this muscle
Speaker 1: quiver just just under. But it's like every fiber of
Speaker 1: this deer's body was going away, and I you know,
Speaker 1: and you see movement, but I had never seen it
Speaker 1: this way. And I sat with this animal and then
Speaker 1: and field dressing it. Um. I was thinking about the
Speaker 1: appreciation for life. And so I tell folks when the
Speaker 1: day comes that there's not some minute of indecision that
Speaker 1: I have about pulling the trigger or loosen the boat,
Speaker 1: then loosen the arrow. Then it's time for me to stop.
Speaker 1: You know, it might be and it it might not
Speaker 1: seem like I'm taking, but I'm taking a beat. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that we are. We are taught to
Speaker 1: take those beats. It's sort of been marketed out of
Speaker 1: us because people don't want to understand that their meat blinks,
Speaker 1: except for fish, and then they have no problem, you know,
Speaker 1: doing whatever they want to do to fish because they
Speaker 1: don't blink. So it's a disconnect from life that I think. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I try to get people to whether it's
Speaker 1: through birds or butterflies or whatever else that it is,
Speaker 1: but nah, no you must for anything. But it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, well you better if you don't pay attention
Speaker 1: to what's going on, then this is, this is, this
Speaker 1: is what happens. Years ago, we had a guest down
Speaker 1: a I say, it's a novelist named Tom mcgwain and
Speaker 1: he's been a lifeline hunter and he said something about
Speaker 1: hunting or he said, um, you're trying to kill something
Speaker 1: that's trying to stay alive. He said, are you going
Speaker 1: to ignore that? Think? And you know and and all, honestly,
Speaker 1: oftentimes I do you, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 1: you lose sight and then then something really reminds you
Speaker 1: of it. We had like a just there at night,
Speaker 1: like a very vistible reminder that it's like that the
Speaker 1: thing doesn't want this to happen. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's the to but to recognize that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think maybe it's necessarily apparent, you know, if
Speaker 1: if if you're just playing life with your thumbs, um,
Speaker 1: but but being out there in it or at the
Speaker 1: very least, And for those of us who grew up
Speaker 1: on a farm, you know, and you and you make
Speaker 1: the mistake of name in that calf. You know, so
Speaker 1: what happens when it's sizzling on the plate, you're not
Speaker 1: calling that. My friend Doug during he grew up near
Speaker 1: another dairy family, and he said they solved that, but
Speaker 1: because they were all named dinner there. I mean, you
Speaker 1: got you gotta think about that stuff. You gotta. And
Speaker 1: I don't think we do that enough. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, drinking crab flavored whiskey, uh makes me think
Speaker 1: of the briny deep and in a great way. You know,
Speaker 1: that's probably what it tastes like to drown. I would
Speaker 1: suppose the realment. No, I love the castor really, but
Speaker 1: I just I just think for me, I mean, birds
Speaker 1: are sort of at that place of being able to show, um,
Speaker 1: the epitome of life. So I mean flight and the
Speaker 1: song and just their activity. And they're everywhere, even if
Speaker 1: it's pigeons. Even if it's pigeons. Um, if you take
Speaker 1: a while to watch pigeons, I mean, you can't help
Speaker 1: but be impressed. You're they're they're common. But here birds
Speaker 1: that have been symbols of piece, they've been symbols of
Speaker 1: of of of life itself, but people just ignore them.
Speaker 1: So a crazy way of flying, their pattern of flights
Speaker 1: just bizarre exactly. But that you recognize that, right that
Speaker 1: you just don't walk by and not see that happening,
Speaker 1: um is to me when when people do that, then
Speaker 1: we're sort of at a dangerous place. You know, we're
Speaker 1: a dangerous place in a disregard for for life. So
Speaker 1: you know it's birds are I mean, birds are it
Speaker 1: for me in that way, but um, you know, being
Speaker 1: able to exercise that option of watching them and adoring
Speaker 1: them and you know, making what's in the who's uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a dream. Come true for me.
Speaker 1: So here I am well, thanks for being here. I
Speaker 1: appreciated it. Yet it took a while for us to
Speaker 1: get together. But I admire the work. I really do.
Speaker 1: UM have for half for a while because I think
Speaker 1: it's important. Two. Um, your your arking head and heart.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of information that you're putting out in
Speaker 1: research and words and moving words in the direction for
Speaker 1: people to laugh at it, to think about it and
Speaker 1: then hopefully do something about it. So I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks love for coming on. Uh, hit hit him with,
Speaker 1: hit him with your hit him with your lineup of
Speaker 1: books and the best way to find you uh the
Speaker 1: Home Place Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature.
Speaker 1: Um if you will find your indie booksellers somewhere. UM
Speaker 1: Sparrow n vy Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts.
Speaker 1: That's a hub City book that you can buy from
Speaker 1: hub City Books. Forthcoming books from Ferrar or book from
Speaker 1: Ferrar Strauss and Guru is Range Maps, Birds, Blackness and
Speaker 1: loving Nature between the two from Enchanted Lion will come
Speaker 1: Home Place hughes where you can find colors like Coyle
Speaker 1: shit brown in my box of Creole of sixty four
Speaker 1: and the bird I became, um uh black Boys story
Speaker 1: of becoming a bird man. Busy dude. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: got a course load at Clemson or no? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a course load. Not teaching um so much
Speaker 1: this semester, but got got lots of deadlines, including one
Speaker 1: on on Monday. So lots of essays in the works,
Speaker 1: lots of poems. That's my last question for you. Okay.
Speaker 1: We always always come down to, you know, how I
Speaker 1: know what's real? I found it on the Cornell Ornithological Lab.
Speaker 1: Is that the best birding resource out there? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think so? Okay, yeah, you know it's good to hear.
Speaker 1: I mean that that was my dream as a kid.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go to Cornell. I want to be
Speaker 1: a Cornell ornithologist specifically. So um, I get to work
Speaker 1: a good bit with Cornell and published stuff and um
Speaker 1: in Living Bird. But yeah, you can't do better than that.
Speaker 1: I feel that you dig them because they do a
Speaker 1: good job of putting stuff out to two Joe blows
Speaker 1: like us right there you go. I mean there's the
Speaker 1: science moving and and nobody's going to discount that science.
Speaker 1: But more people know the science because Cornell values that
Speaker 1: aspect of it of getting out there, they get to
Speaker 1: do great job of getting people in a position to
Speaker 1: find that yes, absolutely absolutely this might not be the
Speaker 1: right way to put it, but I feel like it's like, um,
Speaker 1: they have they see, they have like a very good
Speaker 1: balance to It's like it's not like it's it's not
Speaker 1: like politicized, you know what I mean. It's just it's
Speaker 1: very like like good information for people that want to
Speaker 1: start understanding birds from whatever route they're taking into it.
Speaker 1: It's just like helpful stuff. Man. That that Merlin app Yeah,
Speaker 1: that and it's and it's gonna get better, you know.
Speaker 1: And I and I turned people on to every you know,
Speaker 1: when I teach your on anthology in the spring, I
Speaker 1: also turn them on to UM to the du page
Speaker 1: and Duck cast and that. Yeah, I turned the students
Speaker 1: onto it because I want to cross Foster um learning.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're going to Cornell for for some stuff,
Speaker 1: you're going to the d U site for other stuff
Speaker 1: to understand. It's really good too, really informative exactly. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot of resources out there, but
Speaker 1: those are two of the best. Aw Well, you got
Speaker 1: a standing invitation to come back. I'll be back. You
Speaker 1: got you got enough stuff going on, you'll you'll get
Speaker 1: re uh you know, you'll get a new set of
Speaker 1: ideas working up pretty quick. Well we'll try. Yeah, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know this Montana has been in my uh in
Speaker 1: my dream basket for all my life. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be three things growing up. I wanted to be an ornithologist.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be yeah, yeah, I wanted to be
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a fighter pilot, right, and then
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a Montana cowboy, and I want
Speaker 1: to be at. I didn't. I didn't, I didn't. Nope, Nope.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be at because Montana for me to
Speaker 1: find the West and I would look in in the
Speaker 1: old encyclopedias that we had and it just, um, it
Speaker 1: just always pulled me in. And so now that I
Speaker 1: have the opportunity work down at um with with ELK
Speaker 1: River books, um, you know it's uh yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: dream come true. So I appreciate you giving me the space. Thanks.
Speaker 1: You should come out in Turkey hunt and watch the
Speaker 1: other birds. Okay, I was gonna say, if you ever
Speaker 1: wanna go shoot some ducks, you know, I'll be staying
Speaker 1: at a cabin. I've been on this cabin last night
Speaker 1: at at the Elk River Book Festival or I'm sorry
Speaker 1: Elk River Writers Workshop and um and one this cabin
Speaker 1: and so and uh yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to make it uh in during Elk Seas and
Speaker 1: you guys can tell me about cow tags and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I need to understand that. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: how accessible it is here, but unfortunately there's no last
Speaker 1: minute options. Yeah there may be there, yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: but I also you know, this is something I mean
Speaker 1: there's no time limit on it, so you know I
Speaker 1: can put in and and get that work to definitely
Speaker 1: get some deer tags. Sounds like you're coming back to Montana. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well deer wise, I've always wanted to hunt the Milk River.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, so that again it's so white tailed
Speaker 1: or white tails, you know, for for me, that's that's
Speaker 1: still that's still the beast of of choice for me.
Speaker 1: But I have others in line that I'm wonna get at.
Speaker 1: Stay in touch, man, we'll do, we'll do. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for what you do