Bird Podcast with Shoba Narayan

This episode is both about birdwatching and illustrating birds. In 2016, acclaimed and bestselling author Amy Tan began taking nature journaling classes with John Muir Laws. During the pandemic shutdown, she spent long hours observing the behavior of wild birds in her backyard.  Her editor, Dan Halpern, suggested she turn those pencil sketches, colored portraits and journal notes into an illustrated book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, published in April 2024 by Knopf, which became an instant #1 bestseller and remained on the list for 70 weeks.   Her drawings were on special exhibition at the Roger Torey Peterson Institute and at the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. Amy serves on the board of American Bird Conservancy, the National Poetry Series, and The Community of Writers.  She lives with her husband and their dog in California and New York. In this episode she talks to us about the pleasures of watching and illustrating birds.  

Rohan Chakravarty is a Cartoonist, illustrator, and wildlife buff. Creator of Green Humour, the comic strip. He is an author and illustrator known for his work in bridging art and science, particularly in the field of bird behavior. His book, "Bird Business," focuses on showcasing the quirks, antics, and daily lives of 100 Indian birds, offering insights into their unique behaviors.    How does a cartoonist and illustrator think about birds? Can you walk us through the process of creating this book. How did you choose the birds that feature in your book?  You are clearly interested in bird behaviour. You say, for instance, that the Lammergier- bearded vulture, takes 7 years to master its bone-throwing skill. These are very specific facts.  How did you learn all this and how did you choose what to throw in.  Rewrites? Anita's intervention? For those who haven't read your book, can you mention some of the fascinating bird behaviors that you have come across? Have you seen all the species in this book? Bar tailed treecreeper? Why do nuthatches move/spiral downwards while the treecreeper spirals upwards, do you know? Baya nesting colonies are usually built close to water bodies to reduce risk of predation by snakes— but aren't there water snakes? Do snakes not climb up trees? Why does the brown fish owl wade instead of doing the traditional thing that owls do? Bar-headed geese (raising the bar). How do you come up with puns? Because you are a cartoonist or a writer or both? What are your favourite species and why? What is your technique of going birdwatching, as in do you go every week? Favourite binocs? Or do you sit and draw outside?

The sex of a bird – whether it is male or female – is one of the most critical aspects of its biology. Males and females often behave differently, especially during the breeding season, and in many species, they have strikingly different plumages. This episode features Dr. Hamish Spencer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Otago in southern New Zealand. Hamish was recently in Colombia, where he was shown a bird that violated these rules. Colombian ornithologist John Murillo had discovered a very unusual Green Honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza) on his farm near Manizales in Colombia and pointed it out to Hamish when he visited early in 2023. The bird exhibited aqua-blue male plumage on its right and grass-green female plumage on its left. The bird's head showed the black hood of a typical male on the right, but the left side was mostly green. This episode discusses this bizarre phenomenon, known as bilateral gynandromorphy. How did it affect this particular bird? How does it arise? How common is it? Which species has it been observed in? The article reporting this find has colour photos taken by John Murillo and is available at https://journal.afonet.org/vol94/iss4/art12/ John Murillo's video can be seen at https://figshare.com/articles/media/DSCN2268_MOV/23739894  

  When a pigeon comes into the house. This is a controversial episode.  In fact, I am pretty sure nobody in the nature groups that I am part of will approve of this.  In fact, they may even condemn this episode.  Because you see, it is about pigeons, which birders call flying pests. But here's what happened and so, if you listen or watch this episode, advance apologies.  About six months ago, a rock pigeon made a nest in my mother-in-law's balcony. This episode is about the ripple effects after that. One day, I returned after a long trip and visited my mother-in-law who lives in a separate apartment in my building to discover that a pigeon had laid two eggs on a chair that she uses to sit on in her balcony.  My mother in law was quite delighted with this development.  She lives alone and having a living creature inhabit her home gave her a lot of pleasure.  The problem is that these feral pigeons– rock doves– are carriers of disease. Bird Podcast is one of the Top 20 science podcasts in India per Feedspot.