Cliff Shackelford:
Good evening. This is Bird Calls from the Noel Foundation studios here at Red River Radio, and we're glad you're joining us. Tonight's program is made possible in part by the Community Foundation of North Louisiana and Willis-Knighton Health. We invite you to call in with your questions about our feathered friends and the avian world at 800-552-8502. I'm Cliff Shackleford, the host of Bird Calls since its inception in 2013. Operating the board this evening, you'll hear her speak, is Alaina Atnip. Hello, Alaina Atnip.
Alaina Atnip:
Hello, Cliff.
Cliff Shackelford:
Soon I'll introduce our guest, and we'll be ready to take your calls and discuss birds. So let's hear from you by calling us at 800-55-28502. Again, that number is 1-800-552-8502.
So tonight is not only episode 130. Wow. But if you take the zero off of that, it's our 13th anniversary episode and I've mentioned this, I think, every anniversary episode, whether it's 10th or 11th, 12th, gosh, I didn't know I'd make it this long! I have to say it again! Gosh, I didn't know it'd make it this long! So here we are, 13th year, still going strong.
Birds rule. That's the bottom line.
So there's a lot of people to thank, and I hope I didn't miss anybody, but I want to thank a lot of folks. My wife, Julie Shackleford, she's always helping me when I've got questions or pondering options. She's there as a soundboard and helps me decide. Les Stewart's been very helpful posting to various listings that the show is coming up. We've got the phone bank volunteers like Caden Cox and Max DeBenedetti. We've had three different co-hosts, Ki’ara Lafitte was first, and she left us for California, and then Alaina stepped in, and then she took a little break because of college. She had a Tuesday night class. And so Caden Cox stepped in from the phone bank, and he did a slam dunk job, but now Alaina Atnip is back, thank you. And I want to thank all the Red River Radio staff that have, you know, keep this show going, keep the studio going, keep everything on the air, especially Ranae Moran, she's been helpful behind the scenes with this show, and everybody that keeps this station going.
So yeah, and, you know, we haven't talked about new swag for this show.
Alaina Atnip:
Oh, yeah.
Cliff Shackelford
You want to tell everybody? Because that just came out, and there's two items for pledges. I'm not making… you know, the pledge drive is over, but let's at least mention… go ahead and tell us what the swag items are.
Alaina Atnip:
Yeah, so we have a Bird Calls shirt and a Bird Calls mug. Everyone is raving about the mug. The mug looks so good, and they both have, the Bird Calls logo, which is, like a little red cardinal sitting on a tree branch, and they are both, very lovely.
Cliff Shackelford:
Do you want… I have not even seen the mug. I, I've seen the t-shirt because my wife made a contribution that was qualifying for her to get the t-shirt, and she's been wearing the heck out of it, because she's real big on the, you know, the little V-neck for ladies. She doesn't like the men's t-shirts with the tight top or tight collar, rather. So she loves it, and so it looks really good on her, so… I was kind of pushing for a picture of me on it instead of a bird. I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding, because the Cardinal looks really good. So it's an artist's rendition of a northern… male northern cardinal, and yeah, if it was… if it had my ugly face on it, we'd sell three copies, so…
Alaina Atnip:
We'd sell at least… at least four, I think four well one for you, one for your wife, one for me maybe and we ship one out to Ki’Ara.
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah, and we'd force her to where it's a you wear this in California
So, yeah, 13 years and going strong, thanks to everybody, and thanks to the listeners that listen in religiously, and maybe call, and hopefully we get some calls tonight. We're going to talk about a really cool bird in just a minute, but before we get to that cool bird, I want to play a recording… Because we get, we get a lot of recordings sent to us, and in my previous life, with Texas Parks and Wildlife, I would get recordings sent to me and people would be like, what is this? And, you know, especially at night, there's a lot of things calling at night that people don't know about, you know, and it's more than often it was, you know, a frog or a mammal and not a bird. But this, I know what it is. It's a pretty faint recording. We're gonna hope this works, but I just used a little app on my cell phone, so it's not the greatest setup, but I want to play it first, and then kind of… Actually, there's two files, and then talk about it, because to me, some of the stuff sounds prehistoric, and so let's see what what you all think, and then I'll… I'll explain what it is, because I had eyeballs on what it was. But let me say that if someone had sent me this, these two recordings, and said, what are these? I'd be like, I don't know. Dinosaurs, velociraptors? I don't know. So, let's listen, see how this goes.
Okay, let's try the second one. The second one gets really cool. Let's switch to that one. Here we go…
Yeah, so, you know, if I heard that second one, I'd say, oh, man, sounds like Amazon parrots had a roost, you know, something tropical. But I know exactly what they are, because I stood under the rookery or heronry, where great blue herons were nesting, and it got really rowdy when the parent would come in with food, and there'd probably be 3 in the nest I was recording, I couldn't really see the net… see who was in it, but typically there's 3-ish nestlings, and they… they're all fighting. They're half-grown or more, and they're all fighting for here comes a mom or dad with food, and birds like herons don't carry prey in their feet, like a raptor. They… they bring… they don't bring it in their bill either, so they swallow it and store it temporarily in their crop, and then throw it up right into the mouth of the baby bird, and wouldn't that be an interesting way to feed our kids, human kids? But that's how birds do it. So they carry it in their crop and distribute it, and the young are fighting for, “Hey, no, I want it, give it to me!” And so that's what we heard.
And so I had to play that because, yeah, again, if someone had sent us that to the studio and said, “Hey, what's this?" I'd be like, “I don't know. And you're sure they weren't parrots?” and “No, there are no parrots around…”
So, yeah, nestling great blue herons, and boy, are they raucous. So that was a lot of fun.
We're going to go now into our profile species and this evening we're profiling not a hawk, but a Nighthawk… common Nighthawk, let's listen to one sound file that includes a nasal heard in flight and towards the end of this clip, the abrupt booing sound of diving male makes with his wings.
There.
Pretty neat. Can you forward it to that, just that last little bit?
Alaina Atnip:
Let me try. I'm just gonna have to replay it.
Cliff Shackelford:
Okay, let's listen because you're gonna hear the call several times, and then just listen quickly for the wings when the male dives, it's called a boom or booming sound. Here it comes…
There.
And some of you might hear that and wonder what the heck was that? And so maybe now all these years later you've realized that was a common nighthawk that made that strange sound from above. So the name Nighthawk might be confusing to some. This is not a raptor, and Nighthawk is one word that refers to a night jar or caprimulga that hunts or hawks for insects at night.
There are many species of night hawks on the planet, and the widespread one here in the US that I'm profiling is the common nighthawk. The name can be misleading as Nighthawks are sometimes active during the day, especially while migrating north in spring. They're also quite active at dawn and dusk, thus not strictly nocturnal.
The common Nighthawk can be found in a large variety of habitats across North America, from Canada, south through the US and parts of Mexico and Central America. This highly migratory species leaves its North American breeding grounds for its wintering grounds in South America, a long distance traveler, the common knighthawk can be seen in, say, Seattle, Washington in summer, for example, and then Sao Paulo, Brazil a few months later. During spring migration in our listening area, common nighthawks are quite late, peaking during the month of May, when many other migratory species have already been here for a month or two. Nighthawks and other night jar relatives are aerial insectivores, meaning they catch and eat insects on the wing, like that of many species of bats, swifts, and swallows, including the purple marten. Not all these birds have big, gaping mouths to swallow insect prey they chase down in flight up above the night hawk's nest on the ground, and they do not construct a nest. Instead, they lay their eggs directly on the ground, a gravel beach, rocky outcrop, forest floor, or sometimes a flat gravel rooftop.
To see a photo of a common nighthawk sleeping on a limb, very camouflaged, sleeping on a limb, snapped by James Childress, please visit the Bird Calls page at redriveradio.org
All right, Hawks are cool, and they're not a hawk. Just like a catfish is not a cat!
Alaina Atnip:
It is a fish, though.
Cliff Shackelford:
Yes, thank you. Okay, we're gonna hop right over into our guest, and we have tonight joining us Jim Wright, and he's in New Jersey. Jim, are you there?
Jim Wright:
Absolutely!
Cliff Shackelford:
All right, great. Well, thanks for joining us. What's the weather like in your area there in New Jersey, and what part of New Jersey are you calling from?
Jim Wright:
Uh, calling from northern New Jersey, where it's quite nice right now. It has been hotter than heck, but it's not too humid, and… pretty nice.
Cliff Shackelford:
Great. So you were on this show before in August 2024, nearly two years ago, talking about owls. Remind us, listeners, about yourself, so give us a brief biosketch, including where you're born, where you went to school, your hobbies, and your family life, and just tell us a little bit about Jim Wright.
Jim Wright:
Sure. Uh, I'm from Philadelphia, and ever since I can remember, I've loved to write. Uh, I remember starting a… neighborhood newspaper when I was 8 or 9 years old, and I would… was then in the junior high school newspaper, senior high school newspaper. Went into journalism school at Syracuse,
And I've been a writer ever since. Written for magazines, editing, newspapers for quite a while, was a movie critic, uh… and just love to write, and uh…became interested in birding when my wife and I moved near a nature refuge, and uh… it's 100 acres nearby the house, and I… Just fell in love with birds. I'd see them out the window and want to learn more.
Uh, I started writing about raptors. I did an e-book about red-shouldered hawks, and then I did a… another e-book and kept a blog for Duke Farms, which has a bald eagle nest and a live streaming, uh, camera. And I would write what you're seeing when you watch the, uh, bald eagles of Duke Farms.
And after that, I kind of morphed into Screech Owls, and then Peregrine Falcons.
Cliff Shackelford:
A movie critic, that caught my ear. I mean, that's a great job when it's temperatures like this in the South and hot, and you want to get into that movie theater, or up north, it's, you know, 10 feet of snow, and you can't do anything else. So. were you doing all kinds of movies, or did you have a specialty?
Jim Wright:
Uh, I was the generalist movie critic, for the record, and I… foolishly vowed to review every movie that opened in the area.
Cliff Shackelford:
Wow.
Jim Wright:
And… And, uh, I wrote… I once wrote 7 reviews in one day.
Cliff Shackelford:
Oh, jeez.
Jim Wright:
Uh, you're… at the very beginning, there weren't previews for some of these things, you'd… go to the movie theater, write it, and then… I take the bus and write the review on the way back to the… to the newspaper.
Cliff Shackelford:
Wow, and what decade was that? And maybe tell us a couple of the movies that were out just to give us an idea what time period that was.
Jim Wright:
Well, I think the best story is… Uh, I was at a news meeting in the morning, I was an editor, and… my editor said, “We have a problem. Uh, there's a new movie coming out. We don't have anyone to review it. Uh, the reviewer has a sore throat, he's very sick, and we need someone to jump on a bus, go into the city, and review the movie.”
And I said, “What's the movie?”
And they said, “Oh, it's this new movie by Woody Allen, uh, Annie Hall.”
Cliff Shackelford:
Huh.
Jim Wright:
I raised my hand and said, “I'll take a chance.” So I jumped on the bus, got to the first show at noon in New York City, uh, saw the movie, wrote the review on the way back, and filed by the end of the day. And that was my study, yeah.
Cliff Shackelford:
Oh, neat. That's neat. Yeah.
Well, we'll get back to birds now because earlier this year, you wrote a book called The Peregrine Falcon, The Epic Life and Times of the World's Fastest Creature. It was published by Schiffer Publishing, and I have a copy in my hand. It's… I have to say it's an incredibly well-constructed book. The hardback and the pages are nice and thick, and it's just… I'm a book fanatic, and so it's really well done. So… so give us, Jim, a little overview of the book and why peregrines are so fascinating to you as an author, and to so many who should read this book.
Jim Wright:
One thing that happens, there's… Someone wrote, “why… are you writing a book about peregrines? So many books have been written about peregrines, what's different about yours? “ You know, this is a story about how they almost went extinct and were saved from extinction and that sort of thing. And I've noticed in recent years that people…how they perceive peregrines has changed drastically. Uh, you heard about them from afar, they're the fastest, they're the fiercest. That sort of thing.
But with these live streaming cams that you can watch, uh, year-round now, because Peregrines nest all over the place, north and South America. You can always watch nesting peregrines, and you watch them online, and they are…uh, adorable. They have the cutest little babies, and they fly in with the food, and they're great parents, and they… take turns incubating the… the eggs, it's really amazing. And with these new live streams, you can watch 24 hours a day, you can rewind it. And you can see all kinds of things, but there's no context. You just see these wonderful parents and don't know much more about them, or even know what's gonna happen next.
So this was sort of a play-by-play uh, for… for that. And also…uh, you didn't mention, but there's fabulous pictures in that book. I was quite proud. One of the hardest part of the books was uh, putting together these 90 images and getting the most interesting pictures I could. And ones you usually don't see.
So that was part of it as well. And the other part of it was I wanted… I wouldn't say humanize these birds, but… everyone sees peregrines, but they think of them as… a species. They're fast, and they're nasty, and they… apex predator, but I wanted to introduce them as… as almost individuals, they have their own personalities and that sort of thing.
Cliff Shackelford:
Neat, neat. Yeah, you're right, the pictures are fantastic in the book. I should have mentioned that, but some amazing photography in there.
You're listening to Bird Calls. I'm Cliff Shackleford, the host. We have Jim Wright joining us as our guest this evening. If you have a question about birds, or especially about peregrine falcons, the number here is 800-552-8502. Again 800-552-8502.
Until the phone rings, Jim, I've got some other questions for you. You begin your book with an encounter with a peregrine on the cliffs above the Hudson River, just north of New York City. Why start the book with this, I'm curious?
Jim Wright:
Uh, well, one reason was… That's why I fell in love with peregrines, and I figured if I fell in love with peregrines because of this, others might as well. Uh, and the episode is, I was, uh… I would count raptors in the fall, they'd be migrating over state line lookout uh, in northern New Jersey, along the Hudson River Palisades. And sometimes you'd see a thousand birds flying overhead in an hour. It's that incredible during broad wing migration.
But you see these specks flying by, and it was a spectacle, but you never really saw them up close. And when things got slow, there'd be this peregrine falcon who would fly in, announce her arrival, land near me and look at me, and I would start talking to her.
And I just found her amazing. Uh, she would pose for photographs, and uh… just all-around charismatic bird. I could see her bird band and everything else.
And I talked to a fellow birdwatcher and said, “You know, there's this peregrine who flies in and is so friendly. I can't believe Peregrines, you can get a view of a peregrine falcon like this.”
And he says, “Oh, You met The Beast.”
And I go, “The Beast? What do you mean, the beast? She has a name?”
He said, “Oh yeah, she's pretty famous.”
Uh, a few years ago, during migration, a young, bald eagle was flying down the river, and she wanted to protect her nest. So she flew out, did a short dive bomb, and killed…the young bald eagle over the river. Killed it. Yes.
Cliff Shackelford:
Killed it killed it oh my goodness
Jim Wright:
Yeah. So that's what I said, oh my goodness, that is a… so they said… they called her The Beast as a result. And… Yes. Yeah, and that's a huge size difference between a peregrine and bald eagle. I mean huge. That's like Kevin Hart beating up on Shaquille O'Neal.
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah
Jim Wright:
Pretty much, it is. And uh… but that's how ferocious they are, and they are fearless. And so I hear these other stories, oh yeah, I saw… I saw the beast fly out and kill a gull just for sport, you know, or that sort of thing. Too close to the nest, so it had to… had to die.
So she disappeared, and then we started noticing that, uh, the male peregrine started hanging out more as well. And he was a quite handsome bird, and he didn't do much. And, uh, they nicknamed him The Dude. And he would just spend all his time preening, and pretty soon the word got out, uh… that these peregrine falcons at State Line lookout, were charismatic and not at all bashful. And we started have… having people drive from as far away as Maryland, 250 miles to photograph The Beast and The Dude.
Cliff Shackelford:
Oh, neat. The Dude, I like that name. What's that the movie The Dude with Jeff Bridges. Oh, come on, brain, you're not working. Jeff Bridges, yes, the dude that was in that movie, but this one sounds different, because the dude from the movie didn't care… yeah, The Big Lebowski, somebody wrote it in. That's… yes. Yes, absolutely. That's it, thank you.
Yes, thank you. I think that was a phone bank. Phone bank comes through. Big Lebowski, yeah, he was the dude, but he didn't like primping like you're describing, so that's funny that your peregrine had to look good all the time. Now, my question, when did they ever sit together, and if you did, could you see a size difference?
Jim Wright:
I think they did once or twice, and yes, you certainly could. She's bigger, uh, she is bigger, she's the third bigger.
Uh, in a lot of places, I didn't get into it in the book, but they called the male falcon a… terseil or tiercel?
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah.
Jim Wright:
That means a third smaller.
Cliff Shackelford:
Oh, that's where that comes from. Interesting. Okay
Jim Wright:
Yeah, and then the Ford Falcon, they had the Toyota Tercel parallel the Ford Falcon. Back in the 60s. Yes, it's funny.
Cliff Shackelford:
You're listening to Bird Calls. Joining me in the studio via Zoom is Jim Wright, and we have our first caller.
Alaina Atnip:
We do. We have Michael from Fouke….
Cliff Shackelford:
Arkansas.
Alaina Atnip:
Oh, well, there's… I looked it up real quick, and I saw that there's also a Fouke, Texas, so I wasn't sure which one it would be.
Cliff Shackelford:
Okay, well let's let Michael tell us and if we're pronouncing it correctly, Michael.
Caller Michael:
it's Arkansas and Cliff knows me.
Cliff Shackelford:
Is your radio on, Michael? We're getting some feedback.
Caller Michael:
No, it's not.
Cliff Shackelford:
Huh.
Caller Michael:
I understand that, but no, it's not. I don't know what the problem is.
Cliff Shackelford:
Okay, we're having trouble hearing you.
Caller Michael:
You want me to call back?
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah, why don't you do that? Maybe there's a weird connection, maybe you go to a different room if you're on a cell but it's too rough for the radio.
Caller Michael:
I understand.
Cliff Shackelford:
Okay, call us back Michael.
Until he calls back, I've got some more questions for you, Jim. Could you spend a few minutes explaining the decline in peregrines and then what was done for its remarkable recovery?
Jim Wright:
Well, uh, quite a few chapters of the book are devoted to this, because I found it fascinating. Uh, I'd go to the Smithsonian Institute and look at, uh, the Ancient Egypt exhibit, and there would be all these mummies and, uh… tombs with falcons painted on them. Peregrine falcons, and they were revered. They were… like a bird from the gods. And, uh, even into the Middle Ages, you may have heard this word royalty would have a pecking order, and the king would have a… would be able to hunt with a golden eagle. And, uh, a prince would be able to use, say, a peregrine all the way down to, uh, a surf could… hunt with a kestrel, which…
Cliff Shackelford:
Hmm.
Cliff Shackelford:
And so it was literally almost a pecking order. And they… but they revered these birds, because that was how they hunted. And then the invention of gunpowder came along, and all of a sudden, the birds they used to hunt… where the birds that were competing for the same game, they were suddenly, they started demonizing these peregrine falcons and other falcons. And uh… people started shooting the peregrines because they were competing for the food. And, uh, it got pretty bad.
Uh…and on top of that, in the late 1900s, there was egg collecting. And people would love for hobbies to collect as many different species eggs as they could. And since you had to climb down the side of a cliff to get to a peregrine nest… uh, peregrine eggs were fairly rare, and uh… costly, and they actually had catalogs where you could buy peregrine eggs for $3 a piece in the late 1800s. And so this was quite a hobby, and… they would hunt… they would go and take all the peregrine eggs they could find, which hurt the populations as well.
Uh, and then World War II happened, and uh… DDT became this wonder chemical. Uh, and it certainly was. It helped, uh, kill… malaria-bearing mosquitoes, uh, head lice, all kinds of things. But it was just overused, and uh… started causing all kinds of problems. And about that time, uh, Peregrine falcon populations started to drop. And they eventually discovered… that the DDT was causing the eggshells to thin. And the eggs were too thin for the parents to incubate. And the eggs would crack, and they were headed for extinction, actually until, uh, someone… they discovered DDT was causing it and started to get… that chemical banned in the United States.
And uh… the trouble was, it was almost extinct at this point. And the question was, how do we bring it back from extinction? We don't have enough birds to do it. And, uh, you can't breed them in captivity because the birds become imprinted on their owner and not a wild bird.
So, there's a gentleman in, uh… New Paltz, New York, SUNY New Paltz. He was a falconer, and he had read during World War II… that a German general had… raised a Peregrine Falcon in captivity and successfully released it. So he tried to figure out how to do it without imprinting uh, on the bird, and he… built an aviary, uh, had the birds hatch the eggs. And then he would, uh, had a trapdoor, and he would feed the baby peregrines with hand puppets, so they would not be imprinted with human beings. And he just…
Cliff Shackelford:
And the puppet looked like a peregrine adult, right?
Jim Wright:
Yes!
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah, cool.
Jim Wright:
And they just kept raising it, and so that was great, and he actually released birds up in New Paltz.And it was successful. They survived in the wild, it was all great, but you have a… almost a world full of plummeting peregrine populations, how do you re… repopulate it? So, a gentleman named Tom Cade and Cornell figured out how to replicate this on a grand scale. And, uh, suddenly the peregrine Falcon started coming back. Yes.
Cliff Shackelford:
Pretty neat, pretty neat. And you cover all that in your book, so if people want to read the blow by blow, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Jim's book. It goes through that really well.
So speaking of peregrines, Jim, how, you know, so many people are fascinated by its speed. As a kid, you grew up learning that, you know, the cheetah is one of the fastest mammals, but the peregrine is the fastest critter on the planet. How is that speed measured, and what is the bird doing to reach such speeds?
Jim Wright:
That's… it's a great question, and I'm not sure I have the answer, but I did want to mention that, uh, when my granddaughter was 9, I told her I was doing a book on peregrine falcons, and she goes, “Wow! Peregrine Falcon, world's fastest creature.”
18:29:53 Yeah.
Jim Wright:
And at age 9. So I… she didn't have many birds, but she knew the peregrine falcon. And yes, it's the fastest creature, everyone knows that, and they've measured it all kinds of ways and tried to estimate, uh, how fast it's actually going. Uh, and they measure it… It goes, uh, soars up in the air, uh, as high as a mile, I think, and uh… then it goes into a dive called a stoop, and think of a downhill skier in a tuck. So it's totally aerodynamic. And it jumps and goes flying down as fast as it can, and it's built, uh, built for speed, uh, very little wind resistance, and it just goes screaming down.
I don't know if I've ever seen it go 200 miles an hour, but I've seen it over the Palisades when it's hunting for prey, and it is like a laser beam cutting across the sky. It is truly impressive. They've tried to measure it with, like, Doppler radar and speed guns and high-speed… stereo cameras, all kinds of things, and uh… they kind of agreed it's around 200 miles an hour. Some people think less.
Cliff Shackelford:
Okay, interesting. So when they're stooping, they're after prey, what are some of their favorite prey items?
Jim Wright:
Uh… well, they seem to really like pigeons, and I go into that. I'll talk a little about that later, but they love blue jays, uh… flickers, uh, anything that they get their hands… get their talons on, I guess. But, uh, they seem to like colorful birds. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not. But they… I… when I look at Nests and under… go underneath the nest, and I'll see a lot of blue jay feathers, and a lot of northern flicker feathers, and that's a woodpecker up here in the northeast that has, uh… yellow feathers on the wings, and it's a beautiful bird. Uh, but seems to be very good eating.
Cliff Shackelford:
You're listening to Bird Calls. I'm Cliff Shackleford. We have Jim Wright joining us as our guest this evening, and we have another call. Let me mention the number just before we enter this new caller. If you want to call, the number here is 800-552-850. Who do we have next?
Alaina Atnip:
Well, actually, we don't have a caller, we just have a question for Cliff and for Jim. Keith from Arkansas asks, what's the difference between a common Nighthawk and a Chuck Wills widow, and how do you distinguish them?
Cliff Shackelford:
Jim, do you want to take a bite at that?
Jim Wright:
Uh… That's a… that's a tough one. I… I've just been listening, I got my first lifer, Chuck Wells widow, down in Cape May. Back in, uh… back in May, and I used… I hate to say it, but I used Merlin and picked it up. And I had several other great birders who concurred this was a Chuck Wills widow. It's an unusual call. Uh, the common Nighthawk… it sounded exactly like a parakeet to me.
And I'd hear them call in Belize, when I would do birding trips down there. And you can hear them at the lodge calling all night. And it was kind of a haunting call, and you knew you were in the jungle. I thought that was really cool, until I went to the front desk in the morning, and the woman at the front desk said that a man checked in late at night who was complaining about a car alarm going off all night. And the parakeet call was just like that Nighthawk going…
And I've really never heard Nighthawks, common Nighthawks, I see him flying above, that little white, uh, chevron on their wings, but I… I don't hear them.
Cliff Shackelford:
Well, let's see if Alaina can find us those recordings in her file. She played the Nighthawk earlier. Let's just listen to a couple iterations, and then we'll go to Chuck Will's Widow, if you can find that in your files.
Alaina Atnip:
I do believe I can. I'm gonna play the Common Nighthawk first.
Cliff Shackelford:
That's the car alarm.
Yep.
Alright, let's hop over to Chuck Will's Widow, very different so one syllable for the Nighthawk beew is one alliteration that you hear for Nighthawk beer and then Chuck Wills Widow, let's listen to that.
Three syllables. Anomatopoietic. Chuck Will's widow. Chuck Will's widow.
Jim Wright:
And there's a whippoorwell cousin, right?
Cliff Shackelford:
That's right. Well, let's do whippoorwill. That's something we all… in the South, we get those two confused, the whippoorwill and the Chuckwill's widow. Let's listen to whippoorwill, because we don't get those until you get up into the Ouachitas of Arkansas and points farther south. So if you're in a state that touches the Gulf of Mexico, you probably… well, unless you're over farther east, but let's say the listening area, you're not going to have a whippo calling this time of the year, June. So let's listen to Whippoorwill.
Rapid fire.
So those just migrate through here, but so many people think we have whippoorwills all summer long, but we do not. We have the Chuckwills Widow here in the deep south.
We've got another caller on, Alaina.
Alaina Atnip
We do! We have Paul from… Paul from Nacogdoches. Paul, what can we do for you this evening?
Caller Paul:
Oh, I've called in before, Cliff. I've lived in Galveston 35 plus years, and I'm glad you cleared that up between the Chuck Wills widow and the whippoorwill for me. But I was going to ask about the peregrines. Of course, we had them down on the island I've seen them hit doves, morning doves. And your guest talked about the young bald eagle that was attacked, but I was kind of curious, what's the biggest prey that they will pick on?
Jim Wright:
What was the question?
Caller Paul:
What's the biggest play that peregrine Falcons have?
Jim Wright:
Uh… I guess the bald eagle's about the biggest. That was more… a defense mechanism than anything else, though. But they will kill gulls their size, I guess that… that's an answer. Uh… and you mentioned morning doves. Around here, they really… love pigeons, and uh… I go into the… this love-hate relationship between pigeons and peregrines for several chapters. Uh, the peregrines love pigeons, and pigeons hate peregrines.
Caller Paul:
Well, dogs are in that same family, but as far as that bald eagle, did the peregrine eat it?
Jim Wright:
No, just killed it. That's why I said it was more of a… defense than anything else.
Caller Paul:
Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. So pigeon and dove is about the biggest thing they'll prey on?
Jim Wright:
Yeah, that's… and, you know, the same thing with… flickers and Blue Jays, that size bird, slightly smaller than they are. Uh…
Right, right. I didn't look this up recently, but I did read a paper decades ago, a short note about a peregrine that captured and killed and ate a cattle grit. Right, exactly. So, you know… Whoa! If it's something that big, they'll eat it on the spot, on the ground, but you can't carry that off as easily as a pigeon
Caller Paul:
Yeah, yeah. No, they're amazing to watch. We had them down on the island, I guess that was in the spring. But yeah, a lot of birds down there, and I'm up in the tiny woods and I can't see them. Yep. I can only hear. I can only hear them.
Cliff Shackelford:
Alright, Paul, thank you for the call. Well, thanks, thanks.
Caller Paul:
Yeah, thanks for your job, Cliff.
Cliff Shackelford:
Thanks. Alright, bye.
You're listening to Bird Calls. I'm Cliff Shackleford, and we're joined by Jim Wright, who's joining us as our guest this evening, and we're talking about Peregrine falcons. He wrote a fantastic book on the species. It just came out this calendar year, and I've got some more questions, Jim.
Jim Wright:
Sure.
Cliff Shackelford:
You devote a couple chapters to pigeons, which we've already talked about, but what makes them so special? And I, you know, you kind of answered that. They're the right size prey, and they're flashy, and… but what a pursuit that would be. That's two F-15 fighters chasing each other.
Jim Wright:
Yeah, that's the really cool thing, how fast the peregrines go in this stoop. Compared to the… the pigeon flying horizontally, and you realize how… incredibly computerized their brains are that they can… figure out I'm going 200 miles an hour, I've got to hit a… target moving 30 miles an hour, uh, and managed to strike these things.
Jim Wright:
Their depth perception, all that is incredible in Peregrines. The thing that I found with Peregrines and Pigeons… was that pigeons over the years were used for carrier pigeons during wartime to carry messages between enemy… over enemy lines and things.
And they would, like, the siege of Paris, they would send carrier pigeons with all their messages, uh… uh, in microfiche… microfilm on their legs flying out, and the enemy… uh, in this case, the Germans, uh, hired or employed the Peregrine falcons to kill the messenger pigeons. And so it got to be quite a competition. And it got to the point during World War II where the United States was actually recruiting peregrine Falcons from the Hudson River Palisades to go after enemy carrier pigeons. And they later, uh, decided… I found out this harebrained scheme, they wanted to attach, uh, razor blades to the peregrine Falcons' legs, and when enemy parachutists jumped out of the plane and opened their chute, the Peregrine was supposed to fly down and cut the cord so the parachutes would plunge to their deaths.
Cliff Shackelford:
Geez, wow.
Jim Wright:
Uh, fortunately, it's just a… stupid idea for all kinds of reasons, but, you know, how do you get the peregrine above the parachute to begin with? But I came across other top-secret plans that were even more harebrained.
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Well, Michael never called back from Fouke. We're having some feedback issues. We've had two calls from Arkansas that both had feedback. What's going on with the phone lines in Arkansas?
Alaina Atnip:
I don't know.
Cliff Shackelford:
I'm not sure either. But Keith did call back to talk. He didn't get on the air because of the feedback, so he gave his message to the phone bank that wrote it to us in the chat, and he wants us to emphasize, back to how to tell the Common Nighthawk from the Chuck Wills widow, how to tell him apart in flight and I have to say that you will not see a Chuck Wills widow in flight. It's flying around in the darkest of night. The common Nighthawk is the one that you'll see flying around. So if you see a cap and it's between those two species, it's probably going to be the Nighthawk, Just because they're more tolerant of flying around the day. Chucks just don't do it at night. I've seen Chucks very rarely fly over the highway, but it is so dark that all you see is a silhouette. You don't see any of the pattern at all. So, yeah. And, yeah, so sorry about Arkansas, Michael and Keith, thanks for calling from Arkansas, but we couldn't get you on because there was some tremendous feedback. In our caller from Texas, we didn't have feedback, so I don't know where the source is, but sorry to everybody who tried and had feedback issues.
Back to Jim and Peregrine. Since so many peregrines nest on man-made structures like tall buildings and under bridges, what historically were they selecting before these man-made structures were available?
Jim Wright:
Uh, often on cliffs, and almost anywhere they could find a good place to nest that was safe from raccoons and other predators. And, uh, I think one of the big things that happened when they made their comeback, they could put the peregrines anywhere they wanted, not just on the sides of cliffs, which is… uh, tough to get them to relocate.
But they were also very prone to predators on the cliffs, especially great horned owls. So they decided they would start, uh… introducing peregrines to cities. They had already nested on cathedrals and some buildings before World War II and after the war. But, uh, they realized that skyscrapers are the perfect place for them, and they would put these, uh… these dog-loos, they're called, they're, uh, outside… shaped like a dog… shaped like an igloo but big enough to house a peregrine, and they put them on the roof of buildings, and the peregrines took to them.
And, uh, because they did… uh, they were then able to install cameras and do livestreams, and one of the reasons we can see peregrine Falcon so much is because they… I wrote quite a bit about the, uh… diorama at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. And, uh, until live streams, you… no one could see what…a peregrine looked like, what a scrape looked like, uh, unless you went to the… the, uh, academy that went to the American Museum of Natural History.
Uh, and I should mention, speaking of pigeons… but the diorama has a… peregrine flying in to feed its young, holding a pigeon. And if you look very closely at the diorama, under the two, three baby Peregrine falcons, there's a bunch of… pigeon bones, and one of the pigeon bones has a racing pigeon leg band on it in the diorama in the late 19… late 1890s.
Cliff Shackelford:
Oh, wow, there's another user group that would not be happy having peregrines flying around
Jim Wright:
Yes, that's absolutely true.
Cliff Shackelford:
Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Well, you mentioned that when you said the igloo, I'm envisioning that, and I understand I can picture the dog igloo on the roof that they're using, and I remember reading a book, I think it was Birds of Tennessee, or something about Tennessee that talked about historical use was in large tree cavities
Jim Wright:
Yes.
Cliff Shackelford:
And I don't know if you encountered anything like that, and kestrels, of course, that nest in the south, they're nesting in cavities. So, are there any peregrines in tree cavities in the U.S. that you know of?
Jim Wright:
Uh, there probably are. They'll nest almost anywhere, I think. Uh, Roger Torrey Peterson once said they nested on top of a buoy in a… in the water. So…
Cliff Shackelford:
Oh, interesting. Okay
Jim Wright:
Yeah, they're very resourceful. Uh, I should mention that you picture them uh, nesting on the side of a cliff overlooking the Hudson River, and it's beautiful or have one nesting on a patio at an apartment high-rise.
And they'll nest wherever they can. But we have one nesting under a bridge, in northern New Jersey… and there's highway traffic 24 hours a day overhead. Uh, it's just a nasty place, but the peregrines… find safety in it, free from predators, and… they'll nest there.
Cliff Shackelford:
You said an apartment high-rise patio, gosh, who lives in that apartment? I want to go visit them.
Jim Wright
Yeah, I think they spend their winters in Florida. So, so this was an empty… empty patio. An empty balcony.
Cliff Shackelford:
Okay, so the birds… the birds aren't… they're not dumb, they're using a vacant patio.
Jim Wright:
Yeah, oh, yes, very, very…
Cliff Shackelford:
Awesome.
Cliff Shackelford:
Good to point that out. No, they're not there with people sitting there, uh, having their snacks. Oh, that'd be hilarious, though, if they did choose your patio, you'd just not be able to use the outside, and you could have these incredible views from the inside while you're sipping on your coffee.
Jim Wright:
Exactly.
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah. Well, let's change gears, Jim to SGAR and what are SGARs and how do they impact raptors like peregrines?
Jim Wright:
Uh, well, SGARs are second-generation Anticoagulant rodenticides. And these are…
Cliff Shackelford:
Poison, for short
Jim Wright:
Rat poison, exactly. Yep.
And these rat poisons, uh… caused the rat to die a slow death. And so they will eat it and slowly… bleed to death. And while they're bleeding to death, they're easy prey for pets, for raptors, especially owls, uh… and, uh, I have pictures of… the peregrine falcons, uh, eating these poisoned rats… eating these poisoned rats.
And there's a lot of figures, uh… like, 77% of bald eagles that are tested have some level of rat poison in these second-generation rat poisons in them. And I became aware of it when that… peregrine I mentioned nested under the bridge, I would take pictures of a peregrine in the same picture with my cell phone of a rat poison dispenser.
And I really became troubled by that, and I've… started a group, a coalition in New Jersey to get these worst rat poisons banned in New Jersey. And we're also… not just trying to ban the worst rat poisons, or trying to educate the public about simple things like, please don't put bread on the ground to feed birds, because it's not good for birds, it attracts rats, and then you have to get the rat poison.
So, it's a lot of education in that regard, and uh… just telling them… to… no more open dumpsters, you know? Have your trash cans covered.
Just simple, common sense things that will protect our raptors and our wildlife. Foxes and bobcats in the Northeast are dying because they'll eat this uh, poisoned rat, and it weakens their immune system, and they start getting mange and other diseases and die of that.
So it's a big problem.
Cliff Shackelford:
Yes. And like you said, it's a slow death and that means it's a painful death. That would be awful. So for someone battling a rodent problem, I mean, what's the best solution? The old style rat trap?
Jim Wright:
Uh, yes, you can put the rat trap if it's outside, you can put it inside these rat poison dispensers, uh, but I would start with… uh, looking to see how they're getting into your house, or what they're in your yard for.
So, if you have bird feeders, uh… start using the… the wasteless seed, you know, the stuff that doesn't fall on the ground? Uh, that sort of thing.
Cliff Shackelford:
Or, you know, you're feeding your pets and they don't eat at all, you know, you're feeding everything else. You got a raccoon problem, a rat problem. So, yeah, usually these problems are human-created. And so, we have to sometimes look in the mirror and say, what am I doing wrong here? Why are there so many rats here?
Jim Wright:
Right.
Cliff Shackelford:
And then putting out these rodenticides are bad news for birds, that we need raptors, we need them to control and keep numbers of prey up and check things like rats and mice and roaches. If you're a screech owl, you're eating a lot of the wood roaches, so we need those critters. We want these raptors to be present to help keep these numbers in balance. It's not all about just spreading poisons and killing everything, like you mentioned, mammals as well.
And pets! If people figured out, hey, this is bad for my cat and dog that are outside because they just ate this rat that's got to poison in it, I think that grabs people's attention, because a lot of people are like, I don't care about raptors, and all these hawks, but everybody cares about their pet, or at least they should, yeah.
Jim Wright:
Exactly. In general, uh, I…I talk about side effects. And if you have something in your backyard you're using to spray that has the word side in it, it means, uh… rodenticide, herbicide, insecticide. But if it has the word ‘cide” in it, it means to kill. And it's often an equal opportunity killer.
So, I would just think twice before you use some of these products.
Cliff Shackelford:
Good point, good point.
Well, I wanted to read a little excerpt from your book that I found to be really fantastic, if I could. It's on page 224 at the bottom, and I'm going to read that because it's one of my favorite things in the book. And it's… it's just really neat. So here it is.
“While researching this book, I came across instance after instance of a future naturalist who fell in love with peregrines because of a book or a photo in a book. This has become my dream, that a youngster happens upon this book and falls in love.”
And that's written by you, Jim, and I just want to tell you that, you know, this is what it's all about, inspiring others, and I love that quote. Did you want to expand on that any?
Jim Wright:
Uh, well, every… I kept interviewing naturalists and asked, “Well, how did you get interested in birds or nature?”
And they often said, “Well, I was reading a book, uh… my side of the mountain came up a lot with Peregrine falcons.”
And, uh, what really struck me, though, was, uh, the gentleman who saved, in my opinion, saved peregrines from extinction by learning how to have them breed in captivity. Heinz Meng was a child, he was reading a book called The Story of Bird Life by Arthur Allen, who was a professor at Cornell who founded the first ornithology course. But, uh, young Heinz Meng saw this photograph of a peregrine at a waterfall, fell in love, decided when he grew up he was gonna study at Cornell, study, uh, study Peregrine falcons, uh, became a falconer, and eventually saved them from extinction.
So, uh, I thought… if I'm doing a book on peregrine falcons, I am going to… put a bunch of pictures in there, that might capture kids' attention. I know that it's when your parents aren't home and you're bored, uh, you start looking around the coffee table or looking in the bookshelves, and looking for books to read. And I know it was me and American Heritage magazines, and I would read about the Lincoln assassination or something and start reading about history and fell in love with history that way.
I was a late bloomer when it came to birds, and I wanted to give, uh… kids a head start by… getting something they would like to see, and… capture their imagination.
Cliff Shackelford:
I love that. Yeah, inspiration from a book or a magazine. That's fantastic. So speaking of books, are you working on any other book projects or chewing on the idea of another book?
Jim Wright:
Uh, I'm playing with the idea of… I did a book on the real James Bond, who was an ornithologist from my hometown of Philadelphia. And uh… he was fairly well known for his book, Birds of the West Indies, and Ian Fleming, uh, needed a name for his 007 character, and he's writing the book in Jamaica. He looks down and sees… Birds of the West Indies and sees James Bond, and decides to steal it.
And so I wrote a book about it, and I've found out much more since then.
Cliff Shackelford:
Oh, so a part two to that book, which I have and love, and actually, if people want to hear more about it, we did talk a little bit about it in your August 2024 episode. I'm sorry, August of 20… yeah, it was 2024, on this show, so people should go back and listen for that. So, yeah, I'd be the first one to be excited about any upgrade, a second edition with some added stuff, so that's great, Jim.
Well, thanks so much for being here. We have run out of time, Jim. Thanks, thanks for being here. Did you have fun?
Jim Wright:
I did, thank you. It was a lot of fun, some great questions, and I tried to answer them.
Cliff Shackelford:
Yeah, well, thank you so much. So that concludes this evening's show, which is our 130th episode. You've been listening to Bird Calls with me, Cliff Shackleford, resident ornithologist here at the Red River Radio studio, and our guest via Zoom has been Jim Wright of New Jersey. Thanks, Jim.
I didn't mention some guests in the beginning, and I wanted to spend a little time before I finish out my exit script here. I didn't name all the guests that we had in 2020 or in the last 12 months when I was doing all the thanking.
We had nine guests, Eric Johnson, he talked about bird feathers and molt. Sarah Wyckoff, she talked about bird diseases. My wife, Julie Shackleford, she talked about a whole lot of stuff
Jennifer Bristol wrote a couple books we talked about. Dean Smith, we talked a lot about waterfowl and protection for waterfowl and wetlands. Richard Gibbons, we talked about Audubon, he works for the National Audubon Society, and talked a little bit about Texas Audubon as well. And Dr. Sid Gautreau, we talked about bird migration. Ben Jones, we talked about the Lights Out campaign and how birds strike buildings, and he talked a lot about that was really interesting, and then our final guest for this last year was Grant Sizemore, who was here last month, talking about cats indoors, because cats are the number one known killer of birds. So, thank you to all our guests we had in the last year.
So this show has been made possible in part by the Community Foundation of North Louisiana and Willis Knighton Health. Tonight's episode was assisted by Alaina Atnip, and there were volunteers operating the phone bank, Kaden and Max. Tonight's sound file of a common nighthawk was recorded by Bruce Lagerquist and can be found at the website Xenocanto.org.
The photo we used of this Nighthawk on the Bird Calls webpage was snapped by James Childress. This show will be available soon as a podcast on our website at redriveradio.org, as well as from the national NPR app. If you have a photo or a sound clip of a bird that you'd like me to identify, you can send an email to redriveradiomail@gmail.com. Again, redriveradiomail@gmail.com. Be sure to join us for the next episode of Bird Calls next month at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7th, one week earlier than our normal monthly spot.
Do it for the birds.
