S2 E9: Why do solitary songbirds call when migrating at night?

Welcome back to the Bird Brief, this is Stephanie Jenkins Aslett, avian ecologist. Today let’s dive into songbird migration and how their seemingly solitary nocturnal travel is more cooperative and social than we thought!

Stories:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/migrating-birds-sing-to-team-up-with-other-species/ 

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(24)01701-9 

Bird Sound:

Swainson’s Thrush, nocturnal flight call. Paul Driver, XC771098. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/771098.

Music: The Weeknd from wish by Lundstroem is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License. https://freemusicarchive.org/music/lundstroem/songs-i-regard-terrible/the-weeknd-from-wish/ 

Keep an eye out for the next episode in two weeks! I will be talking with an expert in the field about a key tool that helps researchers uncover interactions that might be overlooked in enormous, wildly complex datasets (as this nocturnal flight call dataset was). Spoiler alert, it's my geophysicist husband, Zan Aslett, so get ready to laugh about datasets while learning something. 

This is Stephanie Jenkins Aslett, thanks for listening. If a particular story piqued your interest, be sure to check out the show notes for more details. If you have a story that you would like to spread the awareness of, I would love to highlight it in my podcast. Just let me know in the comments or send a note to thebirdbrief@gmail.com. Please tune in next time for The Bird Brief - your rundown, or should I say featherdown, of the birds we love.