Episode 17: About Striated Caracaras with Jonathan Meiburg
This episode is about striated caracaras, or rather, one man’s obsession with them. The man in question is Jonathan Meiburg who is a musician, author and bird lover. In 1833, a young Charles Darwin was astonished by a strange animal he met in the...
Episode 16: How to attract birds to your garden– with Shubha Bhat
Visit the home of Shubha Bhat and you will find many birds enjoying birdbaths in her garden and its surroundings. An avid birder, Shubha has spoken about backyard birding in many forums including the Bangalore Bird Day, Manipal Bird Day and others. Her work has been...
Episode 14: Data science in birding: the ebird experiment
Do you want to become a reviewer for ebird? Which bird is the logo of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology? Do you think sparrow populations are declining? What abour vireos? Can you “rent” land from farmers to help shorebirds? In this fascinating episode, we talk to Christopher Wood, who heads ebird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Ashwin Viswanathan who is part of Bird Count India and NCF. Over one billion birders use ebird. How did it become this global behemoth? Hint, it wasn’t driven by America. How does ebird track and help avian populations, migration and mapping birds. How do different countries use it, and is India really the “global custodian” of so many species including the Common Rosefinch, Bar-headed Geese, or Blythe’s Reed Warbler?
Episode 13: Birdology and the Hummingbird’s gift with Sy Montgomery
To research books, films and articles, Sy Montgomery has been chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica, worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana. She has been...