Once Upon a Checklist

I’ve done a lot of things to find birds. For starters, I’ve gotten up really early in the morning. Way before sunrise, at times of the day which up until then had seemed theoretical.

I’ve gone to some strange places, too. To a research camp in the middle of the Cameroonian jungle. To a marsh near JFK airport where we found a whole abandoned wharf in the reeds, complete with a jet-ski. To a Maya ruin on the Yucatan peninsula. To Staten Island. But I’ve got nothing on this episode’s guest, Nathan Hood, whose birding habit brings him to... well, let’s save the surprise.

You’ll also hear from animal behaviorist Dr. Emily Shepard, about the strange things seabirds will do in the name of survival.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

-Jer

DISCLAIMER: This episode contains descriptions of high-risk birding. The host of this podcast is in no way recommending that listeners put their personal safety at risk in order to see any rare birds. Or non-rare birds. This statement hereby absolves the podcast host of responsibility if listeners choose to bird in any situations including (but not limited to) the following: hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, flooding events, high winds, killer bee swarms, planetary incursions, paranormal infestations, zombie apocalypses, non-zombie apocalypses, civil war recreations, second comings of biblical figures, and attacks by alien civilization in a nearby star system that consists of three solar-type stars orbiting each other in an unstable three-body system. The podcast host retains the right to modify this disclaimer at any point without notifying listeners. This disclaimer will remain valid in perpetuity.

On August 29th 1978, Don Roberson drove in a rental car up to a scrubby limestone forest on the North end of Guam. Using a hand-made guidebook he’d drawn himself with coloured pencils, Don managed to find and identify two of Guam’s rare endemic birds: The Guam Rail and the Guam Flycatcher.

He didn’t know it at the time, but both of those birds would go extinct in the next five years.

In this episode, I talk to Don about that day in Guam, to find out what it was like to catch a last glimpse of a bird that no longer exists.

On the first episode of Once Upon a Checklist we heard about the intimate experience of spending time with a single bird. In our case - in Don Roberson’s case - it was one of the last Guam Flycatchers alive on earth. It was a sad story.

This time we’re going full speed in the other direction. Toward joy, and glee, and huge numbers of birds. Really immense numbers of birds. Really very colossally spectacular numbers of birds.

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Special thanks to Kathy Mihm Dunning and Van Remsen. My son pilot is 100% inching his way towards a podcast takeover, so I ought to be thankful in the time I have before he becomes the boss. I will never stop expressing my gratitude to Alex Tomlinson for designing OUAC’s amazing logo, which’ll be appearing on more t-shirts very soon.

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Did you see the print from Episode 1? It’s a risograph print that is bright and brilliant in a 1980s Miami Vice kind of way, and I bet it’d look great in your summer home. The print for this episode is coming very soon (maybe even today) and although I can’t give you a preview I can say that it involves an optical illusion. If you want to make sure you get a copy, you can upgrade your subscription to the Checklist Aficionado level right now and you’ll get the 1st one, the 2nd one, and all the other prints for a very reasonable price.

Next month on the podcast we’re going to talk about the checklists that changed our lives. About the times when we left to go birding, and you came back changed.

Maybe you met the person you were going to marry?

Maybe you almost died?

Maybe you were reborn?

In any case, I want to hear from you. You can e-mail me with your checklist story at [email protected] or you can always get me on Twitter.

-Jer