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Birds, Merlin, and the Future of Conservation with Dr. Miyoko Chu
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In this episode of the Bird Joy Podcast, hosts Dexter Patterson and Jason Hall sit down with Dr. Miyoko Chu, Senior Director of Communications at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Chu is a powerhouse at the intersection of science, storytelling, and technology, known for her pioneering work on the Merlin Bird ID app and her beautiful, bird-inspired books.
We explore her journey into ornithology, the global success of Merlin, and the exciting future of bird conservation—powered by data, digital tools, and deeper inclusion. From spark birds to AI innovations, this episode is packed with inspiration for birders of every level.
Links & Resources:
📖 Songbird Journeys | Birdscapes | America’s Favorite Birds
In Color Birding Club
BIPOC Birding Club
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Goals
00:00:00
Speaker
You're tuned in to season three of the Bird Joy podcast hosted by Dexter Patterson and Jason Hall. This podcast is for all the homies across the globe, a place to celebrate birds, community, and joy together.
00:00:15
Speaker
We're back with more stories from the birding world, more voices doing dope work in STEM, and more reasons to get outside and enjoy the birds. Are you ready for some bird joy? Let's go.
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of the Bird Joy podcast, where we explore the wonder of science and the joy of birds and the people who love them the
Featuring Dr. Miyoko Chu
00:00:38
Speaker
most.
00:00:38
Speaker
Today, are thrilled to be joined by a true visionary in the world of ornithology and digital innovation. She's a scientist, an author, and the senior director of communications at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, home to some of the most game-changing birding tools out there, folks.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yep. Including the legendary Merlin Bird ID app, which she helped launch and has now been downloaded over 22 million times around the world. My word.
00:01:07
Speaker
That is so wild. And that's just one part of her story. Her work connects science, tech, and storytelling in some powerful ways. She's also the author of Songbird Journeys, Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds, Birdscapes, a pop-up celebration of bird songs and stereo sound, and America's Favorite Birds, 40 Beautiful Birds to Color.
00:01:30
Speaker
That is incredible. Please, please, please join us in welcoming the incredible Dr. Miyoko Chu to the Bird Joy podcast. Welcome, Dr. Chu. Thank you. That's the most special intro anyone has ever given me. So thank you I'm so happy be here.
00:01:48
Speaker
Hey, like we said last week when we were chatting with Danielle, we take pride in these intros. We really do. Thank you. Honestly, it's ah it's an honor to have you here. Jason and I, we we had the honor of meeting you when we were down at Biggest Week in American Birding. And I came in a couple of days later. And when I arrived, Jason's like, hey, you got you gotta to come sit down over here. There's some pretty cool people that I'm having dinner with right now. And we go over there and there's you, there's Kimberly Kaufman, there's Ken Kaufman and like all these just fantastic.
00:02:23
Speaker
fantastic people sitting at a dinner table just talking about birds and life and
Dr. Chu's Childhood and Passion for Birds
00:02:28
Speaker
and it was pretty it was just amazing. And when I found out that you were one of the people that helped to launch the Merlin bird ID app, like from that moment, I was like, what, like, Who is this amazing human being? But when I think about something like Merlin, there had to be some sort of spark for you when it comes to birds.
00:02:46
Speaker
What was your like spark moment? Like what what was what was a moment early on in Little Miyoko, you know, when you were like, I like birds and like knew that they would be a part of your career?
00:02:59
Speaker
Wow, yeah, definitely. It happened in Little Miyoko, Little Miyoko about age 10 or 11. Yeah, I grew up in the Bay Area across from San Francisco.
00:03:10
Speaker
and now and then my parents and I used to go over into the city, maybe get some Chinese food, look in the grocery stores. And there was this one time that I was walking down that street, a street in San Francisco, and ah we passed a truck.
00:03:25
Speaker
When I peered inside, this truck was full of cages. birds. Some of them were chickens, no doubt. But I think there were different kinds of birds. What I do remember is the cages of pigeons. And i started to cry because I was pretty distressed you know seeing them all cooped up in cages.
00:03:46
Speaker
But also I knew that they were destined for somebody's dinner table. And that made me feel sad. ah So you know I'd been like any ordinary kid. I hadn't paid any more attention to birds and any other kinds of things around me. But i I definitely had a moment where I was sad. And the most amazing thing is that my dad just decided on the spot, we're going to rescue some of these pigeons.
00:04:12
Speaker
And so oh he out his wallet. I think they were super cheap. Like I feel like they were only $2 each or something like that. And they got taken out, their legs were kind of wrapped up and they were put in brown paper bags and handed to us live. I was, of course, as any kid would be really excited.
00:04:31
Speaker
And so we drove back across the bridge back home, had nowhere to put these birds. But my dad helped me build a coop in our backyard. oh wow.
00:04:42
Speaker
shipping pallets for the floor and some chicken wire for the top. And we ended up being able to put the birds in there and then I could sit in this coop with them.
00:04:53
Speaker
And that's how my spark started sitting in a pigeon coop. That is incredible. That is a great visual image for me too. Just 10 year old you just sitting, chilling with the pigeons, enjoying the company and the yeah the vibe, right? That's that's that's absolutely incredible.
00:05:10
Speaker
Shout out to your dad. Oh my gosh. I only realized later that he had raised pigeons as a boy in Shanghai. And I bet you that helped him make that leap.
00:05:23
Speaker
Like, yeah, we can do this. We can take these pigeons home and they can fly out of the coop. And Jason, you're talking about the vibe. i would just sit in there for hours and I would wear this this pink coat because it was like protection. If they sat on me and they happened to poop, it would just get on the coat. So I'd be in there with this pink coat and I taught them to eat out of my hand. And then I just would observe them mating and courting and fighting, ultimately laying eggs and raising their young. And I was just so curious about all it. I wanted to read everything I could about pigeons. I wanted to see it all happen. It's pretty magical.
00:05:58
Speaker
Like just the whole family lives of birds unfolding right in front of you. Wow, that's that's an incredible, incredible way to get started. And again, shout out to your dad for recognizing the moment too, the moment of empathy and taking that action to make a
Dr. Chu's Literary Contributions
00:06:11
Speaker
difference. You know, it's not all of us get that. And it's, I'm sure it was helpful for you in life to always look back on those kinds of pivotal moments to say, hey, I'm going to do something about this. So that's that's that's really awesome. Yeah, that was pretty special. So you talk about being able to sit and observe these bird homies, right? And your pink coat, which is to me sounds like Miyoko and the pink coat is a whole book you could write. Sounds amazing. amazing. I think you got something there. Yeah, like just that whole journey like sounds incredible. Yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
But you have authored your own books, right? ah Songbird Journeys, Birdscapes, America's Favorite Birds. And it sounds like some of these experiences may have been the things that inspired you to write those. So like, what did you, what do you hope readers take away from those things? And, and, you know, particularly with the Birdscapes book, like that pop-up is so visually stunning. Like, what do you want people to get from those? Yeah, well, definitely. think the common thread through all of them is just the sense of wonder about birds and really celebrating both the amazing things that they do, the mind blowing things that they do, but also just the way they make us feel, you know, whether that's peaceful, joyful, yeah are just curious, all of those things.
00:07:23
Speaker
Birdscapes was one that came about where the publisher wanted to hire a pop-up artist to create each spread. You open it up and a habitat is going to pop up and some birds are going to pop up in the habitat. And ah they wanted to engineer the sounds of the landscape. So we are really fortunate to have the Macaulay Library here.
00:07:44
Speaker
That is the world's largest collection of natural science. sounds and behaviors, as we say, of animals. And we were fortunate to be able to create what some of these seven soundscapes would would be like as you are looking at the pop-ups. So that's the origin of that. The thing that hit me as I was writing the little blurbs for this book is that there are seven habitats.
00:08:07
Speaker
And I was writing about some of them where I'd never been in person. And it it made me feel like, gosh, I've got to go, you know, check out these different places. So I'm still on a mission to do that. only partway through. But yeah, it's kind of opened up that that idea of how different each place is, how different they sound, not just how different they look and then the different birds that are in them.
Birding Experiences and Grassland Exploration
00:08:30
Speaker
Which which are which habitat is next on the list?
00:08:34
Speaker
I'm thinking maybe grasslands are next on the list. I've never been to that kind of habitat and really enjoyed the sounds and sights of those birds.
00:08:45
Speaker
And as we saw in the most recent State of the Birds report this year, grassland birds are the fastest declining group A loss of 43% in the last 50 years.
00:08:56
Speaker
um So these birds need need our help. And I think we're going to be talking a lot about them, helping people like understand what a cool habitat this is and how who lives there and and why. and And so I want to be able to experience that firsthand.
00:09:10
Speaker
Well, if you come out to Wisconsin, we got some grasslands for you, Miyoko. All right. And some really amazing grassland birds, you know. Jason was here not too long ago, and he could speak to that a little bit. he He got to see a little glimpse of the magic that we have in in the badger state here.
00:09:30
Speaker
Well, tell me tell me something that that stuck with you. Oh, with me? Oh, well, so look at you flipping it all. That's anything with me, asking questions. yeah I love this. Listen, Dexter's been telling me about this place called Horicon Marsh, right? And, you know, when he came to Philly, I was like, oh, you got to check out John Hines, Wildlife Refuge, right? an urban refuge. It's big for a city.
00:09:54
Speaker
But man, we drive up to Horicon. It's like an hour north of Milwaukee where I was staying. And... We get to the visitor center and he's like, everything your eye can see is the marsh. And I'm like, wow, this place is massive, right? It's so big. There's wetlands, there's grasslands.
00:10:10
Speaker
And then he's like, we're going to go to this other spot in the marsh. Miyoko, it took us 20 minutes to drive there. Wow. This place is massive. We get and what was it called old marsh road or something dexter yeah yeah that yeah and we walk right out there miyoko and there's uh yellow headed black birds everywhere just black turnt black turns flying around like it's nothing turning like 20 black turns is nesting still there's there's white face ibis like it was just and then when they were on the way back my favorite part we're on the way back and you know we're trying to hustle back get to the airport or or we're going go visit our other homie uh chris and um
00:10:48
Speaker
this little bird is like running along the little rocky shoreline of the marsh. And I'm like, what is it? I'm thinking it's a sparrow, maybe a female black bird or some type. And, and, you know, Dexter's like, nah, man, that's a, that's a Virginia rail.
00:11:01
Speaker
And like, and And there's so little. And like right when he said it, the little silly thing popped up on a rock, made a little peep noise, and then ran away. It was like the cutest thing I've ever seen.
00:11:13
Speaker
so like You got it on camera though, which was really cute, that little moment. It's literally like three seconds. Yeah, every time I watched it, I just laughed because its it feels like it's out of a cartoon, right? Just like meeps and then runs away, which reminds me of that bird. That's perfect.
00:11:28
Speaker
How often do they do that? right Like, look at me. How often does that happen? like You hear them and they're just like, you're like, you're out there somewhere. you know i don't i don't get to see rails often. Like, and and when I do that, you know, they're screaming at me about something in the, in the New Jersey salt marshes. um So yeah, the, when you open this talking about how birds make you feel like I felt so good. like Not only like obviously spending time with my homie Dexter, but we had that space pretty much to ourself outside of all the fans that adore Dexter that popped in every 50 feet went to. But if you get a chance to go there, Miyoko, I'm just going to say like have Dexter take you over to HorrorCon immediately.
00:12:10
Speaker
Special place. I tell birders, like, if if you've never been, it's one of the best places you could go as a birder. Just to at least say I've been there. And it is so big, you won't see it all.
00:12:21
Speaker
But all my birder friends always say, when you're coming in town and and and if you're in Wisconsin and you're earshot away from Horicon Marsh, please let me know and I will take you to all my little favorite spots and you will leave just like full.
00:12:36
Speaker
So yes, grassland birds galore. Look, he saw so many birds. i was like, hey, you want to go see these nesting bobbling? He was like, I'm good, bro. I'm good right now. Yeah. I was also starting to get hangry. So he was taking me to get a cheeseburger at Culver's, which was amazing also. He got to go to Culver's. That was epic too. That's like, that's almost on lifer level, you know, like lifer bird level. You come to Wisconsin, you got to get some Culver's.
00:13:02
Speaker
but Yeah. i love a moment like that. Cause it's ah something that's going to like crystallize always as a part of that moment and that place and who you were with Dexter. Yeah. That's so beautiful.
00:13:13
Speaker
yeah always so Yeah, that was a special day. That was a special day. We ended it on a 92-acre sanctuary owned by a friend of mine named Christopher Kilgore, who runs an organization called Color in the Outdoors. And he's like... his mission he's like he's the outdoorsman like this dude does everything yeah like i'm a birder he's a hunter a fisher like he he fishes he forages he maintains land he does all these amazing things i was there yesterday uh for a foraging event with uh alexis nicole the black forager was there and then also sam thayer who was a really really famous like he
00:13:55
Speaker
I call him the plant God, you know, like that like Sam is like, Sam is like legendary when it comes to to plants. But to be on a space like that owned by a black man, 92 acres, his own private little lake. And i it's it's mind blowing. And it's about 15 minutes from Horicon March. So it's kind of like that two for one. So when you come visit, I'm going to take you to some special places,
Merlin App Development and Impact
00:14:18
Speaker
Miyoko.
00:14:18
Speaker
All right. Thank you. On my list. Yes, yes. as As Jason and I are are walking down Old Marsh Road, sometimes I might hear some sounds or things that I don't recognize. And all of a sudden, when we were hearing these little peeps, and I was like, welcome. That was a rail, but I couldn't like figure out exactly what it was.
00:14:40
Speaker
So we open up the Merlin app and it says Virginia rail. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is so cool. And it's like guiding us down this road. And it's like within five feet of us. So I'm like, you know, I use the tool. All these people use this tool all over the world. Like Jason said in the intro, over 22 million people.
00:15:00
Speaker
What was the inspiration behind the creation of the Merlin app? Yeah. I mean, honestly, the inspiration was seeing how many people were attempting to ID birds back at a time when we didn't have such tools.
00:15:14
Speaker
So I think these ideas came up around 2008 2009. there's a fiscal downturn. and I work with the team that builds the All About Birds website here at the Lab of Ornithology. We really wanted to do more for the website, but we didn't have the funding to do anything more. We couldn't hire a web developer. And we said, let's put our heads together. like Maybe we can come up with a proposal that could help us get some funding to do something ah for this. And so we got in a room, and it was with our web developer and our our other web designers and web team and We were looking yeahia at what people were doing on the All About Birds website. And most people were trying to ID birds, but they were trying to do it by typing in descriptions in there like, you know, I saw a medium brown bird.
00:16:03
Speaker
you know, some stripes or something. And, you know, that was going to bring up all kinds of stuff. So, you know, one of our team members said, know this game, it's called 20 Q. It's on the web. And it's like that 20 questions game you play where some you're thinking of someone and someone gets to ask you 20 questions and see if they can guess it. And you said they use this machine learning to home in on the answer. The machine guesses what you are thinking. And we said, oh, we got to do that for bird ID. Like, what if we could ask you 20 questions about the bird you saw? And then, you know, are you know we we tell you what what it was. Sorry, I think I put that backwards.
00:16:46
Speaker
you You would tell us clues and 20 questions about the bird you saw, and then we would tell you the answer based on machine learning. So that was the nugget of the idea.
00:16:57
Speaker
What we did was we applied to the National Science Foundation, and we wrote a grant saying, look, this is an idea that we think is so powerful because... A lot of people see birds, but they may not have a bird ID book. They may not know somebody. They can ask, what is that bird? And the name of a bird is so powerful.
00:17:16
Speaker
You know, it's like um when you meet an acquaintance, ah one of the first steps to becoming their friend is when you know their name. And I i think it's similar with birds. when you know i love it Yeah. You've got a new connection with it.
00:17:30
Speaker
You could also look up more information about it. And it's just like opens this door. And so what if more people knew the names of the birds they're seeing? That was the premise. Beautiful. Opening the windows to wonder, learning the names of your neighbors. That's the new, you know, shout out to Danielle Bellany for that one.
Bird Migration and Discovery Through Apps
00:17:50
Speaker
because They are our neighbors, you know, and the more we learn about them, the better. And it's kind of it's kind of wild. I can't imagine like we interviewed Ike. Ike ah went to school at Cornell. He just graduated recently.
00:18:02
Speaker
But I can't imagine being literally in like a place that is always doing, you know, All this bird research, always doing on the cutting edge. Like you you mentioned, having access to all those sounds with the Macaulay library and all these amazing researchers that are always doing things. And always tell people what I love most about birds is I'm always learning something new.
00:18:23
Speaker
And I can't imagine you, you know, being, being where you are working, where you're at, that you're always learning some amazing things about but birds and birds got some pretty amazing superpowers.
00:18:33
Speaker
Is there one that still blows your mind about a bird? Like, there's no way. Like, how do you do this? Is there a bird superpower that just blows your mind? Yeah, well, I'll answer that question in two parts. um So first, I'll do the part that maybe doesn't seem as obvious.
00:18:50
Speaker
But to me, the biggest superpower of birds is that they change people's hearts and minds, and they make us want to do more to connect with the spaces around us and protect them. I think that's an undersung power of birds. And I mean, really, you talked about them being neighbors. They're all around us. And once we start seeing them getting to know who they are, yeah, it's just this amazing power that they draw us in and it becomes a lifetime pursuit and it can change our lives.
00:19:19
Speaker
That's amazing. In terms of the more straight out answer, i have to say, you know, just to me, the migrations of birds are the most mind blowing thing. And the fact that they can do it, some of them with such precision to come back to the exact same spot year after year, the distances they go, the navigational know how they have. Yeah.
00:19:41
Speaker
Same. host That's also the superpower that blows my mind. i think Jason said that too, right? Yeah. So three of a kind. Yeah. Yeah. like I just, I am always amazed by them and and all of them.
00:19:56
Speaker
and it And it comes up randomly, right? It's not like I'm always looking to be inspired necessarily, but sometimes they just they just do it, you know? um And sometimes they do it through other people. And I missed my opportunity to ask you, but there's probably those same superpowers that people are discovering through migration by using an app.
00:20:14
Speaker
Like Merlin. Right. And have you have you found any moments where any particular stories of people discovering those birds and you finding out about it that it that you are i probably going to remember for a long time? Any particular experiences where you knew like, yeah, we did something really amazing?
00:20:32
Speaker
I mean, i think to me, what's really amazing is just, I mean, it harkens back to that first superpower of birds is just the moments, the many moments that are happening with you people taking that phone out of their pocket and having that that time with birds. So when we were at Biggest Week, I'll give you an example. ah So Peter Kessner was one of the other speakers. 10,000 birds.
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, he's the first person to see 10,000 birds. It was like something. Yeah, probably now,
00:21:09
Speaker
But okay, so think about this comment coming from someone who's seen that many birds. But to hit a story that stuck with him about Merlin and a moment of discovery, personal discovery, is that he was just walking along. I think he said like it was a canal.
00:21:24
Speaker
ah There's a biker coming down. it was a mom with a couple kids on the bike holding a phone up in the air. Yeah. He just had this gut feeling that maybe Merlin was on her phone or something. So he asked her what she was doing. And sure enough, she had Merlin on. And she just said, you know, like, I've got my kids. She didn't have binoculars or anything. She just said, it just helps me see like, what else is around here. And I thought that was ah pretty amazing kind of moment. It's like, yeah.
00:21:55
Speaker
it's like ah It's like you're giving people their own superpower. The phone, right? It's like, ah you know, don't want to throw any shade at Batman, but he doesn't actually have any superpowers. He's just got billions of dollars, right?
00:22:07
Speaker
Well, this is a way to take technology and put it in the hands of the users. And I see the same thing around Philly all the time. I see people that have never been to one of my bird walks. I'm just out somewhere getting like a taco or something. And I see somebody standing on the corner near a bird singing with their phone up in the air, you know? And like, if you guys had to have a logo for the Merlin app, it would be like ah a homie just standing there with the phone from there, you know? um And a lot of those people don't even realize that the way the app started didn't even have the sound ID. It did have those 20 questions that you had to go through, right? But the the coolest part is when people...
00:22:41
Speaker
hear a bird and then they read about it and they're like, oh, bobolinks are rare in Philly. What's going on with them? And they go down the wormhole, right? is that Do you have any other conservation trends that you see Merlin pushing people towards? and And would you say that Merlin is helping us get into this golden age of birding?
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so you mentioned the 22 million downloads, and ah since i probably wrote down that number, it's now at 30 million. So this gives you the sense of the pace of uptake.
00:23:11
Speaker
You mentioned Sound ID. That's really when it started to take off, right? So that was quite transformative in how people are using the app. And it hints... at you know this trajectory that we're on where this amazing um combination between birders, technology, and just conservation opportunity, right? So it's like the more people who are using these tools and apps, the more data are coming in because more people are learning the names, more people are wanting to keep their checklists.
00:23:42
Speaker
Some people are putting those into eBird. They're getting photos. They're getting sounds. All of those data are making the tools more accurately because we can ingest that and put it back into the app. We can go to new parts of the world where we have less data and try to get more people contributing. And then that pipeline of information does feed into all of eBird's tools once you submit your data to eBird. giving us the most precise and comprehensive information we've got on bird populations all around the world. And people are using those data in all different kinds of ways to help turn around bird declines where that wherever that can be possible. It is this massive movement of people who are coming on board.
00:24:25
Speaker
And thanks to you and so many others who are doing the kind of outreach that is helping to build that movement. And some of those people are going on to contribute those photos, those data that are actually powering conservation today.
00:24:38
Speaker
You know, I love, bro. Like every time I when somebody tells me one of them stories about the the Merlin in the air, all I see is little kids because lot of that is a great way to empower young people and and giving them some agency over their experience in outdoors. I do it with my children. I make sure that when I see young people at our walks. It's a good way to engage them with citizen science and and show them like, actually, we're having fun.
00:25:04
Speaker
But you're also contributing to that data that you're talking about that is helping us monitor those grassland bird declines and all these different things that we're seeing across the globe. And when they feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves and it's fun.
00:25:19
Speaker
I mean, let's go. Like, it is a superpower. You know, it it it really is when you really think about it. That is so fun. That is so fun. And i I had the, uh, I had the experience that the the fortune to be able to go to India in, uh, January, February this year.
00:25:34
Speaker
And they only had about, i think 30% of their birds that you could recognize via sound in Merlin. And my homie, Jeff Kenny, who was on the trip with us was on a mission. Like he was recording every sound he could and trying to get it uploaded. And it's, and it's like a, it's a very direct connection. Like when you, cause the Merlin app gives you a warning of like, Hey, just a heads up. We don't have that much data for this particular region you're in. And so in his mind and others, it was like, Oh bet.
00:26:00
Speaker
I'm just going to start, I'm going to start recording everything I can and getting good data. And it's, and it's, Most people don't realize that, that, you know, we are at a plethora of information in the United States where we have a lot of data in the library and maybe in some more developed countries, but in less developed or less traveled places, they don't. So like you literally through this app on your phone can contribute directly to understanding things about these birds and their numbers and their status.
00:26:25
Speaker
and And you don't have to go to university for four years. Like you're right there. And so that's, that's amazing. Yeah, I mean, i think that's so beautiful that anybody can contribute that way. And the thing is, there's a lot of things about birds that people still don't know.
00:26:37
Speaker
some Some of the urban birds are the ones that are lesser studied because a lot of field biologists want to go study things that didn't seem as common or didn't seem as easy to study. So there's always something new just to to watch and observe and find out. Always learning.
00:26:53
Speaker
it's ah it's that It's that lifelong learning relationship with birds that I cherish. You'll never know enough. Even with the having the app and having field guides and everything, like you'll still never know it all. And I think that's exciting. Always something to look forward to, even just traveling.
00:27:11
Speaker
like I tell people that all the time. like If somebody calls me a bird expert, I'm like... e Please stop. Like stop. is ah You take me outside of Wisconsin. I'm like, what's going on here? Where am i Where's my Merlin? You see Dexter running down the road with his Merlin app in the air. Like like a look. kid But yeah, you're you're always learning. And there's always those humbling moments when you're watching birds. And I think that that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. You'll never know it all. And I always love hearing those stories about people. Even on my birding club, though, people wake up to all this is this is the stuff right here, folks. So I love seeing when people post things.
00:27:55
Speaker
like a screen grab of what they're hearing around them on Merlin. And then they post it into like our Facebook group for our birding club. And like, look at all this stuff that I'm seeing right now. And because I always tell people, you don't got to go to Hurricane Marsh.
00:28:10
Speaker
You don't have to have a car. You don't have to have a fancy camera. You don't have to have binoculars. But most people have a smartphone. And I'm not assuming everybody does. Right. But if you can download Merlin app and take a walk around your neighborhood and always tell people you are going to be amazed at what you see that's been around you the whole time. And I just love it. You know, it could be 12 bird species and they like they're freaking out because now they know that these birds live around them.
00:28:38
Speaker
How's that make you feel when you hear those type of stories? To me, it's surreal. Like um at the time when we were working on this app and and launching it, we thought, you know, it'd be successful if, you know, we get, you know, a million people to use this thing. And so it far surpassed our dreams. We started in the US. We didn't even know, you know, how to go global at that point. ah So, you know, i want to just thank Jesse Berry, who has led this project for so long, built a team around it and built a vision around it.
00:29:11
Speaker
And And I want to thank all the hundreds of thousands of birders who are contributing, which make this app possible. um And like you say, it's just those everyday moments and and things that you discover were right around you the whole
Educational Value of Bird Cams
00:29:25
Speaker
time. You just need a little tip to help you cue in. Yeah.
00:29:28
Speaker
and We're all in this thing together that, you know, I tell that to to our club members all the time. Like, you don't you don't need to know what you're seeing. We can figure it out together. It's a community.
00:29:38
Speaker
I mean, when you're thinking about these hundreds of thousands of birders, as we all are out using this app, we're all, kind of you know, contributing to this data that ah that is making change, um real life change in a world. And it feels good. We're all in this together. It's all about that community.
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And there's another tool that is also one that I really love. So you know how we were talking about um how some of the most common birds are the ones that we might not even realize or that we don't know much about them. So we have these bird cams at the Lab of Ornithology that are just streaming twenty four seven And we have this this one on a red-tailed hawk.
00:30:16
Speaker
Right here on the Cornell campus. So one of the most common hawks that you see all around, but you know what? Watching these cams just showed so many things that we never realized about these birds. um I remember one time I was sitting right here at my desk. I just happened to have the screen up and right at that moment, the egg started to hatch in this red-tailed hawk nest. And the father was the one who was incubating in that moment.
00:30:43
Speaker
Oh boy. And we got to see the egg shell split open and the father just very tenderly removed this little part around the belly the chick and kind of pulled it off and cleaned it up and it was just the most tender thing you would never think that such a big rafter could be that tender. And so there's so certain things like that, where that I love being able to watch the journey of a particular bird or family of birds. It takes me back to those days in the pigeon coop. um
00:31:17
Speaker
But we could not have seen or shared this type of experience before without having the technology of these cameras and having the live streaming. This is all unprecedented stuff. in different ways that people are connecting with birds. And not everyone has the chance to, you know, see birds in Panama. And so we can stream from there. And I feel like there's a real community building around this type of experience as well.
00:31:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And i and i taught I have a lot of friends that are teachers. um And I've met more since i since we started in color birding. And, you know, one thing they all, a lot of them put in their classrooms are these, these they do have these white ca webcams accessible for different birds in different places and they use them in their modules, right? yeah And, you know, and it's is something I talked with, oh, you might've talked about it here, Dexter, but all these companies coming out with bird cams for the feeders, right?
00:32:10
Speaker
I think we would be... we would miss an opportunity if we didn't start to think about how to put those in classrooms, right? Because it's a very direct connection to the birds right outside the window, right? And I'm just thinking about what you're talking about with the hawk. And i and i i've I've been pumping my chest out all spring because I have on my little eighth of an acre of a yard here, I was, not me, obviously, but two Eastern bluebirds were able to successfully fledge three young ones, right, in a box that I put up for the first time.
00:32:40
Speaker
And that was exciting, but I'm at home the other day just in the back in the morning having my coffee and I see a gray catbird just fussing around in my yard, chasing everything away and I'm not sure what's going on. And then I look over and it lands on, I have some some native coral honeysuckle vines.
00:32:59
Speaker
And they're like thick bushes, you know, they got good shade and protection. And I look over and this stupid little mouth just comes out of the...
00:33:09
Speaker
This catbird is feeding this recently fledged catbird baby. and And I just sat there for 30 minutes and watched it go find worms. and the And the baby didn't stay still. It would hop around in the vines and just being able to spend those moments, right? And that intimacy, those those cameras, those webcams, like they provide this to people. um And you mentioned um your pop-up book and how like you want to go see these places, right? Like I think those webcams serve the same purpose of All right, kids, today we're going to spend 10 minutes observing the webcam of this harpy eagle.
00:33:44
Speaker
It lives in this place. This is what it does. This is what's going on with his conservation. i guarantee there's some kids in that classroom are going to say, all right, go ahead and put that on my list because I need to go there. I need to go see that in person, right? And that may be the scientist that grows up to actually help turn the tide for that species. right, or any other species in that area. I'm like, I just, I really want to encourage people to like see these pieces of technology as um a collective of tools that we can use to kind of educate and inspire one another. So.
00:34:15
Speaker
I totally agree. i think that whole notion of what what we can see that we we might not otherwise see, there's so many different ways to do that, whether it's through a webcam or one of these feeder cams, through a lot of the you know, sound tools that we're we're developing now at the Lab of Ornithology to to hear the wildlife that we can't see.
00:34:35
Speaker
And now when you go out birding, like when we were out there at Biggest Week on the famous McGee Marsh Boardwalk, the number of people cameras, right? and And increasingly video. And I feel that's a doorway for a lot of people too, is just like...
00:34:50
Speaker
what What images can they capture? And it's a different way to engage. Oh, yeah. Dexter was out there. i got some I got some footage of Dexter running around with this ridiculously expensive Sony camera. Shout out to Sony. Dexter needs a camera. So you can just send them in if you hear this. All right. They gave me this big old... Oh, he was out there.
00:35:10
Speaker
This is beautiful. Thank you very much. I love all this technology, you know? yeah You want to send me that setup, Sony? I would greatly appreciate it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We got to put it into the air, but it was funny because I had to go. i was actually kind of um working remotely because I had some big meetings that week, so I was like doing some different stuff. I got to the boardwalk like three hours later, and I see Dexter walking up. You can tell he had seen some things. you know yeah went on a journey with that camera. You know, and I don't think people realize that boardwalk is not that big.
00:35:46
Speaker
Like, you probably have community parks that are much bigger, but the amount of birds packed into every 10 yards or so is insane. And you never know what's going to pop up from ah redheaded woodpecker on a snag to a prothonotary warbler coming in and out of a nest hole to a thrush running around down there, right? Like, it's just wild.
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, gosh, I wonder if you saw maybe the exact same prothonotary warbler that we did, because for me, that's a really special bird because we don't get them that much in this area.
00:36:16
Speaker
And so I really wanted to see one that day. And as we were walking on the boardwalk, there was one about, you know, two and a half feet off the boardwalk coming out of this little hole. And it was the most beautiful thing. Yeah, it was the same one. Yeah, the same one. Probably thousands of people got to see this one prothonotary warbler pair.
00:36:37
Speaker
could have stayed there all day. Yeah, yeah. it It was sad, though, because there were some people that were so worried about getting the picture that they weren't enjoying the fact that they were watching a pair of prothonotary warblers nesting in an actual log. Yeah. coming in and out of this hole with moss and all this amazing stuff and i'm like i'm like y'all need to chill out do you see what you are seeing right now like you will get the shot it's literally like three feet from you don't worry about it you know um like that i always tell people i'm just like just relax get back to the joy get back to being in that moment and appreciating This bird, because you are not promised to see one, whether they may not be coming where you are, you know, here in Wisconsin, they nest
Conservation Efforts and Technology
00:37:24
Speaker
here. um So I get to see them pretty much every spring and summer. But I see still every time I see them, they're special. They're loud. They're bigger than most warblers. They're so bright. They're not usually shy.
00:37:35
Speaker
which is kind of cool you know they're not always you know like this in the air you know where where you can't see them so um enjoy those moments enjoy those moments because they're special they're special they certainly are and if I could jump back to a couple conservation things here really quick if you don't mind I wonder, you know, Merlin's been around for a few years now, even with the first version before it had the sound ID.
00:37:59
Speaker
is Is it contributing to any particular conservation trends for any species that you know of yet? Have people come back and said, hey, because of Merlin, we found this or or x you know, we got a 200% increase in data coming from this region on this bird. So it's helped here or there. Like any of those success stories? Because think that would be helpful for people to hear that like this amalgamation of data coming from all of this bird joy is directly connected to the things that come across your desk.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. so um So when people are using Merlin, I think of that as the the front door to helping figure out what bird you saw.
00:38:34
Speaker
And then when it comes to submitting the data that we're going to use for those conservation purposes, that's where we looked to eBird. Mm-hmm. And so we've got more and more people coming through that Merlin door and then setting up their eBird account and going in and and putting their data into eBird. And when that happens, it is powering these tools that today um we've got more than, i think, 495 bird species where we can show the trends at 17-mile radius. Like, that think about where you are right now and just 17 miles around you, for all of these species, are they going up or down in the past 10 years?
00:39:12
Speaker
We've never had that type of precision insight before. And we can see these incredible movements of birds. So it's both ah through time, are they going up or down? And also through time, where are they? You know, are they in the south, flowing up north or are they going back down? Where are they breeding? I'll give you one of my favorite examples of how these data have been used.
00:39:35
Speaker
I come from California and a lot of my family live in California. Yeah, California Central Valley. have some relatives who do farming in the Central Valley. The Central Valley used to be this vast, vast wetland. Now it's a lot of agriculture supports a tremendous amount of food across our country.
00:39:54
Speaker
um But it means that there's, you know, less than 1% of those original wetlands remaining for all these migratory shorebirds coming up from South America, flowing over California and then up to the Arctic to breed.
00:40:06
Speaker
So we need to help these guys on these thousands of miles of journeys to be able to stop and refuel. And even though we don't have those natural wetlands anymore, rice fields, it turns out, ah you know... You can grow them in such a way that they're providing wetlands for birds. The challenge is that farmers typically dry their fields out each year in between crops, and they'll do that typically before the shorebirds are coming through. But thanks to the eBird data,
00:40:37
Speaker
You're able to look at an animated map. You can see exactly when they're coming through, which areas they're using most. And so the Nature Conservancy in California worked with farmers to pay them to flood their fields at just the right times, creating what we call pop-up wetlands. So tripets are migrating through pop-up.
00:40:56
Speaker
They look down and there's a wetland at just the right time. And so they land. And you know what? That has been far more economical to create those pop-up wetlands than to try to somehow do traditional conservation on those lands. We've got agriculture and birds coexisting and the data from eBird really helping to drive a possibility like that. And that's the type of innovation, the type of precision that I think we're going to see more and more of as more of these species get enough data to do that type of work. So people, yeah, keep submitting those checklists because, yeah, that's what powers these kinds of solutions.
00:41:32
Speaker
I love it so much. These conservation efforts are happening. That example with the rice fields and wow, turning them into pop-up wetlands. Let's go. i love I loved how excited you got too. Like I was like, this matters. And my uncle was like, pop up. We're going to pop up on them.
00:41:50
Speaker
We're going pop up on y'all out there. Pop up some habitats. We need to pop up more habitats all around the country. I know. That's a great way to do. Actually, yeah. You know, when I think about eBird um and you you mentioned eBird there briefly, and I'm thinking about Merlin and, you know, how people that's the gateway or they come in through Merlin and they're like, oh, wow now I can start to track all these different birds that I'm seeing and create my list and different things. And eBird, can you speak a little bit to how the Cornell Lab ensures that we're protecting birds while gathering data? Yeah, I mean, so ah in terms of your question, do you mean like more conservation examples or birding and, you know, not disturbing the birds? Kind of conservation, but also that also making sure that we're protecting sensitive birds. I know that they don't show locations for certain birds and things like that.
00:42:44
Speaker
I know that's an example, just kind of a little bit of both. Yeah, that's a good example that if there's ah a bird that is going to be sensitive, like in terms of its conservation status or its nesting and not wanting to disturb that nest, they can vary the amount of precision that's going to publicly display.
00:43:01
Speaker
But we do have the data behind the scenes, you know, to inform conservation measures. So that that's one thing. But yeah, I mean, there's just um going to be, I think, an accelerating number of these kinds of examples coming up. um Another one of my favorite examples is you know, we were talking about birds and grasslands.
00:43:21
Speaker
You know, aridland birds are also really struggling. And um in some of the sagebrush habitats, you've got declines of these, you know, sage grouse. And one of the reasons that I learned about is that there's this invasive grass called cheatgrass that has spread over millions of acres now and it's really flammable. And so these entire landscapes can go up in flames every three to five years and then the cheatgrass just grows back in. the grouse don't like it, it doesn't provide a good nesting cover, there's a lot of other sagebrush birds that don't do well in those conditions.
00:43:56
Speaker
But they found that when you can plant the natives, you see the birds rebounding. And now these Eber data can show, okay, where are the areas where if you put in the restoration, you'll get your biggest bang for the buck.
00:44:10
Speaker
wow And so that's important because when you have millions of acres of this cheatgrass, you cannot just magically reverse millions of acres. You've got to be strategic about it. So those kinds of things are so critical when there's not a lot of funding dollars around and we've got to apply them as best we can.
00:44:29
Speaker
Strategery in science. Yeah. no often that and That's you know something that people usually get to too. is like you know they They get to the point of saying, oh, I want to help these birds. I want to help these sage grouse. Here's the problem with the cheatgrass. And then they start to toil around in their own mind on how would I, how would I do that for millions of acres? Like, well, could you burn it? Well, what if burning doesn't help, right? What if it's some sort of perennial that comes back even harder after you burn it, right? What do you do to the rest of the environment? We're dealing with that here with smaller spaces, right? Like we have invasive grasses at some of our national parks near Philly.
00:45:04
Speaker
And they're trying to figure out how to, how to deal with the invasive plants in order to help the birds. But that process is quite destructive sometimes. and It's not always easy. um But the beautiful part about this is that like people now can find this kinds of information on a lot of the tools that you're building Cornell, right?
Birds and Community Building
00:45:21
Speaker
Where they can go as far down the rabbit hole as they want to go. They can get into Merlin, they can get into E-Bird, they can get into All About Birds, right?
00:45:28
Speaker
And one of the beautiful things about that is that it increases this agency for folks to have a connection to the land where the the farmer in rural Pennsylvania can get the same data as the young college student going to school downtown in Temple University in Philly, right? Like they can get the same data, they can get the same information. And so Was that part of the design for Merlin is to make it accessible the same way or or make it equitable to all communities?
00:45:57
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. um The idea is that probably so many people have mobile phones these days who may not have a field guide. And so if we can make this kind of information readily available to people on their phones, it whether it's eBird data, which you can go to eBird.org and you can explore and you can see all the maps that we've been talking about right for your area, um or whether it's Merlin and you're submitting from anywhere in the world and we're working with communities in different countries who are really helping to surface the data needed to make Merlin work in those countries. So, you know, we sometimes say that these are tools that
00:46:33
Speaker
We build for birders, but they're built by birders. It's literally these millions of people who make it happen. And so, yes, we sometimes talk about wanting to democratize you know the availability of the data, democratize these tools, democratize science, just make it that anybody can participate, anybody who's curious and anybody who wants to can can be a part of it.
00:46:56
Speaker
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. It's the right thing to do. You know, when you think about it, I don't know if you all have heard about this story about these Sandhill Cranes that adopted the Canada goose gossling. Have heard about that story? I saw it. So this is in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. And these Sandhill Cranes have literally adopted a Canada goose into their family.
00:47:22
Speaker
hasn't abandoned it, like literally raising this, this, this gasoline into their family. And it like, it's doing like sandhill crane stuff. Like it looks around like the cranes and like, like it it has some of these like crane behaviors, but like it doesn't eat the same things as the crane. I remember when I first saw that story, I was like, man, if only human beings could be like that.
00:47:45
Speaker
If only human beings could look at each other like we're family, we're neighbors, I'm going to take care of you like these sandhill cranes did this little gosling. And when I think about birds, I always think about those moments where they just make me feel and realize like what really matters, you know, like how it connects you to the world around you. What have birds taught you, Miyoko, about just being human?
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i think especially a time like this where politically our country feels very fractured, you know birds are a common element that people can relate to. It doesn't matter what your politics, it doesn't matter what your religion, where you live, how old you are. They're an incredibly accessible force that everyone can experience in a common way. And we see, I feel hope because we see that across the U.S.,
00:48:38
Speaker
um There's widespread support among all of our neighbors here to value birds and to value our our open spaces. So to me, that is a very special thing about birds and about people connecting around them. So you are surrounded by brilliant students all day coming in and out of Cornell, brilliant colleagues. You so you know you you are brilliant yourself. And all of that context, right? And seeing this golden age of birding kind of come about.
00:49:08
Speaker
What is your best advice for the next generation of young birders that are coming about with all of these things at their fingertips with this, as you just described, very real need to lean into
Advice for Young Birders and Rapid Fire Segment
00:49:21
Speaker
conservation? what's What's your biggest advice for them?
00:49:23
Speaker
My biggest advice is to follow your passion. i think for me, it was really important in my life that whenever you know my mom was giving me advice about you know what was I going to do when I grew up, she just said, do something that you love.
00:49:37
Speaker
And i that was just something that I internalized and I always wanted to do something that I loved and I've never regretted it for a moment. And the thing is, a lot of ah young people who connect with birds sometimes may not realize there's so many different things to do in your career and you could make birds a part of it or you could make sustainability a part of it.
00:49:57
Speaker
mean, look at the two of you, you've made it a part of your lives and your avocations. And here at the Lab of Ornithology, it's very multidisciplinary. So we have educators and we have artists and we have computer programmers and engineers. And honestly, in terms of the emergency that we have with birds declining and so much of nature needing our help, we need people across any profession. And it could be something as simple as just like helping make the windows safer at your workplace. Or it could be, you know, maybe you're working on policy and you're going to help make a policy that's better for birds. Maybe you're a librarian and you're distributing books that are about, you there's so many different ways to do it. And so I just want, you know, all our young people to keep that in mind, you know, just build around your passion. And we need people who express that passion in different ways.
00:50:50
Speaker
So beautiful. All hands on deck. Let's go. Save our little feathered friends, you know? this has been beautiful. I can, honestly, I could continue to talk to you and more and more and more. where i have so many questions that I could still ask you, but. We're going to wrap this up, but we're not going to wrap this up until we do a little Bird Joy rapid fire with you, um which is, you know, like i this is kind of like our thing now. I don't think it's going anywhere. It's really fun. Yes. Yes.
00:51:21
Speaker
So we have to do some Bird Joy podcast rapid fire with you. I'll let Justin start it off. All right. All right. Here we go. What Merlin feature are you most proud of? Oh gosh. um So I am most proud of the sound ID feature because it for so long was difficult to crack that that challenge. And it's amazing to see it happen in the lives that it's touched.
00:51:46
Speaker
Now you got millions of people running around like this.
00:51:51
Speaker
i love it. I love it. I love it. What's one AI development you think will revolutionize bird conservation? Right. One of the amazing AI developments is the ability to put a device out in the environment and it's recording everything it's hearing and it's telling you what it heard. And I think that is going to be a game changer in terms of us being able to get a really understanding of what's happening, even in the places we cannot put our foot on the ground every day.
00:52:18
Speaker
That's good. and That's good. All right. what's ah What's a conservation challenge you believe technology can help solve? I believe technology can help solve So many conservation challenges that just require people to know that a bird is declining in the area, because until you know that, why would you act upon it? So, yeah, I think about the passenger pigeon, a species that was the most numerous bird on Earth that went extinct.
00:52:45
Speaker
And we can't see those signals. We can't act on them. If you could add any new superpower to Merlin tomorrow, what would it be? It would be to somehow take people from that moment of joy when they do ID that bird to having an idea about something they want to do to keep that bird around. It's as simple as doing something in their yard.
00:53:07
Speaker
Like that nest box you mentioned, Jason. There's so many different ways to do it, but I would love to find that little avenue. like I was just going to say that to you in another question. I was like, I'll save that for another time. But I was thinking, okay your Merlin app, here's a Boba Link, right? And it says, is this your bird? Yes, this is my bird. So exciting, right?
00:53:29
Speaker
And then then there's just another prompt that pops up that says, would you like to help? and And it won't even take you somewhere right away to go for money. It'll be like, well, this bird requires this kind of habitat. Do you live in a space that has this? If you do, here's some of the organizations that do this work and- you know You can contact them and get in touch with them. And you know we literally have those conversations here. We had a church that had boblings behind it. The church had no idea what it was. The state came, mowed down the field. they didn't know what was going on. This year has gotten better, but like that is that is we are on the same wavelength, Miyoko.
00:53:59
Speaker
like that's I love that answer. Sorry to interrupt the yeah that fire, but that's like... That was literally the last rapid fire question. She like read our mind a little bit. I know,
Conclusion and Community Emphasis
00:54:10
Speaker
right? Like turning the birds into action. That was our last question. It really was. Wow. Incredible. incredible Miyoko, this has been absolutely fabulous. We're coming up on the hour here. Where can folks learn more about your work and support Cornell Lab?
00:54:24
Speaker
Yeah, definitely come over the All About Birds website. It's allaboutbirds.org. You're going to find all kinds of information about birds there. You'll find our Living Bird magazine. You can get involved in so many different ways. So that's where I'd love for you to check out.
00:54:38
Speaker
And I hope that we can have both of you come here at some point. I would love that. Okay. All right. they love good You know, can come up there and see some of them birds up there. And we, I think we mentioned this before when were talking to Ike, we were like, how we get to Ithaca.
00:54:54
Speaker
got get definitely yes yeah We will find a way knowing Dexter and I, we will find a way to get there. So trust us. We'd be so excited to have you here. So yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Miyoko, any final words of inspiration or call to action for listeners?
00:55:12
Speaker
I just say thank you to all of you who are just out there enjoying your birds and spreading the joy with all your friends and family. We are going to be able to make a difference when we have that critical mass of people who love birds and really know how and what to do to help.
00:55:27
Speaker
So yeah, love it. Let's go. want to thank everybody for joining us today on the Bird Joy Podcast. We hope you enjoyed exploring the world of birding with us in Miyoko. This has been fantastic.
00:55:41
Speaker
Shout out BIPOC Birding Club. We're rolling through summer. Lots of good stuff going on. Check out what we got going on at BIPOCbirdingclub.org. Thank you. Thank you to both of you. This has been incredible episode and we'll see you all next time. And as usual, if you're in or around the Philly area, incolorbirding.org. We're going to have our first bird trivia or game night here in late July. So come through. Yeah. And thank you again, Miyoko, for being here.
00:56:10
Speaker
Please share this, subscribe, shout out this podcast to all your fellow birders and help us spread a little bird joy. Peace, everybody.