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Lee Burton: So today we are joined by Dr katie saving and she is a professor and avian ecologist at the University of Florida, has done some fascinating work in the lab on bird language and so welcome katie glad to have you.
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Katie Sieving: it's really nice to see you again later this will be fun.
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Lee Burton: yeah well, I think the first thing is most people probably don't you know even know the general public about bird language and certainly your work, and I know you've been written up and some major publications and.
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Lee Burton: You know, even in the press, like the New York Times, but again, a lot of people haven't seen that So do you mind first just telling us.
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Lee Burton: And maybe even stepping back tell us about your background, you know how you got in to this field of study and then your areas of research, etc, even if it, you know started is when you were young as a kid.
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Katie Sieving: yeah so I mean i've always loved the outdoors and I was going to be a vet for the longest time and then, then I got into college and I found that the pre vet.
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Katie Sieving: classes were full of you know people I didn't really relate to, as well as people who wanted to be outside more and so anyway, I I started working in a field called wildlife biology.
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Katie Sieving: And I loved it we were outside collecting data, you know nature, all the time and I went on, and went to Grad school in that field and birds came about in my life more as a practical thing in this in the sense that I got a lot of jobs doing bird work when I was you know in between.
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Katie Sieving: In between my schooling.
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Katie Sieving: So I got really good at birds partly just because there was a lot of work and birds.
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Katie Sieving: So then, once I became a Prof and really interested in conducting research and stuff I really interested in how bird communities respond to living with people there's landscapes, full of people and landscapes, full of wildlife out there.
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Katie Sieving: And birds seem to be able to cope with people to some high degree, so I got really interested in a lot of the features of birds that allowed them to live with people and conduct their lives, you know, alongside us so.
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Katie Sieving: I got interested in bird language, though, because I had an undergrad who whose dad was a really serious birder in fact he led nature tours.
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Katie Sieving: birdwatching tours which you know are really intense people who go on birdwatching tours they really just want to see a lot of birds so his dad was super Taipei, and would bring.
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Katie Sieving: The students name was Gary Lang them and they his dad would bring Gary along with them and gary's job was when they went to the tropics or to California, or anywhere with a burning group.
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Katie Sieving: gary's job was to pull out these these recordings of the different species and play the species calls and that would attract the birds to come close so that all the people in the group could see them.
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Katie Sieving: And Gary was in my class developing a research project one time, and he goes, you know all those trips my dad brings me on he goes.
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Katie Sieving: I love going anywhere in North America or Europe with him because to bring birds in close all we have to do is go shoot which in bird languages is you know the human version, as we call it fishing.
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Katie Sieving: And fishing is what brings the birds in really close he goes, but when we go to the tropics like anywhere in Costa Rica or Venezuela or wherever you go.
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Katie Sieving: In the woods, none of the birds pay attention to us at all, which means, then I have to pull up all these individual recordings to bring in the birds at the people want to see.
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Katie Sieving: And my dad was constantly yelling at me to get this tape and the player and play that back and.
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Katie Sieving: He goes I hated going to the tropics because he was always on me and I was never quick enough to get the birds in close enough for the people, because, so I loved when we could use fishing.
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Katie Sieving: So you want to do is research project on why fishing works, why does it bring birds in in North America, but not in South America.
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Katie Sieving: He had this funny term he goes, you know I always refer to the tropics as this thing we call it the fishing black hole basically fish in the wilderness, and nothing happens.
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Katie Sieving: So, so it was a really fun research topic for him and he conducted a study that basically showed.
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Katie Sieving: that the reason that birds are so interested in fishing and coming close is because in North America, we have a family of birds called.
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Katie Sieving: Well chicken ease and tip is you know them and their their their Latin family names is parody so we refer to them as parents for short.
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Katie Sieving: So the parents, including chicken ease tip mice and then in Europe, you have all the tips species.
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Katie Sieving: These guys all have a call that they give when they see a perch doll or and other dangerous animal that they want to bring attention to and draw in a lot of birds in order to chase them away pitching.
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Katie Sieving: sounds just like that call and and the family paradigm does not exist in South America.
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Katie Sieving: So the birds what it lets us, let us understand is that the birds here in North America and Europe, where there are a lot of parrot species have they've learned well over evolutionary time they've learned.
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Katie Sieving: You know, come to understand the language of the parents so fishing brings in the birds, because we sound like parents who are talking about something really interesting to them, which is the location of a dangerous predator.
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Katie Sieving: So, so that whole thing he taught me basically and ever since then he's moved on a lot of other things, but I.
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Katie Sieving: I stayed really interested in antiquities and SIP mice in their language and the more I look at it, the more I find that they have basically a vocabulary for.
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Katie Sieving: everything that happens out there in nature, they talk about it in a way that if you know the language of the chickens and tip mice you can understand what they're talking about they have an incredible vocal complexity.
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Lee Burton: yeah that's fascinating and I want to delve in more on that as we go through here or dive into that just one thing for anyone listening, just to be clear and I know you pointed it out, but.
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Lee Burton: When she's referring to paradise you're talking about that it's not parrots tropics I get that a lot of times yeah I was actually in Costa Rica recently.
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Lee Burton: I have some family down there and I was out with an ornithologist and it was just amazing because I knew this obviously from working with you.
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Lee Burton: That and he was a bird guide really good and works for an NGO down there actually saving various raptor species.
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Lee Burton: and his fishing call was so good, it almost sounded like a chicken it, I mean literally I had a hard time telling some tough times.
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Lee Burton: And so you know it was just and i'm not sure I would have ever realized that you know, without all the work that you've done but.
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Lee Burton: Maybe you can talk a little bit too about you know some of the things that that has unlocked in terms of once that discovery was made, and you know why parents are so important, and some of the the work that you've done in the lab.
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Lee Burton: To kind of decipher that, as well as some of I know you have some colleagues at other universities, who have also done some good work and and why other bird species are so dependent on these guys.
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Katie Sieving: Okay well that's a lot i'll try to take it a little pieces here, I have a colleague good colleague at Tennessee.
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Katie Sieving: who works in the psychology department Todd free version and he works on the language of the chicken ease and tip mice.
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Katie Sieving: As a as a proto language basically he's fascinated with the complexity of the calls that they produce, in fact, they have so many different unique calls and notes.
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Katie Sieving: In their basically i'll call it a vocabulary, a little linguist would take issue with us equating the bird language to human language.
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Katie Sieving: In the general utilitarian sense of it to me they're really similar because.
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Katie Sieving: birds have notes, which are like letters and calls, which are like words and if you add all those things up.
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Katie Sieving: And look at the number of unique elements in the language of chickpeas and tip mice what Todd free bird points out is that there's enough unique elements in their language to encode.
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Katie Sieving: Up to something like two thirds the information that the English language has now that doesn't mean they have that much information, you know sort of uniquely coded in their in their.
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Katie Sieving: Their their vocalizations but the point is there's just a huge complexity or diversity of different sounds that they make that that could be used in.
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Katie Sieving: Like the language so he studies it from that perspective as an evolving, you know, looking at how languages evolve, you can actually study those species to understand how that can come about.
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Katie Sieving: So that's his perspective and we've worked together on various things my interest in that complexity is how reliably associated specific vocalizations are with specific situations in nature, so we already talked about the sort of mobbing call this thing that sounds like.
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Katie Sieving: it's it's a portion of this thing we call the chicken he call most parents PA our ids every day.
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Lee Burton: Thank you.
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Katie Sieving: They have a chicken he call that that has a bunch of D notes in it and it's the D note section of that call.
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Katie Sieving: which can be varied in a tremendous to a tremendous degree, they can vary the nature of the notes, for example, tip nice can do a flat D note like dd dd dd or they can go de de de de de where each note as an.
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Katie Sieving: upswing, and the frequency then they'll typically switch from the flat notes when they're talking to their own kind to the rising frequency that we call the F notes.
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Katie Sieving: When they're talking about a predator that they want other birds come in and mob.
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Katie Sieving: So they can change the type of note, they can also change how quick the notes COM, so if they go.
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Katie Sieving: The they're not very excited about anything but if they go DVD or DVD DVD and add a whole bunch of D notes in quick succession, then they're very excited about something.
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Katie Sieving: And they tend to very those elements of the chicken a call.
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Katie Sieving: In a very particular way if the predator is more dangerous they have more notes they're shorter they're faster they're closer together, and so you can kind of you can very easily tell.
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Katie Sieving: Whether they're talking about a really dangerous predator, or one that that's worth noting, but really isn't going to terrify anybody and.
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Katie Sieving: And so, in order to determine just exactly how they vary the call and how reliable, it is in terms of identifying different situations.
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Katie Sieving: We brought groups of tip mice into aviaries and we presented them with different predators live ones we went to our local rehabber.
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Katie Sieving: wildlife rehab facility and they lent us some owls of different species, the little screen Charles which are very dangerous predator, to the little birds in the forest.
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Katie Sieving: They lent us a great horned owl gave us a an exhibitor that is like a Coopers Hawk.
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Katie Sieving: And then my Grad student who did the work she actually adopted a baby quail and that was our control animal a bird.
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Katie Sieving: that's about the size of a screenshot but it's not a dangerous animal at all, so that was our control animal and then we borrowed some snakes and cats from our friends as pets and we put them all in cages near these birds and then recorded what the birds said about them and their.
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Katie Sieving: Calls varied in a highly predictable and identifiable way, depending on what animal they were looking at and how close the animal was sort of.
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Katie Sieving: To to the tip mice themselves if the animal is presented really close to a to a tip mouse than they get more more intensely fearful about it.
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Katie Sieving: But if they were free flying and a big pen they would just it talks about it in such a way, and we record those calls and then run some statistical analysis on the structure of the calls and it was easy to tell.
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Katie Sieving: What animal they were talking about in the end, so that gave us this really clear.
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Katie Sieving: set of sort of you know recordings that we could then go out into nature and asked all the other birds in the forest Do you understand the difference.
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Katie Sieving: Between the call that the tip mice gave to the little dangerous screech owl versus the big fat slow rate for now, can you tell that the tip mouse is talking about a predator that's dangerous or not, and every test we've done.
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Katie Sieving: The other species like cardinals she could ease you know if we play tic mouse calls to chicken ease if we play the calls to videos warblers I mean you name it.
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Katie Sieving: All these birds that live with the chicken these mice they know exactly what they're talking about.
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Katie Sieving: And how to respond appropriately so, for example, the parents and a lot of other species to they a lot of birds have a really high pitched note that we call the seat note, or the Z call it's super high frequency it's like 11 kilohertz.
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Lee Burton: I can barely hear it.
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Katie Sieving: yeah is so high pitch that, as I get older out i'll quit doing research when I can't hear it.
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Katie Sieving: anymore, but.
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Katie Sieving: But when the when the device give that call.
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Katie Sieving: All the little birds anywhere in the area, they just ditch and fly to cover because what it means is that there's a flying Hawk and exhibitor a really dangerous kind of bird predator, like a Coopers Hawk or a sharpshooter talk that's about to attack them.
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Katie Sieving: And so, when the tip mice and chickens give those calls all the other birds just fleas quickly as they can and disappear into the vegetation.
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Katie Sieving: And I had a Grad student who played that call to every bird of the forest and we play it to squirrels and chipmunks and whatever we get our hands on.
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Katie Sieving: Everything treats it like the most dangerous situation they've ever been and they run the squirrels flick their tails and run run up the tree.
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Katie Sieving: All the birds just disappear, and they stay, really, really quiet they freeze somewhere in the vegetation until they perceive that there's no real danger, I mean we're talking 3040 species.
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Katie Sieving: In any one set of trials that that understand that that's a really dangerous call a call about a dangerous situation.
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Katie Sieving: So that's where my research has taken me and.
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Lee Burton: I was so impressed by that that actually in my bird language course I have a whole module dedicated to this because it's so fascinating and there's so many things dependent upon it.
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Lee Burton: You know, and like you said, the whole fishing thing unlocks and I noticed when I pitch if they're tip my rice and chicken these around they pick up on everybody comes in, if they're not around i'm more likely to be ignored.
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Katie Sieving: That may be as subsequent read probably means my fishing calls and very good.
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Lee Burton: But no it's it's just fascinating how that works and is that, where that term and I can't remember if you came out with it, or one of your your colleagues, the centuries of the forest in terms of.
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Katie Sieving: The forest I like to call them Community informants where it, you know the reason that they give these calls.
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Katie Sieving: The reason there's some chatty To begin with, is that that most species of chicken ease and tip mice are social all year round, they have their families with them.
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Katie Sieving: But they're always have their mates there they mate for life, or you know until one of them dies and oftentimes they'll have kids from a previous nesting with them so.
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Katie Sieving: They they talk and they speak honestly about what they're observing because their kin are with them, we call that kin selection, basically, the idea that.
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Katie Sieving: You know, we don't want to give our family wrong information like we might feed a stranger ally, just to get them off our tails something like that, but you don't do that to family So if you have family with you all the time.
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Katie Sieving: Everything that you you're going to say about predators or food or you know risks and rewards in the environment you're going to be fairly truthful about it.
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Katie Sieving: Now, Tim is they're not always truthful, but we can talk about that later, but um but the point is, then, that what they talk about in the amount that they talk.
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Katie Sieving: it's just tremendous they never shut up they're always talking they're always telling each other hey i'm over here come on over here the food's really good here.
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Katie Sieving: The predators are really bad over there let's not go there, so all the other birds that live with them, who have their almost mute compared to the vocal complexity of the chickens and tip mice.
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Katie Sieving: They listen to them because there's so much great information that they can use as well about foods about risks about rich habitats bad habitats good habitats and so forth.
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Katie Sieving: And there's been a lot of different kinds of studies that show that just the presence of tip Nice and cheeky bees can enhance the quality of life for other birds, for example, there was a really cool study in Ohio.
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Katie Sieving: That a scientist Tom grub did years ago where he removed tip mice from these little woodland patches in Ohio in the winter, you know Ohio in the winter is cold snow everywhere.
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Katie Sieving: And there's a few species that flock up together to withstand the winter together so you've got.
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Katie Sieving: Not hatches and chicken ease and tip mice and downing woodpecker they all flock up and they spend the winter together, but if you remove the tip mice the the other birds in the flock they actually.
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Katie Sieving: got skinnier over the course of the winter than birds who still had their tip mice with them all, that really useful information.
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Katie Sieving: available from the tip mice is it saves everybody time looking for predators, if someone else is doing it and telling them where everything is.
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Katie Sieving: All they need to do is for it, and so, if you don't have that information, then you waste a lot of energy looking for predators or avoiding unsafe spaces.
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Katie Sieving: Where you if you have the tip most with you, you can actually go into those unsafe spaces when it's safe to do that it's sort of like.
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Katie Sieving: You know, finding a good meal and you don't have your smartphone with you, you know, not knowing which restaurants are good, you have to try a bunch of them before you find a good one.
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Katie Sieving: All you gotta do is yell, but if you want to get to a good restaurant right away so lots more information is always better when that information is really useful and true.
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Katie Sieving: So um so evolution is not stupid it it causes these birds to learn the language and to behave accordingly and their lives are better for it so.
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Katie Sieving: This idea that the tip I said chicken ease because of their vocal complexity are really hugely positive force in bird communities, I really think that's true.
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Lee Burton: it's really interesting I mean humans are the same way right if you can leverage somebody else learnings knowledge or just division of Labor it just makes a vast difference, I mean.
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Lee Burton: You know, we we function on that premise today hunter gatherer society certainly function that way because you can't and it's been proven.
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Lee Burton: You know, individuals trying to survive on their own as humans anyway, you know it's you can only do it for so long, right and so yeah that is that's amazing, though, that you know birds have figured all of this out, you know aeons ago right.
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Lee Burton: And what a couple of things that I like to use this analogy, the beginning of my bird language courses.
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Lee Burton: You know when when people you know start to learn this that this is going on it's kind of like if you grew up with a foreign family in your House, you know, like you, you.
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Lee Burton: You know pee wee's have exchange students but almost like you had an entire family and.
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Lee Burton: You know, they were living with you, but you never learn their language right, and then you you go off to college right you study this language and you come back and the family's still there, the holidays and then you find out.
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Lee Burton: All this time they were telling you all these things like you know hey the mailman came by drop the package off at the door your your brother stole your allowance, you know somebody tried to break in the window it's like you had no idea right but it's very important information.
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Katie Sieving: Like God, yes, I know the tip mouse language my brother wouldn't be able to catch me as men.
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Katie Sieving: Right exactly yeah.
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Lee Burton: You know, and so it will jump into the practical aspect of it or the field aspect of it in a minute, but.
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Lee Burton: Something else you, you talked about to, and I know you've heard this story, and I know you know i'm Klaus uber bueller you know, in his work and I believe he's an anthropologist if I remember correctly, but.
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Lee Burton: His work with primates.
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Lee Burton: yeah with primates and Africa and his he's got the most amazing story I haven't in the course and it really goes to show that bird language is just a a subset of greater animal language, and he has a story about a leopard.
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Lee Burton: That he's involved with, and you know he figures out through his research and then has a personal interaction that.
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Lee Burton: You know, all these animals are ease dropping on everybody and again that's something I stayed from the beginning, everything is listening to everyone, all the time.
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Lee Burton: And birds are just as john young says the easiest way, probably for humans to tune into because our hearing is almost perfectly aligned with the.
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Lee Burton: sounds that they make their calls, and of course they're very visible so yeah it's just amazing that you know of course native cultures know so much of this.
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Lee Burton: You know and have for thousands of years, but it's so great to see that the science, you know, is now putting you know the the the theories, if you will, to this as to why this works in the specifics it's just fascinating.
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Katie Sieving: yeah so it's it's all about the good information on pretty sure and there's A recent study some I have some colleagues in northern Europe, who study these guys they call them they call them ecological facilitators.
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Katie Sieving: And they also call them attractant right if the parents that they live with, because they know so much about the habitat they're locals their residence they don't migrate anywhere they stay there all the time they know everything, and then they have this rich language migrant birds.
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Katie Sieving: When they when they come from, say southern Africa, all the way up to you know the Netherlands to breed they will.
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Katie Sieving: they'll actually settle in higher numbers more species and higher densities, where the parents are the debt or the most dense.
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Katie Sieving: So they actually they're like because of their many benefits that they provide through their rich information source they.
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Katie Sieving: They actually attract other species to nest with them and they did a major comparison of.
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Katie Sieving: habitats across Europe with them without high densities of parents and found much higher species diversity, where you have higher densities and more species richness of the chickens and tip Nice and tips.
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Katie Sieving: And i'm sure that that's true here as well, here in Florida in the winter time.
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Katie Sieving: We have the richest most diverse winter forging flocks of anywhere in North America, because hey it's 70 degrees here during the winter.
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Katie Sieving: A lot of times and a lot of birds that come from the far north they stop here and they'll settle in, and then they just group up with tip mice and hang out, so we have various and sparrows and.
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Katie Sieving: You know cardinals and toe ease and all kinds of things that will flock with tip my sometimes or all the time.
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Katie Sieving: During the wintertime whereas if you go to Ohio you have flocks but there's only two or three species that can stand the winners there so but where there are tip is you'll get more birds basically and.
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Katie Sieving: So.
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Lee Burton: yeah that's you know I this isn't directly related, but when I was in Europe.
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Lee Burton: I would go and I know you're not really supposed to do this, but I would play some chicken he calls from my iPhone this is in Italy, I believe, and one of the national parks there.
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Lee Burton: And I mean just instantly the parents that chicken he's over there were on it, you know I mean they knew exactly what it was i'm sure the call is slightly different the syllables whatever, but it really is.
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Lee Burton: A global or I guess the technical term in the whole Arctic right, you know you're always going to get that response.
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Katie Sieving: yeah that that's actually a feature of that family that the parents, again, there was a researcher called jack Kalman who noticed years and years ago he published a paper in 1989.
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Katie Sieving: It basically said that chicken he call this the basic structure of it there's a chick section and a deception right so chicken at that gives a call they'll go.
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Katie Sieving: To get ED ED so you know they all have that same structure, they have a an initial section a lead section and a following section, the following section always as the notes in it.
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Katie Sieving: And of course you're going to identify the different species just by the way that they produce those calls are voices are different, the cadence is different.
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Katie Sieving: But the cost structure is really very much the same across the whole family, which means there's something like 53 species across North America.
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Katie Sieving: parts of Africa and and your Asia, and you have these species all have the same the same highly conserved language and so.
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Katie Sieving: If what you say is true and I know it is, if you play chicken he call of a certain kind.
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Katie Sieving: You know, maybe identifying a small predator here in North America or in Europe, all the birds that hear it, no matter where you are are going to understand.
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Katie Sieving: The intensity of risk that's encoded in that call, which means, if you like, here in Florida we've got maybe 40 or 50 species that know the language of the tip mice let's say 40 and then, if you multiply that times 53 species of chicken ease and tip mice across the whole Arctic.
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Katie Sieving: So 50 bird species times 53 parents species that's a whole lot of birds that understand that language and change their behavior when they hear different calls from chickens.
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Katie Sieving: So it's it's it's a phenomenon that's not its unique you know primates aren't going to be right back, I have a system quite as complex and widespread is that.
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Katie Sieving: It you know it's really you need to these guys so that's why i'm so fascinated with the chicken ease and tip is because they're just so so extreme in that nature.
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Lee Burton: yeah you touched on something earlier.
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Lee Burton: And you know kind of some of your.
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Lee Burton: latest research or or how this can be used beneficially from an environmental standpoint can you talk about you know, using this kind of analysis or acoustical analysis to understand kind of disturbed areas or impacts of.
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Lee Burton: Changes either roads or other noise, because I know you have some data on that right.
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Katie Sieving: yeah so just as an example, I published on this but, but the plan is to try to get this together soon and that is to look across the calls that these guys make.
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Katie Sieving: and show how they're associated with different conditions so in the lab you know you have recordings of tip tip I said chicken ease and you can let's say you want to you want to ask a question of do they speak differently when they're in a forest with.
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Katie Sieving: Where the trees are thinner maybe there's been loggers and they've they've sent out the trees and the trees are further apart in one habitat than they are in another.
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Katie Sieving: Is there a way for us to listen to the chickens and sit mice and know that about the environment without actually going there.
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Katie Sieving: And, and that the truth is, you can for one they every time a chicken here tip mice flies they make a little flight call.
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Katie Sieving: And so just recording the frequency of flight calls you're going to hear a lot more in the habitat, where they have to bounce between trees more often in order to get the food they want.
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Katie Sieving: In a really densely packed up for us here in Florida, they can stay in the same tree for a couple of hours foraging on all the insects and the bark of a really old oak tree.
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Katie Sieving: But if they in a pine forest with a lot of skinny trees that are far apart, they have to fly quite often to get enough food.
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Katie Sieving: So you can you'll you'll see a real difference in the frequency of food calls given so that's one one mark of that situation.
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Katie Sieving: The other situation is when they're flying through open areas, you know wide open forest woodland.
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Katie Sieving: they're more at risk, so they they're they're more on edge and they give more alarm calls when they're in that situation to just to be sure.
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Katie Sieving: That the family's watching for all the predators that could get them when they fly across these open areas because little birds are in trouble, there are more at risk of attack when they're in an open area so.
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Katie Sieving: These are the kinds of cues that we can summarize in the lab you can we use these computer programs that can that can take a vast amount of of audio.
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Katie Sieving: And search it for specific call types and then let us know how many of each type of call there are in a given set of recordings.
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Katie Sieving: So that way we can summarize the numbers and then run some statistics on them.
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Katie Sieving: To show that, statistically you get significantly more flight calls and alarm calls in a wide open forest where the where there's been some logging.
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Katie Sieving: than you do in a forest, that is no it's less disturbed and so forth, so So those are the kind of cues that we can start pulling from big data you've all heard of big data, and there are also.
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Katie Sieving: A lot of people working on artificial intelligence or basically machine learning.
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Katie Sieving: algorithms that can it's basically smart computers it's a you tell it okay go in and get all these call types.
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Katie Sieving: From all these many, many, many hours and days and weeks of recordings and tell us how many there are you can have the computer just go chase those down.
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Katie Sieving: And that technology is getting better and better and better, so it saves my undergrads from listening to recordings, you know for 100 hours a week try all this data.
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Lee Burton: They can just be out in the field playing zeke all the time and watching animals yeah.
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Katie Sieving: A lot more fun, I was gonna say this.
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Lee Burton: This is the best Grad program, we need to give your information out here, at the end you probably have a couple hundred signups already.
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Lee Burton: yeah that's very interesting how that works and I, you know my brain going and being an engineer, like all the potential applications of that you know you mentioned Ai and.
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Lee Burton: Having I don't know, one of the goals is having kind of a baseline for each type of environment, but you know.
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Lee Burton: You go and if you have that information and you, you know go and you record something out there, like you said after there's been some logging or whatever and compare and you know you can get some.
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Lee Burton: You know, probably pretty startling results on the impacts of this and again.
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Lee Burton: To me, the fascinating thing is not just what it does to the parents and potentially even the other birds, but a whole ecosystem can be you know impacted by this and you could maybe measure that just.
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Lee Burton: Really, because of the presence and calls of you know one family of birds that's that's astounding.
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Katie Sieving: yeah I mean, to be honest, the next thing i'd like to get a student to do is i'm a few years ago, I had a student who did this.
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Katie Sieving: She took these boombox is this was before we had a lot of digital audio but she took a you know CD boom boxes and made these long recordings of different predator calls so she had calls of jays.
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Katie Sieving: And owls and hawks and and then we had control playback with nothing going, and she played these at a pretty big scale we set up these plots and we had treatment of control plots.
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Katie Sieving: And then we put bluebird boxes out in the plots and so we usually had two or three pairs of bluebirds nesting in each plot.
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Katie Sieving: And then we subjected the whole thing to these different calls so some places we're hearing a whole lot of profiles and other places we're hearing a lot of calls.
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Katie Sieving: or our calls and then we compare the reproductive success of the bluebirds in the different treatments and we found that birds in the control treatments.
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Katie Sieving: have more kids than birds in any of the predator treatments and reasoning, we think is just that.
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Katie Sieving: Is that the predators calling all the time, makes the parents nervous that influences the females incubation behavior she doesnt sit on the eggs.
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Katie Sieving: As calmly and solidly as she needs to because she's always poked her head out the door looking for predators, and so hatching success was significantly lower.
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Katie Sieving: In the predator controlled areas, and I mean not to be mean to bluebirds or anything but what I really love to show is that tip miles calls about those predators.
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Katie Sieving: would do the same thing to the bluebirds that the bluebirds hearing a predator call they might as well just hear a tip mouse yelling about a predator.
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Katie Sieving: And they're going to do the same thing they're going to behave as if that predation threat is real and I we're going to try to do that in the next couple of years.
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Katie Sieving: Just to show that the timeouts language is as motivating as the actual stimuli that they talk about which is super cool and um.
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Lee Burton: Well, it would the one difference potentially be that if if you had a lot of parents in the area that that might cause mobbing behavior, which would then lead to maybe fewer predators because they'd be outed and so.
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Katie Sieving: yeah that's a really good point we don't want to attract a whole bunch of predator, a whole bunch of animals to the plots.
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Katie Sieving: So what you do is you play those alarm calls with big spaces of time in between them.
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Katie Sieving: And that you know, usually if you want to get a mob together you you pitch consistently a constantly for like five minutes.
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Katie Sieving: So we'll do you know if you take any calls here and there, so that it doesn't really generate those numbers, but you know it does influence the birds and and it couldn't be that, in the previous study all those crow calls and whatnot might have brought more crows I mean we don't know.
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Katie Sieving: We can measure those things as we go but but anyway that's the science of it.
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Katie Sieving: And, and I find that talking about the science sometimes people's eyes roll back in their heads.
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Katie Sieving: But it's been a really fantastic discipline for me to work in as a scientist and revealing a lot of truths about nature, but I also really enjoyed learning the bird language approaches that you guys use in the field with the tracker students that was amazing to me.
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Lee Burton: Well let's jump into that just for we do I had one question on your other this is really fun I, I think, from a science perspective if you're at all interested in ecology, you know this type of stuff is not boring it's not roll your eyes in the back your head, you know it's amazing.
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Lee Burton: You were telling me something about Well, first of all, you call parents, if I know you mean this in a loving way because you have a kind of a bond with them, but mobsters right.
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Lee Burton: And right, and you know, and they can really gang up on predators and, but they also have this phenomenon called acoustical chris's is that right.
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Katie Sieving: Oh yeah yeah.
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Katie Sieving: yeah so I had a student come through recently who wasn't interested, we wanted to find out about the language of aggression in the tip my son jake at ease.
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Katie Sieving: So, not the language of you know aggression towards predators, but towards each other, you know they.
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Katie Sieving: they're really they're intense scrappers when it comes to protecting their own territories from their own kind.
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Katie Sieving: charities and tip my school fight their own species, but we have Carolina Chiquita us and we have tough to tip is here.
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Katie Sieving: And both of those species will attack the other species to there there's some closely aligned and their use of resources that they see each other as predator as competitors to.
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Katie Sieving: So, so he set up these playback trials were during the breeding season now usually we work in the winter, when we work with the predator stuff.
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Katie Sieving: But in the breeding season, you can play a chicken a chicken here 10 miles call a song.
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Katie Sieving: And they'll come bombing in to kick out the intruder from their territory, because when they hear when they hear another bird they assume there's an intruder there.
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Katie Sieving: So he used that to get them to tell us what they say when they're a little bit mad or a little bit aggressive versus when they're really aggressive and.
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Katie Sieving: You know you and i've been talking about how these guys influence the behaviors of all these other species in the woods right.
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Katie Sieving: Well, a persistent alternative question that we have in our lab is do tip mice and chicken he's ever care what the other species of birds.
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Katie Sieving: do for them do they ever listen to the other birds do they ever respond to the presence of say cardinals and videos and those guys.
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Katie Sieving: or do they just go about their own business and a about all these other birds talent them and listening to them.
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Katie Sieving: But they don't give a whit about what these other birds are doing or what they think about tiffany rice, so we also had that question with this study.
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Katie Sieving: So the idea of being when when we started doing the study we we play back at 10 miles content mice would come in and start acting all aggressive and tough.
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Katie Sieving: We also noticed that a bunch of other species would hang around and watch the fight.
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Katie Sieving: So chicken ease or sorry not taking these but cardinals and woodpeckers and jays would all just come in and hang around not they wouldn't talk a lot, they would just be sitting there watching the fight.
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Katie Sieving: And so that became one of our questions with the study was not only what do they say when they're really bad, but do these other species presence of fact, how they fight and what we found was astounding really.
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Lee Burton: A fight club, the flight club effect.
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Katie Sieving: effect right, so you guys remember the 1989 movie with brad Pitt where basically the idea was that these guys were wanting to just.
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Katie Sieving: You know, get off steam, and they wanted to fight each other and make each other bloody and they didn't want to get interrupted by COPs.
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Katie Sieving: or people who thought that was a stupid thing to do, they just wanted to have a fight club and get on with it, so they did.
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Katie Sieving: go in these sellers in New York City and hide themselves, and it would be like you don't talk about fight club, because we don't want anybody breaking up the fights if you want to be in fight club you gotta shut up nobody talks about fight club right.
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Katie Sieving: So you just come you fight you get bloody you feel better you go home and so the whole point that was to be quiet about it, to avoid trouble right so.
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Katie Sieving: So that's what we found out the tip mice actually do so when there's a big audience around them, the tip Nice would come in and they would fight hard they'd fight long and they'd fight loudly when they were.
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Katie Sieving: cardinals and woodpeckers and other little birds and stuff watching the fight the more species that were present at the fight.
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Katie Sieving: The harder and the louder they would fight and when they're finding loudly they have these calls that they call it like TIM myself a call they call the squeal and it's just this really loud.
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Katie Sieving: easy to easy to listen to comment it's easy to hear it's really, really loud plus they use the chicken he calls in their songs.
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Katie Sieving: And if it was a chicken the chicken is actually have this call, they call it gargle and it's this.
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Katie Sieving: crazy loud complicated call that you also is unmistakable when they get really mad they use that call.
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Katie Sieving: And so what we noticed, though, is when there was no audience at tip mice fights they would not use the squeal they would switch to another call type that we call the flutter call.
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Katie Sieving: And it's very high pitched again it's around 10 or 11 killers, which is actually outside the hearing range of most hawks and owls.
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Katie Sieving: they're hearing usually only goes up to about six or seven kilo hertz of colleague of mine and at university of purdue they.
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Katie Sieving: purdue university they study that found that they really can't detect calls that are higher frequency than six or 7000 7000 earth's.
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Katie Sieving: So what those calls are is you know they get close and they start giving the flutter call and the birds would.
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Katie Sieving: Fight really vigorously physically, but they would do it quietly right, so I mean we were doing playbacks but the birds would get close to the speaker and they give those flutter calls instead of.
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Katie Sieving: School calls.
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Lee Burton: And the see call is very high frequency as well right.
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Katie Sieving: yeah it's a different yeah.
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Lee Burton: All it's very yeah very different but same idea, the raptors wouldn't won't pick it up gotcha.
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Katie Sieving: Right, so if you're trying to hide from a predator, that you actually do see then you give the high see call.
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Katie Sieving: If you're trying to hide from a predator, you might not know whether it's there or not and you're fighting, then you have this other call it's like an aggressive fight call but it's super quiet it's like a whisper could barely hear it and.
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Katie Sieving: And so, basically, they they have the same rules of fight club that people do is that if you don't want to get interrupted you want to really get in there and fight the guy.
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Katie Sieving: You do it quietly so you give the flutter call instead of the squeal call so.
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Katie Sieving: That that idea that idea of acoustic crips is where you're you're communicating but you're doing it quietly.
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Katie Sieving: It does arise in the animal world it's only been documented a few times but it probably occurs a lot.
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Katie Sieving: there's a I think it's right whales when when right well Mamas are with their little babies, they have a call that they.
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Katie Sieving: Frequently use but they'll give it much louder when there's no babies around, but if the baby's around these sort of whisper to the babies with this call, they.
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Katie Sieving: They decrease the amplitude not the frequency, but they change how loud, it is so they basically whisper when the babies around so as not to attract predators.
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Lee Burton: And and there's a devious aspect to this as well right in terms of when they're using the.
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Lee Burton: The more audible version, for lack of a better technical term when everyone's around watching.
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Lee Burton: yeah but can you tell us about that the theory about yeah because.
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Lee Burton: Because obviously predators can hear that right, and draws attention.
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Katie Sieving: yeah the explanation for why they they fight really loudly when everybody else is there it's just that.
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Katie Sieving: To my site that big there about 30 grams and and any Cardinal or J or woodpeckers a lot bigger than they are.
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Katie Sieving: And if if a Hawk is attracted to the fight because of all the noise and they frequently are i've noticed a lot of times when we do playbacks of any kind, if the stimulus is loud.
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Katie Sieving: you'll get predators flying by checking it out just to see what's going on and so fight is no different they definitely are attracted to fights.
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Katie Sieving: And so the idea is, though, that, by fighting loudly when there's all these other birds around well the predator, is going to take the biggest meal, they can get right.
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Katie Sieving: Who wouldn't want to supersize when they go to mcdonald's so you take the biggest big MAC that's available and that's going to be a woodpecker Cardinal.
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Katie Sieving: Not the fighting tip mouse so it's it doesn't care at that point it's like yeah sure let's bring the predators and.
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Katie Sieving: i'm safe, and I can get my job done here against this other tip mouse you guys want to watch that's fine, but you know just so you know i'm calling in predators might come in.
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Lee Burton: Lessons competitions dastardly well.
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Katie Sieving: yeah so then when when they're all about themselves, though they whisper because they would be the only snap at the fight if the predator did come in so.
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Lee Burton: amazing amazing well let's uh yeah let's switch gears a little bit and you alluded to it a little while ago.
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Lee Burton: Talk about your experience of bird language in the field on the ground so obviously you've been doing all this, you know fantastic work in the lab and your Grad students and you know, making these discoveries but.
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Lee Burton: After years of doing that you had an experience with with john young and a bird language sit and can you just talking about that experience and.
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Lee Burton: What it meant to you both personally but also professionally you know and how it changed your view of your work, and you know even today how it affects you.
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Katie Sieving: yeah sure, so I remember you contacted me started the whole thing for me after this New York Times article came out on one of my colleagues.
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Katie Sieving: he's in Colorado that they're interviewing him and he mentioned my name and you just went out and found me and called me and asked me about work, I was doing, and then you told me about john young and.
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Katie Sieving: And the book that he wrote you know what the Robin nose and I after I talked to you I I looked into it, I looked up your websites and this whole idea of bird language as a.
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Katie Sieving: As a highly developed skill that trackers use in order to find wildlife or avoid trouble and when humans are out in the in the bush.
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Katie Sieving: And so I read the book and and then I kept talking with you and you said there was going to be some sort of a workshop in San Francisco place, I always like to visit.
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Katie Sieving: So I flew out there and stayed with one of my Grad students who lives in San Francisco and she came to the workshop to she had finished her PhD a few years before and we both came and.
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Katie Sieving: So, for her it was completely outside of her research area, and she studied bees when she was in my lab not birds at all, she said she didn't like birds, but she went to it with me anyway, and so we went through this workshop where what what john taught us was a well a bunch of things.
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Katie Sieving: One is that you know I spent a lot of time in the lab or in an aviary watching what the birds do under conditions that we create.
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Katie Sieving: But what he taught me was the value of just spending a whole lot of time out in nature, watching what birds are doing in response to things that happen in nature and given my research focus it became really obvious to me fast.
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Katie Sieving: How varied the little birds behavior could become.
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Katie Sieving: In response to all these other birds that are around them everything like you said everything listens to everything.
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Katie Sieving: In it, it had to have to because of predation because of access to resources, you have to be efficient and fast that living when you're a little bird or you're gonna you're just going to not going to live so.
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Katie Sieving: So what I learned the second thing was so so first is lots of time observing and you start to put together the whole story of why an animal.
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Katie Sieving: does what it does and response to other species, the way they respond The other thing I learned was if you put a whole bunch of people.
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Katie Sieving: who may not know very much but they've got eyes and ears you put them in a grid patterns sit them down and get them into an organized observation.
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Katie Sieving: of nature and let's say they're all set out in this or this geographical area that spans a whole lot more space than any one person can watch that's what we call the bird sit right everybody's sitting there and then.
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Katie Sieving: every once in a while we all write down our observations of what's happening all at the same time we coordinate our observations and then we come together we tell the story of what happened in that landscape.
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Katie Sieving: After we're done, I was, I was blown away at all this stuff I didn't see by myself.
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Katie Sieving: And behaviors that I saw that I couldn't interpret correctly until I got other people's observations about what was happening say behind me are way over the other side of the hill.
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Katie Sieving: So one thing i'll just share it from that that I learned that I just felt so stupid when i'm at first, but then I learned the magic of this of this approach was that.
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Katie Sieving: I sat down and I, for my my part I got this little place I couldn't see anybody else no it's kind of surrounded by shrubbery and there was a hill behind me i'm like jeez I can't see anything here, this is going.
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Lee Burton: to fit.
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Lee Burton: Or, I think I think we're in presidio Park, if I remember correctly and and and for those listening yeah This is called a groups it yeah.
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Lee Burton: yeah yeah.
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Katie Sieving: So I couldn't see anything i'm like well there's gonna be a boring 15 minutes, so I sit down, and I do see some little birds some sparrows and.
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Katie Sieving: I don't know something else flying around in these in these shrubs and they were feeding in the shrubs some of them were watching looking around, but there was a flock of birds and.
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Katie Sieving: And all of a sudden, I was looking somewhere else, and all of a sudden, I look in front of me, and all those little birds were right in front of me.
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Katie Sieving: On the ground, they had left the shrubs and gone to ground really close to me and I thought wow this is cool I must just be projecting such a quiet demeanor these guys are just they either don't notice me or they like me i'm one of the you know part of the crowd whatever.
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Lee Burton: Your Zen doubt yeah I send out and.
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Katie Sieving: I just disappeared in the landscape polyps and i'm so good at that right, so I thought well that's pretty cool and then about three or four minutes later, they all flew back up into the bushes and and left me and.
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Katie Sieving: And I remember that that one behavior and I had it written down in my notes and the timing of all that everything so then we're we all got together and we're going through.
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Katie Sieving: Each five minute period and john was really skillful at asking everyone in the group to add their observations during those each of those five minute periods that we did the observation and I started to see this whole dramatic play playing out over across that entire landscape and.
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Katie Sieving: And I finally figured out at the end of it, why.
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Katie Sieving: The Birds did what they did near me those little sparrows flew in and sat next to me.
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Katie Sieving: Because some woodpecker had flown where I couldn't see it behind me being pursued by.
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Katie Sieving: A Coopers Hawk so it was just behind me, and of course the birds are quiet they're just flying.
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Katie Sieving: But one of the observers that was on the other side of that whole interchange wrote it all down, this is the most exciting thing that he or she had seen, and you know this, they both disappeared in the in the shrubbery over there.
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Katie Sieving: But that was exactly the same time.
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Katie Sieving: As when all those little birds appeared right next to my knees on the ground, I was sitting there cross legged and they were just surrounding my knees so close like it almost touch them.
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Katie Sieving: And when I brought that up I said wow that's cool that's coincidence that happened right at the same time, all these birds came close to me and john just like.
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Katie Sieving: Obviously it's because they were using you as a foil right you're this big okay slow ape and you're sitting down so you're not that dangerous but no Hawk is going to fly down in front of you, where you can grab them.
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Katie Sieving: Those little birds are completely safe next to you because you're also a predator, but not one that's going to hurt them so.
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Katie Sieving: i'm so oh my God.
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Lee Burton: We call that safety barrier.
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Katie Sieving: barrier that was me I was providing them a safety barrier, I thought they were like worshiping me or something, but no, they were using me the little guys.
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Katie Sieving: As a safety barrier away from this big Hawk so they were hoping the Hawk would hit me and and instead of them so Oh well, but I was fascinated by that.
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Katie Sieving: In that that sort of groups it, you can put together a story that is so obviously.
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Katie Sieving: makes sense right about what's happening, whereas when you're by yourself, you see a lot of things sometimes you can't quite explain, because you can't see all the causes.
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Katie Sieving: All the things are happening in the landscape to causes behaviors and so i've used those same techniques, of course, it was great we actually taught a class together once the with some of my students and they still talk about that that class is opening their eyes to.
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Katie Sieving: To to learning how to interpret what's happening around you in nature and just the complexity and the diversity of things that are going on out there and how you can actually.
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Katie Sieving: become so that you're a member of that landscape and you can understand what's happening so I I you know use that in my class, I mean it used to be.
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Katie Sieving: You give them slideshows and you take them out you do bird ID and stuff like that now I make them just go out there and sit.
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Katie Sieving: and put the stories together and they're just on fire, when they come back my students about all the things they saw and how much sense it makes and then, then the science, the scientific stuff.
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Katie Sieving: can be integrated into that framework, a lot more easily once there once they can see in a sort of simple you know animal way what's really going on out there.
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Lee Burton: Well, I think you just explain that very eloquently about how these two.
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Lee Burton: different worlds, if you want to call it really mesh they go together, you know we're in a high tech society right and.
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Lee Burton: You talked earlier about some of the benefits of the science of this but, having this on the ground, you know really enables you to have a contextually a much.
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Lee Burton: better understanding of all this and and actually I found from teaching this i've incorporated this in my class we have another module and the group's it.
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Lee Burton: That you gave such a great example earlier and and you know this is before we were thinking in terms of or before he was thinking in terms of bird language but.
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Lee Burton: I think this can spawn so many other potential research opportunities, you know things to investigate just based on what you know potentially someone observes a student a Grad student.
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Lee Burton: Every time I do one of these conduct when these groups it's and they take a while it's not so much the sit part which is typically about 45 minutes but.
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Lee Burton: it's the debrief after because there's so much that goes on, and you know every one of them's different but.
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Lee Burton: almost without exception, I recently I did want as last year, but I had this really good burger.
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Lee Burton: From the UK and it and you know new a lot right and we are spaced out and i've gone over a few signature movements of what we call shapes of alarm but hadn't really explaining what they were to say hey be on the lookout and.
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Lee Burton: A couple of people in the city, a couple of students saw this one particular signature.
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Lee Burton: And you know they didn't know what it was, and he kind of told me in between, I said don't say anything yet and another group of people saw.
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Lee Burton: Actually, something else, the cause of it and we came together and discuss and it was actually a fox who had been moving through and I had seen the we call the hook or the popcorn.
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Lee Burton: popcorn yeah and this this gentleman from the UK had seen actually saw the fox and he was just blown away by the whole deal right he's like I never imagined, you know that you could interpret that, and you know there's these old stories.
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Lee Burton: You know, maybe, like the cheer cow patties or Toronto that actually hey who's bird language eileen you know, like cavalry was coming after them.
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Lee Burton: But maybe even there's some stories that they were so good that they can mimic based on behavior birds and in doing so, restore the other birds to come back you know again because.
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Lee Burton: You know even some of the Europeans knew some of this they're like oh that's all baseline you know that's it can't be over there right there's no disturbance over there, so.
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Lee Burton: it's just fascinating yeah.
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Katie Sieving: I love the the way that you guys break it up into sort of baseline an alarm, you know I.
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Katie Sieving: would always try to convey all the different kinds of vocalizations but the.
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Katie Sieving: idea being that you can classify them really simply as.
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Katie Sieving: hey all the birds are just calm and doing their thing and not worried about anything that's baseline behaviors you know they're they're singing and fighting and foraging and doing all the business of life, whereas.
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Katie Sieving: When they're alarmed they go quiet or they're giving some sort of alarm calls and.
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Katie Sieving: birds, no matter what species if they're in an alarm state they sound an act really similarly so it gives students an easy access to all the species at once.
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Katie Sieving: Where they don't even know the species, but they know their behaviors now in a really simple, straightforward way that helps them feel more confident about going forward with their learning about the system, so I really like that as well.
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Lee Burton: yeah I also want to add to is to not to diminish individual sits there still just yesterday I was out on deck visiting my parents place and.
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Lee Burton: I had a cooper's Hawk fly over me literally six or seven feet right over my head and he was doing kind of you know fighter plane, if you seen the new top gun right he was doing this like low approach sneaking in or she was.
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Lee Burton: And and made it, I mean it came in I analysis, the other birds were still singing.
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Lee Burton: And then they realized, you know, a minute or two later that you know, he was in the air and It all went quiet, except for this one lesser goldfinch right really small bird.
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Lee Burton: Probably figure i'm not in danger, although even eventually he or she kind of went quiet on that, but yeah it's just incredible what you can see, when you tune into this and again.
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Lee Burton: have this in a time bad advanced shapes of alarm his idea of cascading alarms and how all the other animals respond to it, like you said, the squirrels the deer and you know Klaus uber bueller talks about that as well, and his story, can you.
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Lee Burton: Just also talk about you touched on a little bit, but why is this important in the field part you know bird language or even a discipline like tracking.
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Lee Burton: Why do you think that's helpful to students, you know who who their job requirements for them to spend most of their time in the lab now right, you know, the vast majority of these disciplines.
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Lee Burton: But why do you think it's valuable for them, and even by extension just you know the public in general.
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Katie Sieving: Well, you know I i'm still old school i've spent a lot of time in the field in my life and and just learning the bird language approaches that you guys use it helped me learn more about the landscape more efficiently and faster than I thought I I could learn, so they know that.
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Katie Sieving: Enhanced my humility thinking about all the stuff that I could have known about maybe more easily, had I had I started, where you guys.
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Katie Sieving: teacher things so I like to start my students there just so that they can feel really confident about interpreting what they see.
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Katie Sieving: And going out there and always be open to seeing something new and knowing that it, it probably has a cause and effect that they could unravel with science or or just with more observation.
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Katie Sieving: I think one of the things that becomes really clear, especially if they go through the whole sit and debrief process is that even people who know nothing.
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Katie Sieving: can make keen observations about nature it's in our DNA it doesn't matter if you've been in an Office, your entire life.
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Katie Sieving: Your DNA allows you to sit there and put together two and two and figure out what's going on at a natural landscape and I think for scientists and training.
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Katie Sieving: Who are learning in the lab they're learning all these high powered quantitative techniques and.
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Katie Sieving: they're pretty full of themselves, then they go out in the field to do research in places where people already live like farmers or native peoples or.
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Katie Sieving: You know just anybody who lives in a place is going to be able to make observations and convey knowledge to a scientist who's new to that area.
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Katie Sieving: And as long as a scientist, I think it gives us humility.
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Katie Sieving: that anyone can make these observations that can be really valuable and lead us to greater understanding.
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Katie Sieving: And and i'm impressed that on my students is like, no matter how much scientific knowledge, you have no much time, you have the lab.
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Katie Sieving: You really have a lot to learn from local people, wherever you are in cities farms wherever you are and don't discount what they know I learned that lesson a long time ago.
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Katie Sieving: From a farmer in Chile southern Chile, who was he befriended us and helped us do our research on birds there and I remember.
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Katie Sieving: going to him and saying I was so excited about seeing this little wild cat that.
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Katie Sieving: really was unknown to science, nobody had published any papers about this little on the field as we knew they had this cool little ferocious.
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Katie Sieving: arboreal cat and I was like wow first time sciences ever recommend you know documented this and he just sat down and read me the riot act he goes, you want to know about those little you know, he said something which is not repeatable about those little guys.
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Katie Sieving: Let me tell you all about that cat it eats all my chickens it comes at night it hides in the hay barn up top.
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Katie Sieving: It has all these behaviors I know exactly where they live, I know how they raise their babies, I know how many babies, they have you want to know something about that cat used asked me.
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Katie Sieving: And, of course, he doesn't like the cat at all, but he just said, you white people you come down here, and you tell us.
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Katie Sieving: What we know what we don't know and well why don't you just asked me, sometimes, so I never made that mistake again because he was one of our best friends in the area and I, I felt so so much humility.
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Katie Sieving: That now I I recognize opportunities to teach that to my students and your work really does help us.
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Katie Sieving: Give them self confidence in their own abilities, it also tells them that other people have the same abilities and that these ancient skills.
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Katie Sieving: could easily have been honed to a really high level by people that have you know come and gone long ago, and that that that knowledge is passed down from ancient times and that that we all have that capability, I think that's that's a magnificent lesson right there.
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Lee Burton: yeah that's something that you know i've heard it said a number of times they kind of science is now catching up to what.
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Lee Burton: A lot of traditional or indigenous people have known for a long time and, of course, adding a lot to it as well you know more detail and.
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Lee Burton: So, again I think they go really well together, but certainly that's true, I think we, you know we've all been guilty in our modern culture being dismissive sometimes of people.
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Lee Burton: that we think are less learn it or you know and we actually have a lot to learn with them are from them and.
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Lee Burton: yeah john young also has a number of stories and i've seen it as well the people i've been out in the field with who you know very.
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Lee Burton: You know well educated highly thought of you know you're a die, you know, researchers, but some of the field skills and I think you've talked about this a bore have been lacking, you know and.
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Lee Burton: You know they're they're going out looking for sign a particular animal I know he did this in Washington state, and you know they're having trouble finding you know where.
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Lee Burton: Mountain lions are for a study your bears and he's like well here come over here i'll show you, you know because he you know between bird language and tracking and so you know the field skills, I think, are still relevant.
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Lee Burton: Even though you know we may be, you know less dependent necessarily on some aspects and more in the lab DNA analysis, but you know you still have to know where the animals are and.
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Lee Burton: I think it's very valuable do you mind also just saying a word to you know your own experiences from a personal nature about.
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Lee Burton: You know bird language, and you know just kind of the meditative nature or you know how it's affecting you I know you had told me previously that you know kind of reinvigorated you know your career and why you.
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Lee Burton: Do what you do.
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Katie Sieving: yeah so um I think I do remember this one time, I was having sort of an existential crisis about every time I went into nature.
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Katie Sieving: I felt like, especially if I was with people everyone was always asking me what bird is that what bird is that what I you know what's the ID what's the ID.
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Katie Sieving: And I I felt like I couldn't go into nature, without stressing over being able to identify everything I saw all the time right actually put a name on every species, it was exhausting after a while.
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Katie Sieving: I don't like to go burning in my off time, even though, because I studied birds I you know full time is sort of I was it was in this joyless period about 15 or 20 years ago my in my my field, just because.
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Katie Sieving: I was just sort of tired of the whole scientific of print, you know that real sort of categorization of everything, and so forth, so um I think I actually took a vision quest and took on that question at one point and I pondered it for several days and I, and I.
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Katie Sieving: may have arrived to this partly on my own.
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Katie Sieving: During that time, but once I learned what you guys do I realized.
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Katie Sieving: How meditative it becomes when you really don't worry about ID.
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Katie Sieving: You just you just basically rock the landscape like you know it's an old word from a book where you just sort of taking it all at once, the meaning of something without putting a name on it.
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Katie Sieving: Just understand it, and I felt like your techniques allow a person to go into nature and just open up and take it in, and if you read the works of the guy who wrote last child in the woods.
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Lee Burton: Richard live.
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Katie Sieving: yeah so he he makes this really clear distinction i'll never forget about.
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Katie Sieving: Two types of attention that that humans have one is that goal oriented attention you sit down at the computer and i've got like 50 tasks today, I have to complete and it's like knocking one of them off after another.
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Katie Sieving: You get satisfaction but it's exhausting to do that that's the kind of attention to take such focus and mental focus and mental energy that by the end of the day, you're just like oh i'm done i'm fried but there's another kind of attention, where.
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Katie Sieving: I forget what he calls it it's like.
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Katie Sieving: The attention of joy I forget what he calls it, you remember.
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Lee Burton: And I know what you're talking about I don't know what the wonder it's yeah that's right wonder yeah.
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Lee Burton: Under yeah.
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Katie Sieving: So just opening yourself up.
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Katie Sieving: In the off tension to the world yeah and allowing yourself to be in wonder of the world.
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Katie Sieving: All kinds of information is coming into you and you're learning and you're processing these things but it's not exhausting it actually is invigorating because.
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Katie Sieving: You feel more and more part of your surroundings as as that time goes on in nature, really has a way of of invigorating you if you let it.
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Katie Sieving: In that sense, you know put yourself in that sense of wonder, which to me, is a it's not quite the same as meditation per se, but it is a meditation that.
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Katie Sieving: I teach my students, using a lot of the skills those sense meditations that you guys do I love those and my students just eat them up.
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Katie Sieving: There just on fire after they they you know listen like a fox or a deer or whatever it is, or they they use their eyes, like an eagle just trying to see whatever they can see and then.
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Katie Sieving: You know, once they've done those sense meditations my students are in a much better space and they're not freaked out about you know, being in a class and having to learn everything that comes out them so.
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Katie Sieving: I find that that taking that as it certainly invigorated reinvigorated my approach to being in nature, I don't worry so much about ids because some of my asked me a bird that I actually can't identify and i'll say.
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Katie Sieving: Well, not really sure, but look he's he's he's given alarm call about the predator that's over there on the line that completely takes their attention away from what they wanted to know in the first place and it takes me off the hook so.
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Katie Sieving: You know I found the bird languages, a lot easier because there's so much more going on and there's no one answer to it right so.
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Lee Burton: Well, and I i've had so many experiences again being out with really good birders and you know, and we all do this, you know it's it's our culture right, but so focused on the ID or the song there'll be this big alarm and this whole thing going on and they'll miss the whole thing.
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Lee Burton: yeah right yeah.
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Lee Burton: Right and and I think what you said and that story earlier about, we are in the presidio and you know the safety barrier is that you know you're you, we are part of the story.
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Lee Burton: And there is a there's a big wonder in on it in the class uber bueller story to me, is just the best way of you know, anyone ever representing that.
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Lee Burton: It is just fantastic and that's ultimately you know I think there's a lot of benefits, of course, to studying these right and whether you do it in the lab but particularly.
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Lee Burton: You know when you're out there in the field doing a set what have you.
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Lee Burton: But that's really where the nature connection comes from and that's ultimately why I do this because I think it's something that you know we're all desperately in need of you know, and like you said completely different type of attention and it's relaxing it's invigorating and so.
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Katie Sieving: And i'll just share one last thing that science tells us, as well as just observations in nature, science tells us that individual birds.
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Katie Sieving: Like mockingbirds can recognize very well human faces and and birds that live in an area, there is no doubt that the crows the jays every bird that lives in your backyard knows you as an individual.
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Katie Sieving: That individually those individual birds that live in your yard, day after day, they know you just as well as they know any one of their other neighbors they know your.
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Katie Sieving: They know who you are they know whether you're mean or you throw rocks or you you, they also know your cat your dog that probably know your best friends and they categorize you as safe or unsafe individuals and.
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Katie Sieving: So I mean there's A scientific study that shows that.
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Katie Sieving: This is a cool one that the one of my colleagues did here at university of Florida he had a whole team of undergraduates out searching for nests of mockingbirds on campus so that they could track the reproductive success.
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Katie Sieving: And do some scientific studies of demography or population trends on campus so they needed that data so every student had their own four or five nests that they would check regularly as they go back and forth in classes and one of the students.
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Katie Sieving: I you know, had this observation that when other students came close to their mockingbird nests a mockingbird didn't care.
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Katie Sieving: But if she as soon as she approached and asked to poke into it and and and count the babies and stuff the adults would attacker and basher in the head and do all kinds of nasty stuff to her.
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Katie Sieving: And she was kind of indignant it's like, why do they, why are they so mad at me well it's obvious because you're going to poke in their nest and bother the kids.
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Katie Sieving: So they did this study of just how well the birds recognize their own nest searchers, and so they they made a video about it.
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Katie Sieving: And they took these some this one, one woman who was one of the surgery, she was blonde and she's like 554 something like that, and they dress her up.
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Katie Sieving: In khaki shorts and a khaki shirt and they put a blue backpack on her back.
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Katie Sieving: She had long blond hair, so they found a whole bunch of other students that had long blond hair we're about her size, they gave them khaki clothes and a blue backpack.
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Katie Sieving: And 10 different women and they walked him by one by one past this nest of the mockingbird and the mockingbird completely ignored nine of the 10, but when her Nestor to walk by.
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Katie Sieving: And there were hundreds of other students around walking the class.
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Katie Sieving: The bird came bombing out from a building and just smacked her right in the head picture out of hundreds of students and completely ignored nine other really similar looking women and they have that on video and it's just so obvious to me how intelligent these animals are about.
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Katie Sieving: And they make individual relationships.
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Katie Sieving: Across species, all the time and and individual enmities they have so.
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Katie Sieving: To me, that actually makes me feel much bigger part of my own neighborhood knowing that this mockingbird I got in the morning every day.
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Katie Sieving: And I have a fig tree that comes right full of things in the summertime.
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Katie Sieving: And it's me in the mockingbird as to who gets the right things right, so I go out there at dawn when he's just waking up.
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Katie Sieving: And he's sitting on the wire and I run to the fig tree and he flies into the fig tree and we both are going after the figs at the same time, and that it just helps me to know that that's the same guy every day, and he knows me, and I know him.
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Lee Burton: Well, you better be careful, you may be telling all the other birds calling you a thief.
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Lee Burton: All right, yeah that's true.
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Katie Sieving: I have to get up early get my feelings from now.
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Lee Burton: yeah that's true.
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Lee Burton: yeah I just you know, in terms of wrapping here again that's another great example, you know how humans, even in a cityscape we're part of the story.
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Lee Burton: And if you start tuning into this you'll just start, even if you're doing something else you'll start just watching other things happen.
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Lee Burton: literally just two days ago I was driving close to my house and I saw you know looked like a vulture fly right over the top of my car.
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Lee Burton: But you know i'm always kind of just paying attention and well not always, but a lot of the time and I noticed wait a minute, there was a white stripe on that tail and I was like that's his own tail Hawk when I really on the edge of their territory.
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Lee Burton: wow yeah and then I saw there was something in its talons and it alighted in a tree right behind me, I did slow you turn parked the car and watched him or her disassemble this white wing dove.
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Lee Burton: Know watch the feathers coming down, and you know they don't take they're not exhibitors.
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Lee Burton: Right, but, of course, like most raptors they'll take the occasional burden these guys typically nest in.
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Lee Burton: In a riverine environment and i'm sure he had come up and it's been a brutally hot summer here, so you know, probably getting whatever food, he can everything's out looking for food.
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Lee Burton: And anyway, and then afterwards I picked up some feathers and most exhibitors and they pluck feathers you might see a little line on the quill but they usually don't stand, but he had snapped him off, but no damage to the plume.
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Lee Burton: And so again just from a science perspective, you know if you were out in the field, whatever that would be a clue I mean you may not know for sure it's its own tail Hawk or but it might be dad or red tail but.
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Lee Burton: All these things just weave together, you know, in terms of the empirical the field and and what you can go back and do in the lab so I really appreciate your time.
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Lee Burton: katie and just you have such a body of knowledge it's a pleasure hearing you, you know not only talk about your discoveries, but your stories and.
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Lee Burton: for everybody out there, I cannot recommend bird language enough and her work I referenced it a lot my course there's an article out there if you're really interested in the science aspect called what why pitching works.
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Lee Burton: which I know that's your Grad student it's it's a wonderful article, and if you have any other questions feel free to reach out again she's Professor University of Florida, so thank you so much for your time this has been just a joy.
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Katie Sieving: it's always so fun to talk to you later let's get the field again sometime soon.
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Lee Burton: All right, we'll check in with you again another couple years and see what you're up to thanks again.
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Lee Burton: bye bye.
