Transcript

00:00:11 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Naturally Speaking by Nature Up

North. I'm your host, Will de Chabert-Ostland. And today, we're going to be covering birds

and the full migration here in the north.

00:00:22 Will de Chabert-Ostland

During my junior year at Saint Lawrence University, I had the pleasure of taking

Ornithology, and originally, I was just taking it to fulfill my distribution requirement for my

major. However, throughout the class, I began to fall in love with birds, and today we are

going to be joined by the professor who sparked my interest in birds and taught the class.

00:00:42 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Hopefully, this podcast can instill some curiosity in our audience about the North Country

birds that we have.

00:00:50 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Alright, so today I'm joined by Sue Wilson, who is an ornithology and ecology professor

here at Saint Lawrence University.

00:00:58 Susan Willson

Hello. Will, I'm happy to be here.

00:01:00 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Glad to have you and today she's going to be joining me.

00:01:04 Will de Chabert-Ostland

To answer some questions about birds up in the North Country, especially in regards to

those birds that are migrating through here in the fall. So, I guess my first question to you

would be, what are some of the most interesting bird species that we might see migrating

in the North Country during the fall?

00:01:22 Susan Willson

Mmm. OK. Well, I think all birds are interesting, right? But beyond that, we do have a

number of species that I think people would be surprised to see, depending on who they

are. And so, for people looking for big birds, there are some really notable large birds.

That has just recently have become more common in our area, and that would be the Sand

Hill crane and the trumpeter swans. Both of these birds now breed in the North Country,

and so they'll be moving through. From areas further north, but they're also breeders here,

and so they'll be leaving in the fall. We have small populations, and both of those species

breed right now in the Upper and Lower Lakes Wildlife Management Area right here in

Canton. But they basically were extrapolated from the entire, either continent or eastern

United States for over 100 years, so they're slowly coming back. Both of those populations.

And it's because of wetland management. They both rely on wetlands. And so now that

there is protection for wetlands, these birds are coming back.

00:02:31 Susan Willson

Trumpeter Swans. You know, they're the heaviest bird in North America. There might even

be the world. They're about 26 lbs. They're enormous swans. They just look like a big white

boat on the lake. When you see them. But they basically were killed off by hunting. In

addition to draining wetlands for agriculture.

00:02:51 Susan Willson

But they were kind of a top bird killed to adorn women's hats for fashion, which is, you

know, you just have to think. My God, like nobody stood up for that. But a lot of these birds

that are coming back, you know, they were helped by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which

was passed in 1918. So that made hunting those of two species illegal. But because they're

long-lived birds with low reproductive rates. And they start breeding quite late. You know,

maybe like 6 to 10 years.

00:03:25 Susan Willson

They still have a very low population incline, right as they're coming back. And so, they're

both rare here in the North Country, but you'll see them migrating out of the area this fall.

00:03:38 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah, I think that would be really cool to see. I've personally never seen him. And I mean,

I've spent my past three years up here, so.

00:03:44 Susan Willson

Oh, good. This fall is the time we'll find them for you. They're pretty easy to find. I did want

to note before you move on that for people who like smaller birds, there are, you know,

think of just north of here. We've got the Boreal Forest of Canada, right in Ontario and

Quebec. And so that is the home to about more than 80% of the population of warblers

that breed in North America, breed in that boreal forest, and so all of those warblers, the

boreal specialists that we could see if we're in the Adirondacks, we generally will see more

of on migration, and that would be like, gray cheeked thrushes, or Kate may Warbler, baybreasted

warbler, blackburnian warbler. You know. So, really cool birds that you otherwise

wouldn't see, and you may not even note that they come through, but unfortunately,

sometimes they're the birds I know come through because I find them dead under

windows on this campus, mostly in other places, so they are quite common migrants in the

fall, even though a lot of people don't know that.

00:04:50 Will de Chabert-Ostland

OK. Yeah. Awesome. So, I think that also led to the next question I had, which was the

lesser-known species that came through here. Do you have any other species that you

might want to highlight?

00:05:01 Susan Willson

Lesser-known species that migrate through well, I certainly see those boreal migrants. It's

certainly a time to go out at night on a clear night, and you know a lot of people don't

understand that birds, for the most part, songbirds migrate at night, right? Many people are

just like what, you know, when they hear that, they have no idea because they see larger

birds flying while all birds fly by day. But so are all the songbirds.

00:05:20 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah.

00:05:30 Susan Willson

And shore birds will migrate at night, and so it's really just the larger birds like ducks and

Hawks that are migrating during the day. And so, on a clear night, like a clear, cool night in

the fall. If you go outside, you can actually stand in a quiet area and listen, and you'll hear

these; what they're called are flight calls of all of these different species that are moving

over, and there's a very specific, just “yip”, you know, whatever it is for a given species that

people are starting to learn these, just like we can now use software like Merlin or different

apps to understand bird songs, people are getting better and better at learning those night

flight calls so that you can actually put up like automated ARU's automated recording units

to know what's going through that? You'd actually have no idea of.

00:06:25 Will de Chabert-Ostland

So those night calls are definitely different than the normal songs and day calls. Ok so a

whole different range of vocal notes and all that.

00:06:28 Susan Willson

They're completely different and they're even.

00:06:34 Susan Willson

Yeah, it's not really like a song, you know, it's not this big, long, drawn-out song. It's literally

just like a pip, but because of the pitch of that, and you know what the bird is doing, if

you're really good at songs, you can actually learn some of those. But certainly, on a

spectrogram, you can see where it falls in with pitch and all the other parts of, you know,

like the vocal range and the complexity of that call to determine the species.

00:06:59 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right. And I know, while answering that, you talked about one of my favorite apps, which is

Merlin. And so, if you don't know in the audience what Merlin is, it's basically free to

download app, you can press the record button, and it will give you a pretty accurate

suggestion of what the bird that you're hearing should be. I know I use that all the time

when I walk outdoors in addition to Merlin. How would other people in Saint Lawrence

County and the North County how would they know exactly what's going on a daily basis.

00:07:31 Susan Willson

Oh well, there's a very exciting app called birdcagebirdcage.info, and that's come out of a

lot of work at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. So, I point my students to both of those, like

everyone has Merlin. But if you go to birdcast.info they use radar data to actually, in the

spring and the fall, you can look at it in the morning to see how many birds actually flew

over a given county. Saint Lawrence County in a given night, and it'll tell you, you know, like

2.6 million birds flew over Saint Lawrence County. They tell you the altitude. They tell you

the speed and the direction of those birds and you could do that with fall too, so you know,

here in Saint Lawrence County, a big night is something like, you know, like 3,000,000

birds. That's amazing. It's amazing. If you lived in Chicago or, you know, in the Midwest

Flyway, you could get a night where you have 10 million birds. And so it's dependent on the

area. But anywhere in the United States, you can put in your county and see that for both

the fall and the spring, and that's super exciting. So they'll give you a forecast of what

potentially is going to happen, but you can always look the night, be the night, the morning

after to see what that morning was like. And that can be really, really useful. You can even

look like real-time because they're uploading this information in real time. So you can right

now see at like 2:00 in the morning, if you can't sleep, you know you can see what's going

on, but it's super helpful for people who are monitors in cities that look for birds that have

hit windows of, for example, buildings and cities, and so they'll be pretty cognizant of what

is a big night for the next morning, looking for dead and or hurt birds.

00:09:07

Yeah.

00:09:11

Yep.

00:09:12 Will de Chabert-Ostland

And what was that website you mentioned, you said again.

00:09:14 Susan Willson

It's called birdcast.info.

00:09:17 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Awesome. And do you know how on the broadcast.info they are getting those real-time

projections?

00:09:24 Susan Willson

Yeah, it's all Doppler radar, so you know it's weather, weather, Doppler radar. And for

decades, you know, even a meteorologist on, like, on their newscast, they would kind of

ignore sometimes, you know, they'd show the forecast and show, like, what was going on.

And they would ignore, or perhaps every once in a while, someone would be like, Oh, and

look at that, that's biota, or you know, they have this like name of like animal junk. Like we

don't care about that, but um, acoustic biologists and people started looking at this stuff in

the 1970s, and so there's been an interest in using radar to look at bird migration for

decades. But now that we have kind of the really high-tech Doppler radar, they can actually

look at the size of the birds that are passing. They can't say hey, like that's a blackpoll

warbler, but it can be like warbler size versus shorebird size versus a duck.

00:10:23 Susan Willson

It's pretty amazing. Now, what they can look at.

00:10:25 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah. So you're saying that they have gotten such advancements in technology where

they're able to be like, ohh, we think that's probably Raptor size, or we think that could be

like a Robin size, or.

00:10:37 Susan Willson

Correct. So, people are looking at that and can use that data to look at migratory patterns

of different species or groups of species based on Doppler radar information. Yeah.

00:10:49 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah. So that's a really interesting way I know some folks who are either bird enthusiasts or

who want to monitor window collisions at home or something. If you notice a big night,

maybe go outside and see who's stopping over in the day, or just kind of scan those

windows and see if you can't find anything.

00:11:08 Susan Willson

Right. Absolutely. And that's a good point, Will, because a lot of birds as they migrate. It's

not like they're flying from the boreal forest in Ontario, Canada, to Costa Rica, right? Like

they're doing what you just said a stopover. And so, birds will fly for a night, and then they

come down at dawn, and then they rest during the day, and birds physiologically have

crazy mechanisms, physiologically, that allow them to do things like not sleep during

migration. So, you would think of you flying all night, you know, powered flight with your

wings. And then what are you going to do with dawn? You're going to sleep all day. No,

these birds eat all day. Right. And so, they just gorge. They basically do not sleep, or they'll

do a kind of hemispherical sleep while they're flying.

00:11:56 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Similar to what a dolphin will do if it's sleeping

00:11:58 Susan Willson

Correct. Yeah. And so, birds have a lot of mechanisms where they're, they'll shrink their

organs, you know, they do all this crazy stuff so that they just become these, like, evolved

machines for getting what they need to do for migration. But one of them means, yes, you

can wake up in the morning and look at your birdcast.info and say oh wow, it was a big

night. Go outside, go to your local forest or whatever, and you can find some of those birds

feeding, yeah.

00:12:24 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah, yeah. And I know I mentioned a stop oversight. So, are there any particular key

stopover sites within the North Country or St. Lawrence County, and how are they critical

for migrating birds? And what's really the true importance of them?

00:12:39 Susan Willson

Yeah, you know, like there are so many species of birds, and it's not like one particular

habitat is the most important. Of course, large, protected areas are key. And as we have

allowed wetlands to recover and as we have allowed forests to recover, there's a lot of, you

know, any forest, whether it's protected or not, is going to have migrating birds in it. If it's a

standing forest, right? But places like the Upper and Lower Lakes, which are a big, big

wetland complex, are huge for any kind of aquatic birds, whether they're herons or rails or

shore birds, right or waterfowl.

00:13:16 Susan Willson

That's really, really important to have large, protected areas. Many of these areas do allow

hunting, right? So those ducks that are trying to get through, there's a lot of conservation

protection for waterfowl, and there's a lot of protection for habitat because of hunters and

basically, money for hunting licenses. And so, waterfowl populations have actually they

have, they've increased over the last 50 years, but individually those ducks are, you know,

going to these stopover sites and they may get shot because there is hunting. But you

know, here we've got the upper and lower lakes, that's key as in a wetland complex, and in

the forest that's around that, and it's a forest of different types.

00:14:00 Susan Willson

Stages, right? Because some of these birds like early shrubby growth, especially in the fall.

Remember, there are kids, right? And so interestingly, there's a lot of new research that

shows that even birds we consider interior forest species, right, like wood thrush or

Swainson's thrush or different warbler species, the young seem to, once they leave their

parents, they kind of get into these mixed species kid groups, and they are deliberately

going to this very brushy like, think of a really young early successional habitat where it's

like covered in like vines and bramble and stick it right because they are well hidden in

there, right? And often it's places that have blackberry and raspberry. So there's a lot of.

00:14:39 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah, it just looks like a mess.

00:14:48 Susan Willson

Fruit eaters, especially things like thrushes and flycatchers. So, you've got birds going to an

edgy habitat that has a lot of fruit, and it has a lot of cover from things like sharp-shinned

hawks or Cooper’s, right? That may be hunting them. So, the kids in particular will seek out

this habitat that is just as important as, you know, a big old growth forest, so having a

variety of habitats as birds go through is key. So really, you know, it's like every habitat is

important. The grasslands are important, and just basically not having a super fragmented

habitat. That's all become urbanized and agricultural.

00:15:27 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah, I know. Earlier this morning, we were actually on a program with Nature UpNorth at

Indian Creek Nature Center, which is inside the Upper and Lower Lakes Wildlife

Management, and we were leading this group of kids, and they were like, Oh my goodness

there’s so many bugs. It's so hot and all this like plant growth, like I can't walk off the trail,

and I'm like, I'm trying to tell, and I'm like, yeah, it's important to make sure that these

seemingly areas where you know it doesn't look as appealing for humans, it's really

appealing to a lot of other types of animals, and especially those young birds. So I think,

yeah, if you're ever in that area and want to check out some of those young birds,

especially in the fall, the growth, the shrubby growth, the stuff that doesn't look as you

know, pretty like you wouldn't have it in your yard most likely, but yeah, right along there.

Indian Creek Nature Center, which is just off County Route 14 near Rensselaer Falls.

00:16:25 Susan Willson

Yep, and surrounded by Upper and Lower Lakes. And so, you know regionally, of course,

the Adirondacks are important because it has less urbanization. The Robert Moses State

Park. You know these parks along the Saint Lawrence River, the Saint Lawrence River itself.

All of that is a super important habitat. And you've got along the river, the estuaries and the,

you know, the areas that are along the edge where it's not developed. All of that's going to

be very important.

00:16:50 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right and with.

00:16:53 Will de Chabert-Ostland

All that area that's not quite as developed. And we're making sure it's maintained. Have

you been noticing any trends with climate change affecting either the bird species in the

successional habitats or the successional habitats themselves that have, like, started to

alter them?

00:17:13 Susan Willson

Sure. Yeah. I mean, you know. Like, yes, people, climate change is. Real right? Like come

on man, and to take money and funding away from that is a huge problem right now

because it's just getting worse. And so, one issue here in the North Country is invasive

plants, right? Every year, we hear about a different plant that's taking over wide swaths of

habitat, wherever that may be, or invasive insects that are taking out major trees that are in

the forest. You know, the emerald ash. Where are we going to lose our ash trees? Yeah,

then that's terrifying. That's like going back to chestnut blight from the 1930s and '40s.

So, both of those things are certainly exacerbated by climate change, and they really can

change. For example, good edge habitat can become a monoculture of Japanese,

knotweed, right? And that can be a nothing for birds that need something else it can

provide, perhaps cover.

00:18:05 Susan Willson

But perhaps not the correct food sources for, and it's a monoculture.

00:18:08 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right. And when you say monoculture, it's that whole idea that there's just that one

dominant species. And it makes it hard for everything else to grow and function as well.

00:18:18 Susan Willson

Yeah. So, I'd say in terms of habitat, yes, there are all those invasives, the invasive insects

and the invasive plants. But then, climate change has also affected the ranges and range

expansion of some species. And this is, you know, more of an interesting thing. It's not

necessarily a bad thing because you think back to, like, well, in the Pleistocene, like birds

had to expand and contract those ranges with climate change. But, for example, I've lived

here in the North Country for 19 years, and I've been waiting patiently to hear a tufted

titmouse in my backyard. And last month I did, for the first time ever. First time ever.

00:18:46 Will de Chabert-Ostland

For the first time in 19 years.

00:18:48Susan Willson

You know, I just was, like, washing the dishes or something, and suddenly here. And they

have a very, you know, this, this whistle. And I was like, oh, there. So.

00:19:06 Susan Willson

That's climate change, right? So tufted titmouse? It's a very common species. If you go to

Southern New York, or if you go to New Jersey, where I grew up, you know, it's just there.

It's like a chickadee. But here they're spotty because we're right at the northern part of their

range, and they're expanding. Cardinals are the same way. So, Cardinals, we're on the

edge of their range. And really, they survive due to bird feeding, titmice would be the same

way in the winter due to the cold here. So, Carolina wrens are another one. So, there are

particular species of black vultures. Think of that. That's a tropical vulture.

00:19:38 Will de Chabert-Ostland

You're coming up here now.

00:19:40 Susan Willson

Yes! I saw one in Saratoga Springs a few years ago, so if you start kind of looking at eBird,

for example, another tool. Yeah, a citizen science tool where you can actually look at

particular species. Pick one of these right and go on eBird and look at it, and you'd be

amazed and say, like oh my God, people are seeing black vultures and Gouverneur or, you

know, like who knows?

00:20:00 Susan Willson

Yeah. Guessing on that one, but I saw one in Saratoga Springs, you know that to me. I'm a

tropical ecologist who works in the Neotropics. That's a tropical bird, and it's here.

00:20:08 Will de Chabert-Ostland

You're like that, you're like.

00:20:10 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Hello, why is that up here?

00:20:11 Susan Willson

It's crazy. So all of that, obviously is specifically, due to climate change.

00:20:16 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right. I know you mentioned bird feeders, and we've also been talking on and off about

window strikes. So my question to you would be, what are some of the other, more manmade

threats, and what are ways that people living in the North Country can help manage

and protect some of the birds that we have up here, because I know we have a very good

variety. And pretty healthy bird population overall, but just, you know, improving that, and

especially for those species that you mentioned, like the sandhill cranes that are still

working their way back, how can we help them?

00:20:49 Susan Willson

Mm-hmm. OK. So for the large species, right, like the cranes and the swans, they're coming

back on their own. Right. So, Swans, potentially there was a -There is a- Reintroduction

program that's ongoing in Ontario for the trumpeter Swans, and we have been helped with

that, right? So some of the species that we have, some of the individuals that we have here

are very likely birds from that reintroduction program. They're doing okay as long as we

manage our wetlands and don't open a hunting season for either of those species,

because those two species are going to continue to increase here. For me, the biggest

threats, well, obviously. Habitat loss. That's always number one, right? So, if we can

manage habitat, and for me, the big one in the North Country is grasslands. People look at

an open area that perhaps isn't being farmed and say that's junk land that's not being used,

right? It's not being used by a farm, but.

00:21:50 Susan Willson

It is curial to grassland birds are the most declining group of birds in North America today.

And that's because of agricultural industrialization, right? So, pretty much anywhere that's

flat and has soil...

00:22:02 Will de Chabert-Ostland

It's going to be farmed now.

... we've put farms there like huge industrial farms. And so here it's corn and soy. And we

beyond that, we just, hay, right, there's a lot of cattle here. And so, people hay and

traditionally it used to be that people would hay, you know, late like July, and so to keep

bird populations going in grasslands, you know, you think of bobolinks in savannah.

00:22:31 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Eastern meadowlarks.

00:22:32 Susan Willson

Meadow larks, right eastern meadowlarks. These birds. It's not really safe to hay fields until

about July 15th. But everybody here thinks of like, okay, when do people hay in the North

Country? May.

00:22:44 Will de Chabert-Ostland

I know I've been seeing hay bales basically this whole summer.

00:22:47 Susan Willson

It starts late, May goes through June, and it's kind of like every, you know, every other

month kind of thing, but those birds are settling on what looks like perfect habitat. Right in

late April, meadowlarks are coming back or in April in May, you know, they're building

nests, they're laying eggs, they're incubating, and then they hatch out those kids, and

across all those stages, they are getting mowed. So eggs, nest's baby chicks are getting

mowed every time haying happens.

00:23:20 Susan Willson

What do you do? You know, I understand that people want to pay early because the protein

content is higher in the hay. I have goats, right? I buy hay for my goats. There are programs

that reward people. There's actually. It's like the Bobolink Project is one that will pay

people. Specifically, some states will pay farmers as well to hay later, and it's X amount per

acre based on the number of acres you have. You know bigger is better to not hay, so that

you'll get a population of these birds instead of.

00:23:50 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right. And that's just to preserve, yeah, to preserve those bird species and help them nest

during the summer.

00:23:56 Susan Willson

Correct. Because they're declining so horrifically, but even to get them on your land, you

have to have a minimum of like 30 acres of intact open grassland, right? If you have a little

patch that's like 5 acres, forget it.

00:24:10 Will de Chabert-Ostland

They're not going to come.

00:24:10 Susan Willson

Know maybe you'll.

00:24:11 Susan Willson

Have a bobolink sing there and then he's just going to leave cause he's not going to attract

a female. And so for me, grasslands are crucial, and we need to preserve them now. And

that would be the number one habitat here in the North Country that I'm concerned about.

00:24:24 Susan Willson

Beyond that, it's windows and cats, right? And so.

00:24:25

OK.

00:24:27 Susan Willson

So, windows. All you need to do is just put something on those windows that shows birds

that that pane of glass is not a nothing, right, like birds don't see glass, they're going to fly

30 miles an hour...

00:24:41 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right. So you mentioned that they don't see glasses. There's something that goes on

biologically as to the reason that they can't see the glass.

00:24:48 Susan Willson

They just can't see it. Like you know, they didn't evolve in these, you know, built

environments like we do. They just don't get it, like and so they'll see, you know, people

have potted plants inside or often these, you know, I saw one at Clarkson yesterday, an

aerial walkway where there's glass on both sides. And I.

00:25:03 Susan Willson

Was like, oh, that's.

00:25:04 Will de Chabert-Ostland

And you're like the poor birds just going to think, I can just fly right thought it.

00:25:06 Susan Willson

They just see the trees on the other side, right? But even a lot of glass reflects the trees on

the outside, right? So it's often reflection based on the time of day.

00:25:16 Susan Willson

The best thing to do is to put a treatment on the outside of the glass we're trying to more,

that is as much as possible here at Saint Lawrence University. Right. We use something

called Acopian Birdsavers. You can go to birdsavers.com. It literally is paracord, like a thin

quarter-inch, but it's like a nylon cord, and you basically secure it on top of the window. It

hangs vertically every 4 inches outside the window in a snap on your own home. You could

even use a bar of soap. And so I had a junco hit, one of my windows at my home house, it's

in a weird position, but it's on the 1st floor, and so I just go out with my ivory soap and I put

lines on the outside of that window because I don't want more birds to hit that window.

00:26:05 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right. Just so they can see it and be like, Oh, I can't fly there.

00:26:07 Susan Willson

And it's in the back. So nobody's going to see it. And it's like, it's great, but this paracord is a

really wonderful solution that is not costly. And you could do it yourself. There are other

things, like bird friendly window films that you can. There's one called Feather Friendly. You

could look that up, but it's more it's it costs more. But for some companies, you know, they

want something that they think is prettier. I think the paracord is very pretty, and it kind of

has a Zen-like look where it's just these hanging lines.

00:26:41 Will de Chabert-Ostland

I know for our listeners, if you've never seen the paracord, there's some actually on the

Johnson Hall of Science on Saint Lawrence campus. It's on both the North and South

facing windows, too, I guess, aerial walkways that have them. And I mean, I noticed when

they came up because I was off campus during the fall, and they were up in the spring.

When I came back last year, I was like, oh, it just looked like, oh, it looked like there was

like a little renovation, and it's nothing major. I mean, it doesn't change the beauty of the

building, really at all.

00:27:10 Susan Willson

No, I'm super proud of that. My students and I collected about a decade's worth of data to

present to the university to show that it was one of the worst places on campus for birds

hitting windows. And since they have been up, they were put up last fall, 20 October 2024,

have not received or seen a single bird that has hit those areas of Johnson on the north and

south side, and the walkway to Beweks. And that's a win, right, like shows how well they

work. And again, I guess I would say you know a lot of people, when they think about

window collisions, they'll say like. Oh. That's a problem for cities, right? And it is, you know,

there are some. You can be a window collision monitor in Chicago or New York City, or pick

your city, and they'll have days of, you know, dozens of birds per day. You know, they get

more than 1000 a in a migration. But residences, too, you know, homes.

00:28:08 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah.

00:28:10 Susan Willson

Have birds hit all the time, and so that's an individual thing where you don't have to. Kind of

force or beg. That company should put something on the window or shame them enough.

But it's getting people to do that in their own homes, and it's very easy to do so. One is the

power cord for the windows, Acopian Birdsavers or birdsavers.com. You could look at that.

And two, its cats, right? And so, I've done a ton of research on cats killing birds. Look at the

American Bird Conservancy. If you look at Audubon Society, like, pick your bird society

everything is cats indoors, and I stand by that. Of course, cats are the worst invasive

species on the planet. OK, besides humans, maybe we're not invasive, but we're

everywhere. But cats really are. We've brought them everywhere with us. Cats and rats do

horrific damage to bird populations everywhere they are.

00:29:01 Susan Willson

UM.

00:29:02 Susan Willson

In places like the North Country, many, many people have cats that go outside, barn cats,

right?

00:29:07 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Right, like barring cats and that stuff, just, you know, to eat the rats and stuff that we also

brought.

00:29:11 Susan Willson

Yeah. And so, one thing that I've done a lot of work on is something called the Birds Be Safe

Collar Cover, and it's, you know, you can go to like birds, Google Birds Be Safe, and you'll

find this, but basically, it's like a cloth sleeve that goes over a collar. You can use a cliprelease

collar or a buckle collar. There are buckle collars that have strech in them. I prefer

those because they stay on better than the quick release. Clip collars have a high failure

rate, but anyway. They're brightly colored, patterned, and think of birds versus mammals,

right? Birds have incredibly good colors. Their vision mammals besides humans, most

mammals see in a kind of gray scale with a little bit of color thrown in. But birds have

exceptionally good color vision, so it basically breaks up the pattern of that creeping cat

creeping up on a bird, and studies that I've done have shown that they're between like 65

and 95% effective at keeping cats from killing birds, and that's huge. That is not going to

save all grassland birds, right? It's not something like that where we're talking about

populations of what we can do for eastern meadowlarks, but for owners of cats who

decide to have their cats outside or have an outside cat. This is a concrete thing one can do

to keep your cat from killing birds, and that's important, right? Because it's traumatic and

it's like every little individual thing counts. You can't take the shoulders of everything on you

for, you know, the problems of the world. But you, each individual can do something if you

own a cat and its an outside cat it should have a caller on. Right?

00:30:54 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Yeah, it's a pretty safe and effective way to.

00:30:56 Susan Willson

It's very, very effective. It's way more effective than just like bills on a collar, for example.

So that's one thing I think that you know each individual person out there can be thinking

about windows and they can thinking, be thinking about their cat and how to keep their cat

from killing birds. And those are fixable, solvable problems.

00:31:17 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Nice. So that I think that's a good way of at least getting some positive out there and being

like oh, we're having birds declined. But wait, there's something we can do at least.

00:31:24 Speaker

Yes.

00:31:25 Will de Chabert-Ostland

My next question for you would be that you've seen over the past, I guess, 19 years that

you've been here. What, what has been some of your favorite fall migration sightings or just

anything that you that really like tickles your brain up there and?

00:31:38 Susan Willson

Oh, okay. You know, like, since we're on migration. To kind of think seasonally and for me. I

live just a few like 3 miles South of SLU, and one of the most beautiful, beautiful things that

I have had happened in the last maybe 6 plus years is that I have a small wetland behind

my house. There's a meadow and there's a wetland, and because of that every fall and

spring.I get trumpeter swans and sand hill cranes now coming over my house back there.

You know, I see them in the meadow and that's a win, right? Like, that's such a

conservation win for me. A bird biologist who knows the history of these birds knows that

they were basically extrapolated. And they're in my backyard, you know? Like, so that's.

Very exciting in terms of migration, I think it's important to remember that, it's not that all

the birds are leaving, you know, like winter in the North Country people are like, Oh my

God, you know, it's hellish, and there's nothing but if you're a bird or in the North Country,

there's a whole well, it's a whole new slew of birds that comes from the north and they

come specifically here to winter. So they're not even passing through. They are now here.

00:32:55 Will de Chabert-Ostland

They stay up here the whole time.

00:32:56 Susan Willson

So we have incredibly amazing birds here like I had my whole Ornithology class see a flock

of bohemian waxwings, right? So, we had 30 bohemian waxwings which you don't see

other times of year. There's a lot of Hawks that are here like rough legged hawks, many

more eagles. You know it's like you can see a bald eagle every day. In the winter, because

there's so many that come down, we also have golden eagles that come down in the winter

and set up shop here and hang out so many, many songbirds, you.

00:33:28 Susan Willson

There's another bird that I work on personally is the evening grosbeak, and so that's a funny

bird because it's a big, big finch, right? And so, anyone who's hearing this, who's lived in the

North Country, perhaps or grown up in the North Country, this is a bird that goes to bird

feeders. And if you've lived here a long time, you may say I remember that bird that big

yellow and black and white bird with that huge gigantic seed crushing bill. They were

common here, let's say - 40 years ago.

00:34:01 Will de Chabert-Ostland

40 years ago. Real common, yeah.

00:34:02 Susan Willson

Or more now.

00:34:05 Susan Willson

Now, they're not here. And so every once in a while, a couple every couple of years, get

what's called an eruptive movement. And these are these birds that are moving, looking for

food, right. It's not this kind of back-and-forth migration like we think of a normal

Neotropical migrant. But evening groseaks on a good year when maybe the seed crop of

what they want for particular cones, you know, they're going to like different pines or fir or

spruce or sumac or what have you like dried fruits. If those fruits are not as good in

particular places in Ontario or Quebec; the birds will flood down into the Adirondacks, and

so we had a Goodyear a few years back where Tupper Lake was dripping with evening

grosbeak. I took my Ornithology class. I guess it was four years ago. You know, and we saw

hundreds, you know, it was like, bizarre, right in downtown, you know? And like, on

somebody's residence?

00:34:57 Will de Chabert-Ostland

And you're like, we don't see these birds all the time anymore.

00:34:59 Susan Willson

No. And the students were like, yeah, whatever. You know, I'm like people. These are this is

not common. But that also needs to be appreciated here in the North Country that we have

birds here in, not just kind of moving through but coming in in a particular season and in

this case, winter snowy owls, right are one that we get almost every winter, but there are

some winters where we'll just get a big movement of snowies into the area. And you can

find them and see them. And you know, like my God, to see a big white owl here in the

North Country is it's it's such a thrill and it's it's very remarkable. On top of that sometimes

we get great gray owls. You know, we've had great Grays come to places like Robert Moses

State Park up along the Saint Lawrence River. I had the pleasure of watching two there,

couple years back. They were hunting and one of them actually hunted and caught in

ermine while we were watching, you know, which is a predator, an ermine, a weasel and

so.

00:36:02 Will de Chabert-Ostland

And so it didn't. It didn't just get a mouse.

00:36:03 Susan Willson

No, these are huge owls, right? And so it grabbed ermine and so there's a lot of very, very

special birds up here that people from the south, you know, think of New York City.

Whatever will come in the winter specifically to see because they can't find them anywhere

else in the northeast.

00:36:22 Will de Chabert-Ostland

And that's really pretty cool. I've been a student at Saint Lawrence. I'm going to go into my

senior year, so I've been here for a few years. But between studying abroad and stuff, I

haven't been around here in the fall as much. This falls the time I think, especially for me. I

know it is my first year here. I was like, oh, yeah, there's birds. I'm like, cool, sure,

whatever. And then I think where I am at this point and just, you know, gaining that sense of

appreciation. I'm actually going to go out and really heavily look and be like, oh, that's what

I can actually see here and I think it's. I think it's really special because I come from more

of an urban area and southern Connecticut and I've just been surprised so much this

summer. By every time I drive, how much wildlife is actually up here. So, I think this is a

really special thing that everyone up here in the North Country has.

00:37:16 Susan Willson

I think I just want to speak to that really quickly because birding is difficult, right? Like it's a

hard thing to get into one you need binoculars. And binoculars used to be like, oh, there are

like $500 or six, you can get good binoculars for, you know, like 150 bucks now. Yeah,

that's still a lot of money, but they help, you know, it opens up the whole world of looking

for birds. And you don't want to get junk binoculars. I like what are they called? The vortex

binoculars. They're about $150.00. That's a good entry level. They have very good optics

and they have a lifetime warranty. So, I know getting into burden can be hard, but binocular

prices have come down and now that we have things like the Merlin app, you know where

you can literally stand in your own backyard. Hold up, Merlin, press play and it's recording

the birds and telling you like it highlights the bird as it sings. It's a really remarkable way for

people to learn bird songs and learn what's in their backyard. I love getting people excited

about birds, so if you're listening and have questions about birds, let me know or let Will

know because he knows a lot about birds now too. But I'm very happy to talk about them as

much as possible.

00:38:32 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Thank you so much, Doctor Wilson, for coming in.

00:38:35 Susan Willson

OK, you're welcome, Will.

00:38:37 Will de Chabert-Ostland

Thank you all for listening to my conversation with Susan Wilson. We hope you enjoyed

learning about the different species of birds that migrate here in the fall, the importance of

stopover sites, ways you can help protect birds and some of our favorite bird encounters

here in the North Country. Stay tuned for our next podcast. And as always, until then, get

up and get outdoors with Nature up North.