One side effect of our collective global coffee addiction is the transformation of native forest into coffee plantations. But are all coffee plantations created equal? How does shade grown coffee match up to the native forest it replaces? Can it still be good habitat for birds? Canada Warblers make a long trek each year from their breeding grounds …

We usually think about natural selection making small changes, generation by generation, over long time spans. But during extreme weather events, high mortality means natural selection acts fast. How do these extreme events drive evolution? At a long term study site in Nebraska, researchers took advantage of continuous Cliff Swallow monitoring to l…

By Ellie Roark & Willson Gaul

'Tis the season for caroling.... and some of us enunciate better than others. On its wintering grounds in Tanzania, the Thrush Nightingale sings an inconsistent, disjointed version of its beautiful, complex song. Why? In what ways is its winter song different from its breeding song? This month, we're chatting about a paper that tests the theory tha…

Flying is a dangerous business. Birds must dodge trees, powerlines, windows. Anyone who has seen a robin flit at full speed into a dense thicket knows birds have an extraordinary ability to avoid obstacles if they can see them. But some obstacles seem particularly challenging. This episode's study looks at a single 260 meter section of powerline in…

In TV advertisements, it seems paper towels can always absorb more grape juice. Are urban areas similarly able to take in more and more introduced bird species? Does this species absorption have a limit? In this episode, Willson and Ellie don't know, can't agree, and so speculate wildly while discussing the study "Alien species richness is currentl…

Studying birds typically involves in-person observation, but with the rapid advance of high quality audio recorders and microphones, bird researchers are finding they can have "ears" in many places at once these days. How do audio recordings of birds compare to observing them in person? What information do we lose when we don't have visual observat…

Not all brood parasites are on the hunt for an unsuspecting bird of another species to take advantage of. In fact, there are many bird species who lay the occasional egg in the nest of a same-species neighbor. But is this behavior actually parasitic? For many waterfowl species, it may be that both host and egg-layer benefit from the arrangement. Jo…

Is there an evolutionary arms race between birds trying to hide eggs and birds trying to find eggs? If so, who is racing who? Brood parasites (like many species of Cowbird and Cuckoo) lay their eggs in other birds' nests to trick a host species into raising their chicks. It's easy to imagine that all the drama and competition arise from conflict be…

Feeding the birds is big business these days, but how has all that food availability affected bird communities? It turns out that your feeder (combined with all your neighbors' feeders across the nation) has probably helped influence population change and bird community composition! We're discussing "The composition of British bird communities is a…

Do birds get used to people walking past? Today we are talking about whether birds in rural and urban areas differ in how easily they are spooked by passers by, both human and... well, umbrellan. To hear more about the role of eyed umbrellas in bird research, tune in to our discussion of "Predictors of flight behavior in rural and urban songbirds" …

Specially adapted antbird species can track and follow army-ant swarms in the Ecuadorian forest to take advantage of the arthropods the ants flush from the forest floor. But there may be other birds hoping to take advantage of these ant swarms-- if they can find them. This month, we're talking about the intriguing tale of intercepted communication …

No matter where you live, you probably see some bird species that seem to stay put all year long. But did you know these species might still be migrating? Today we're talking partial migration-- where some individuals of a species migrate and some are resident. Why does this happen? Which species do this? How can we even tell?? Check out the articl…

Does it help or hurt a plant to have birds eat their seeds? Birds can help plants by moving their seeds to new places, but what happens to seeds inside birds’ guts? For some plants, seeds that pass through a bird’s gut may actually be at an advantage compared to seeds that never get eaten. But does that depend on the bird species, or the plant spec…

Long running, citizen science data collection projects like the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count and the North American Breeding Bird Survey are more than just a fun excuse to get out and bird with other people! In fact, together they provide 60 years of comprehensive data tracking relative bird abundance in North America (and the CBC alone p…

For the endangered Saltmarsh Sparrow, nesting is a pick-your-battles endeavour. Nest too far below the high tide line, and you could lose your babies to flooding. Nest too far above the high tide line, and parasites may invade the nest, spreading disease and robbing parents and juveniles of valuable body mass. What's a bird to do?! This month we're…

Like Peter Pan, migrating birds fly through the night, straight on 'til morning... but then what? Usually as dawn arrives, birds make landfall in suitable stopover habitat. But if they find themselves over the Great Lakes in the northern USA as the sun rises, how do they deal with this obstacle? What happens to the height birds are flying and the d…

Roughly 100 years ago, some Yellowhammers (Emberiza citrinella) were captured in England and released in New Zealand. They successfully bred there, establishing a new population. Since then, what has happened to the way these birds sing? How has 100 years of separation between the New Zealand and Great Britain populations affected the dialects of Y…

Stable isotopes are a pretty hot topic in bird research these days. But what are they, and how are they used? What can isotopes tell us about where and how birds are migrating? This month, we look at what the combined forces of isotopes and geolocators can tell us about Barn Swallow migration, as we discuss Keith Hobson & Kevin Kardynal's 2016 stud…

As the planet gets warmer and spring comes earlier each year, birds may have to adjust their spring behaviors and migration timing to keep up with the weather! But what happens when bird populations fail to adjust their nesting and migration timing to the new, earlier advance of spring? How does a mismatch between the bird breeding season and the a…

Is climate change pushing birds to higher elevations than they've historically occupied? Are birds that live at the tops of mountains losing habitat as higher altitudes get warmer? This month, Ellie and Willson explore these questions as they discuss the paper "Altitudinal range shifts of birds at the southern periphery of the boreal forest: 40 yea…