Webinar: Flying High – The Journey of Migratory Seabirds
Aired June 8, 2021
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hello everyone. Welcome to our World Ocean Day program. My name is Meaghan Cuddy, and I am an ocean educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and happy World Ocean Day. We are very excited to have everyone join us for our special program today. To celebrate World Ocean Day, we will be talking to Dr. Autumn-Lynn Harrison about her work studying migrations of seabirds from the Arctic to the tropics. So it's going to be a great program and we're just going to give everyone a minute to join our webinar. So while people are joining, you can use the Q&A button, which is the button with two speech bubbles located on the bottom of your screen, to let us know where you're joining us from and to let us know what you love about the ocean. So feel free to get in touch with us, tell us what you like. We have some answers coming in already from people. Rachel saying, all the animals in it, getting a suntan and that it's pretty. So those are all great things about the ocean. Please keep them coming.
So while everyone is joining our webinar, we're going to go over just a couple of details about the program. This is a webinar, which means that your audio and your video are off and we cannot see or hear you. So the best way to communicate with us throughout the program will be to use that Q&A box that you're all finding right now. And your comments will be visible to our Smithsonian staff, but not to any other attendees. So please do keep them appropriate and keep them on topic. And I see many of you are finding it. We have Barbara who loves the birds in the ocean. Eunice loves dolphins and tropical fish. Lily just finds the ocean so interesting. Bryson is interested in the animals. So we got some great, great ocean explorers here joining us today. So you can also use that Q&A box to answer, or to ask questions to Autumn-Lynn and to answer our questions for you.
So you can submit a question or a comment at any time, but we'll probably ask most of the questions at the end of the program. So make sure you stick around until then. And we'll be asking some questions today using polls. So if you are on your own device, you can go ahead and just click your poll answer. But if you're in a classroom or in a group, maybe take a vote in your classroom or your group and then submit the most popular answer. Or if you're having trouble using that poll, you can always just give us your answer in the Q&A. And we'll be happy to read it. And we have some special guests, some museum educators, Laura, Caroline and Marion, who you might also interact with today. They'll be answering some of the questions in the Q&A box if we're not able to get to them on air. And last but not least, we do have live captions available for today's program.
So you can turn them on by clicking the CC button that is located on the bottom of your screen. And with that, I think that is all of the details for today's program. Thank you to everyone who's been writing in from Ireland, Toronto, Ohio, Ontario, all over, people telling us the things that they enjoy about the ocean. We're so happy to have you with us today and I think we are going to get started. So once again, welcome to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and happy World Ocean Day. So today, June 8th is World Ocean Day. But here at Natural History, we are celebrating all week long because we think World Ocean Day is so important.
It is a day that reminds us to celebrate our ocean and think about how we're all connected to the ocean and how we all play a part in protecting it. So it's a great day to learn about the ocean and a great day to be thinking about the things that we need to do to keep all those things that we love safe on our planet. But the ocean is not just about what lives underwater. There are 350 species of birds that rely on the ocean. And today I'm super excited to talk about some of these amazing birds with our guest scientist, Dr. Autumn-Lynn Harrison. So Autumn-Lynn, do you want to join us?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Hi everyone.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hi Autumn-Lynn, how's it going?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Really good. I love World Ocean Day.
Meaghan Cuddy:
We are so excited to have you with us today to talk about these cool birds. I'm already so interested in some of these birds I'm seeing on screen, so I can't wait to get talking about them. So you are a research ecologist at the Migratory Bird Center, which is part of the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, which that is a mouthful, Autumn-Lynn. Tell me a little bit about it.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
It is. My office is at the National Zoo, but I work for the Migratory Bird Center, which was actually founded by an act of Congress in the 1980s. So really an austere event that founded the Migratory Bird Center to promote understanding and conservation of birds and really in response to observations of population declines. So we are a bunch of scholars and educators that study and work to save migratory birds.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. And I know you work with a lot of partners, one of which is Environment Canada, right?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Yes, exactly. I'll be talking about some of the work today that we've collaborated with Environment Canada and the National Park Service on, but we work with many different partners because I study migratory seabirds that may travel through many different countries. And to do this work, we have to work together.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, it is so collaborative and I think that's so cool. So can you tell us a little bit about your job as an ecologist? What do you do on a day-to-day basis?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, an ecologist studies where and why animals are where they are and how many there are to make sure that populations are safe and healthy. My day-to-day job is a mix of field work, that I see you've pictured in these slides, and then we come back to the office, analyze the data, work with our partners to write up our results and publish them in books and journals.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. And I know you've gotten to travel to some really cool places, one of which is Utqiiagvik, what makes that a special place?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, this place is the most northern populated town in the United States of America. It's at the tip-top of Alaska, above the Arctic Circle. So I feel really honored to have been able to work in the community there.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. So I'm so excited to talk about these birds and how they're migrating. But before we get into all of that, let's start at the very beginning of the story. So what actually is migration?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
In its basic terms, it's a seasonal movement of animals from one place to another. So shown on this slide is a beautiful migration of sooty shearwaters that nest in New Zealand. They travel across the Pacific Ocean to forage in the summer in New Zealand or in Russia and Japan and California.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. So it's kind of amazing that all of these animals are on the move this much. I wouldn't think they'd be moving around that much. I don't move around that much.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
I know. We make trips back and forth to the grocery store. We don't have to go from pole to pole [inaudible 00:07:24].
Meaghan Cuddy:
I know. It's much easier. Now I feel like I shouldn't be complaining about traffic ever. So you study lots of different birds, but since today's World Ocean Day, of course we're going to talk about seabirds. And I don't always really think about birds when I think about animals that live in the ocean, but there are a lot of different species of birds and a lot of them migrate, right, Autumn-Lynn?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Absolutely. Most are migratory actually.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That's so cool. And so we have some pictures of some of them here. And I have a question for everyone who's actually joining us today. I'd like to know why do you think all these birds are migrating? A poll is going to come up on your screen and let us know what you think. What is causing these birds to go all over the place? Why aren't they just going to Safeway?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Some of the gulls are.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That's true. I've seen a couple when I've gone to the beach. I've definitely seen a few in my grocery store parking lot. Autumn-Lynn, do you have a favorite seabird by any chance?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
The seabird I was most excited to hold in my hand is pictured on this slide, the Arctic tern because this bird makes the longest animal migration in the world. So longer than any land animal, longer than a whale, this bird migrates from the Arctic all the way to Antarctica. So just thinking about that little bird in my hands and that it's just come back from this long migration has to be one of my favorites.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is such an amazing experience. That is so cool. All right, we are getting so many answers from you all. I'm going to close this poll in just about five seconds, so get those last answers in three, two, one. All right. And we have so many answers. Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts with us. And Autumn, people are kind of split. We've got a lot of ideas here, but most people saying they think that it's to avoid weather that's too hot or too cold. So what do you think of all these answers we're getting?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
I think everyone did great and we actually gave a small trick question because all of those answers were correct. So everyone's correct. But I'm really interested in the unique ideas that you all put in the Q&A as well.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, it's really interesting to hear. We have a bunch of questions already about this work that you're doing, so we'll get to all those questions in just a little bit. But Autumn-Lynn, I know that these birds are, they're raising their young in one place, they're finding food in another place. Why are they doing that?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, seabirds are this amazing marine animal because they have this dual existence. They get to spend time on land and at sea. And the best place to make a nest is not on top of the ocean waves, but actually on land. So birds make their nest on land, but then after the nesting season, the best place to find food is the ocean. So they may spend three-quarters of their lives over the ocean after the nesting cycle. And birds of course also migrate to avoid predators. And in the case of the birds I study in the Arctic, when the Arctic starts to freeze, the birds are out of there, so to avoid really harsh weather and to travel to places that have better options for them.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, I think that that makes so much sense. I definitely like to avoid the winter if I can. And we did get some really cool answers from you all at home. So other people talking about maybe things like pollution or habitat loss. So we'll talk a little bit later about how humans are impacting this too. But those are great thoughts. All right, so we know these birds are migrating, we know kind of why they're doing it. So let's get into the specific birds we're talking about today. So here are some pictures of them and I'd like to know from everyone watching, what are some things that we're noticing about these birds? Maybe some colors that we're seeing or some shapes. Let us know how big maybe you think these birds are. And while you're giving us some of those comments about what you're noticing, I'd also like to know, do you think these birds are the same species? Is this the same kind of bird? And a poll's going to come up for that. So let us know what you think.
People are noticing. The birds are gray, that they have black heads. I noticed that right away that they have these, it almost looks like they're wearing little hats. We're seeing that they have hooked-shaped beaks and a lot of people noticing that they're gray. The gray color is really striking a bunch of us, Autumn-Lynn.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Why do you want to study gray birds? You'll find out.
Meaghan Cuddy:
They're pretty cute though, I have to say. I'm not going to lie, I'm not always a big bird person, but these birds are very charming little birds. And we're also noticing that they have some patterning on their stomach and they have long tails in their back, which I think Autumn-Lynn's going to talk about in just a second. So it was a great observation, Katherine. All right, we're going to close that poll down. And let's see. So most people are saying, over 50 percent, that these are different species that are closely related to one another. So Autumn-Lynn, let us know how did we do on the pop quiz of birds.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
That 58 percent of you that said that they are closely related but different species are correct. These birds are not the same species, but they are closely related. We would call them sister species. They look very similar. Genetically, they would be very similar, but they are different species.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Okay, so we've got three birds that we're talking about today, the pomarine jaeger, the long-tailed jaeger, and the parasitic jaeger. So can you tell us maybe some of the things that do make them different and make them unique?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Sure. And I'll start with something that makes them similar. The jaeger word is actually German for hunter. So these birds are all predatory seabirds. They're hunters, even though they look so cute and beautiful, The long-tailed jaeger is the smallest. You'll see it's really long-tail feathers that it only has during the breeding season. And then the parasitic jaeger is in the middle. It has a tiny little elongation to its tail, but for the most part, not so much. And then the largest bird is the pomarine jaeger, and its tail has these kind of rounded or wedge-shaped feathers that actually twist. So during the breeding season when those tail feathers are there, they're really easy to identify. But outside the breeding season, it's difficult to tell these three species apart.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, I definitely don't think that I could tell these apart in the wild. Can you tell them a part when you're out there?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, don't worry, Meaghan, because [inaudible 00:14:20] experts get confused, especially we scientists do at-sea surveys from boats to count birds and see where they are. And these three species often get grouped together because it's difficult to tell them apart at sea.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, I would imagine that when they're zooming by, it's probably kind of hard to tell what they're doing. We have a couple questions, Autumn-Lynn, asking about if their colors help them blend into their environment. Are they gray because that helps them blend in?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
They are really difficult to see even in the Arctic on the nest. They sit really low on their nest and often they nest around a lot of lichens which are growing on rocks. So they're kind of in between these rocks and lichens and then little tundra plants. So that does help them stay camouflaged. But there's often this thought that many seabirds are white underneath and darker on top because when predators are looking up toward the sun, they will be camouflaged against the bright sunlight of the sky. So that's one theory about why they might have white bellies, but dark backs.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so interesting. So we know a little about these jaegers now and I definitely think they're very cute, I'm very invested in their journey. So let us follow them on their migration and we're going to start in the Arctic because that's where they start, right?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Exactly. That's where they raise their young, build their nest. That's really the start of their annual cycle.
Meaghan Cuddy:
And they spend the summer months in the Arctic, right?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
They do.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So we know these birds are in the Arctic in the summer. I'd love to know from some of us watching, what do you think the Arctic is like in the summertime? Do you think it's cold and snowy? Is it hot? Is it bright? Is it dark? And if you have any other ideas or any other scientific predictions or hypotheses, you can let us know in the Q&A. And Autumn-Lynn, you've spent some time in the Arctic in the summer, right?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
I have. A lot of our collaborators welcomed me to the Arctic to teach me about Arctic fieldwork. And definitely my first trip there was a bit disorienting because of the answer to the poll. So we'll find that out soon.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. So we're getting great answers. We'll leave it open for just a couple seconds, but we are getting some awesome answers from you all. People saying that they think it's going to have lots of mosquitoes, that it would be bright, that it's maybe foggy, maybe it's not like sunny, but it's foggy. And a couple of people talking about how maybe it's getting hotter in the Arctic too, which I think is really interesting. So let's close our poll. And it looks like most people are saying mild, but mostly daylight. So Autumn-Lynn, tell us a little bit about what you've seen when you've been there.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Yes, it's usually mild. We have 24-hour daylight above the Arctic Circle in the summer. So my first time camping there, working in the field in a tent, it's still bright at 4:00 a.m.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh my gosh.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
We have some 80-degree days. So sometimes it's hot, but usually mild, sometimes foggy and cloudy. So lots of folks have good answers. And that mosquito question is front and center on this slide.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So we're seeing a video of some of the bugs flying around in the Arctic, right?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Exactly. So these are lakes that the birds nest nearby and you can see that there is a lot of good food for their chicks.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So this is a great place to nest if you are jaeger, it looks lovely. So that leads me to my next question for you, which is how do you actually track these birds to find them and to know where they're going to go?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, there aren't very many roads in a lot of the Arctic. So step one is usually to take some good hikes out to where their nesting habitat is. So this picture is from Denali National Park where jaeger's nest actually in mountain tundra, a little bit south of the Arctic Circle. We call that the subarctic. But we're hiking across a river bed here and we're about to hike up the sides of those mountains to get to a nesting habitat where the jaegers are.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh my gosh, that's exciting. So once you get to where the jaegers are, then what do you do?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Then we watch them for a while, we try to find their nest. So we oftentimes will walk straight lines to try to flush the bird from their nest because they're so low, they're hard to see in the tundra. But once we find that nest, we go over to the nest and we set a trap. Here I am with Laura Phillips, she was an ecologist at Denali National Park, and we're setting what's called a bow net trap. It has a spring and a line that runs from it. And after we set it, we pull the top back, we go back and hide, the bird comes back to the nest eventually, and then we pull the line. A lot of times the bird doesn't even notice that this little bubble has just popped over it until we start to run to make sure that we can get to the bird quickly.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. So you got the bird, you caught it very calmly, very successfully. So then what do you do once you have it?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So then we usually take a lot of measurements. The first thing we always do is put a little metal band on the leg. This has a unique number that tells where the bird was banded and who banded it in case it's ever found again. And then we take a lot of measurements, we weigh the bird, we measure their wing. And here I'm using a little spring scale attached to a bag that has the bird in it. And you can see the little tail feathers of the long tailed jaeger coming out of that bag. And just a super secret here for all you budding marine biologist and ornithologist, this is a Tom's shoe bag that comes with Tom's pair of shoes, that is the perfect size to weigh a jaeger. So [inaudible 00:20:35] using.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Very sustainable, yeah. Why make something new when we have shoe bags. All right. So then the next step, what is that?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So then the next step is actually to attach a little satellite tag to the back of the bird. And I brought one with me today. So this is a tiny little solar-charged satellite tag. It's like a GPS tag, a little different technology, but this only weighs the amount of an American nickel. So it's very lightweight.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Wow. It's so tiny. I feel like that really shows me how small these birds are.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
And this is really tiny compared to the bird as well. So this gets charged by the sun and it gets worn with this ribbon. This is made of Teflon, like the lining under frying pans. It's pretty strong material. And these ribbons go over the top of the legs and then the tag just sits on the lower back of the bird.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So Ben is asking, is this like a GPS? So is it kind of like a GPS on the bird?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
It's kind of like a GPS. It's a little less accurate. But to get something in that small package that also transmits back to me wherever I am, it's a little less accurate than a GPS, but really similar, like the GPS on your phone.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That sounds good to me. So once you've got our bird, all suited up with its tag, then what do you do?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Then we just log into a website on the computer. Oh, before we do that, of course we have to release the bird back into the wild. So we release the bird. Typically, we'll watch them for a little while. So they fly away, they go back to their nest. We want to make sure that they do go back to their nest and they're attending their eggs or they're typically incubating eggs when we catch them. Jaegers tend to go right back to their nest. They are very good parents. They'll defend their nest and try to swoop in on you when you're near one. So they're great parents. They go back to the nest. And then we just watch them for a little while and sit back and let the data come in.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. Yeah. So then you set them off to go do their thing. And can you tell us a little bit about what that's like? How long do you track them for? And then Kiara wanted to know, does it interfere with their lifestyle in any way?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
It's a great question. We always think about that when we're working with wild animals. So the first thing is we try to track them for about a year. We'd like to get a full migration so we know what this bird is doing in all seasons of the year, but the tags stay on for about a year to two years. And ultimately the ribbon degrades, the birds preen their feathers and might pick at the ribbons. So we hope that the tag will fall off so that the bird is not carrying the tag forever. And that gets at Kiara's question. We have tried to make these tags as tiny and attach them in a way that doesn't interfere with their lifestyle. So jaegers use their wings a lot. They are acrobatic in the air. And so we don't attach a tag anywhere near their wings. They don't often use their legs, they don't walk very much. And so that tag is just sitting on the lower back as out of the way as possible and really lightweight compared to the size of the bird.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, it's pretty cool to just sort of see it stuck on its back. It's like wearing a little vest or a little backpack. So we now know that we catch these birds, we apply these trackers to them, and then you get this satellite data. So we actually have some of your data to look at, look at what a real bird was doing. So Autumn-Lynn, can you tell us a little bit about what we're looking at and what this bird was up to?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Sure. We're really interested in studying what birds do when they're over ocean, but also when they're breeding in the Arctic because that will really help us think about future effects of climate change and how their prey might shift. So this first slide that you're seeing represents some of their movements when they're nesting in the Arctic. Jaegers switch again to this kind of land-based lifestyle during the summer. They leave the oceans for the most part and they nest on land. But we're like, is that really true? So that's what these tags will tell us. And these little dots here show on every satellite transmission on every day of the year during their nesting season whether their movements were over land or whether they were over water. And that helps us think about what they might be eating.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So what day are they usually eating when they're over the land?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
When they're over land, jaegers are known to really love these little mammals called lemmings. And I know, it pops up and it's just so cute. [laughs]
Meaghan Cuddy:
They are really cute.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Can't even think about a bird eating a lemming because they're so cute. But it's all part of the circle of life. But this lemming is a really popular snack for long-tailed jaegers and pomarine jaegers. And many people think that, it's actually been pretty well shown that jaegers only have successful nest when lemmings are present. So they definitely specialize on lemmings. But we are showing with this data that they actually use ocean habitats a lot too.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So now we kind of know what this data is telling us. It's where our jaeger that has been tracked is flying over land or over water. And so now everyone watching us, let's be the scientists. So what is this data telling us? Is this telling us that the jaeger is eating only fish? Is it only eating salmon? Is it eating mostly salmon and then lemmings and fish? Or is it eating lemmings and fish, the whole season long. And we did get a lot of questions Autumn-Lynn about what these birds are eating. Sienna was wondering and a couple other people too. So I'm glad that we got to the mystery of what they're snacking on.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
And we can only infer, which means strong educated guess, what they're eating from these data. We don't see them actually eating. But these data give us that kind of first look at what questions we should be asking and maybe we want to do some diet studies after this.
Meaghan Cuddy:
It sounds like these are actually some pretty mysterious birds. There's still a lot of mystery around them.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Especially their migrations. There are some studies from the 1950s where someone actually made the jaegers regurgitate what they ate. This hard-won meal, but actually after you learn how they get their food a lot of times maybe, you won't feel so sorry for them.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right, so-
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
That's coming up next.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Coming up next. All right, so let's get into this Autumn-Lynn, it looks like most people think that it's eating mostly lemmings from June to August, but it's eating lemmings and fish through the whole season August or June to September. So let me know, what do you think of this response?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, it looks like we have a lot of great scientists in the audience that hopefully I can hire in the future. These data suggest to us that they are switching from mostly land-based diet to ocean-based diet as the breeding season progresses. And that gives us, again, a window into maybe more studies that might be needed to see what they're actually eating.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So we have some answers, but that also has left us with more questions.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Always.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So these are seabirds. So if they're switching to eat things from the ocean, does that mean that they're starting to get ready to migrate and maybe get ready to move offshore?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Yeah, a couple of things are happening. Their chicks are getting older and they're going to start to get independent from the parents. So maybe they might also be starting to feed for themselves or maybe they need something from the ocean, but the birds are starting to get ready to switch to that land-based lifestyle, to that marine, ocean-based lifestyle in around August.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. So we've got a lot of miles to cover with these birds. So let's continue following them on their migration. And we're going to start with the smallest of these sister species, which is the long-tailed jaeger. So Autumn-Lynn, can you tell us a little bit more about it and about what it's up to?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So I just think this bird is so beautiful. It is predatory, but it's thought that it often makes its living kind of skimming food from the surface, little fish or a marine insects that live on the surface of the ocean. It's about the size of two bananas, is about what it weighs. I'll use bananas for the rest of the birds, but about two bananas, very acrobatic. And yeah, we were really interested to see now where they go after they leave the Arctic.
Meaghan Cuddy:
And I mean I think it's pretty well named because that is a very long tail on this bird.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Exactly, exactly.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So I know that this study that you all did was to find out where they were spending the wintertime, but can you tell us a little bit maybe about what you think these birds would need in a place where they're going to spend the winter?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, they definitely need warmer habitats than what the Arctic turns into in the winter. So they're in search of some tropical habitats that have a lot of food for them. And we just really didn't know where birds from that particular Arctic in Canada, what ocean do they migrate to, where do they go? So generally we know the tropics, but we had no idea other than that where this bird would go.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. So let's find out what your team learned. So Autumn-Lynn told us that these birds are probably going to go to the tropics, but we don't know where exactly that will be. So before we reveal the answer, I'd love to know from some of you, where do you think long-tailed jaeger went after they tracked it? Do you think it went to the Caribbean? Did it go to Mozambique, which is on the coast of Africa or did it go all the way to Micronesia, which is in the Pacific Ocean?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
I didn't know either, everybody. So you're participating in the scientific process right now.
Meaghan Cuddy:
And Autumn-Lynn, we did get a bunch of questions about the tracking process. So while this poll is running, some people were wondering how many birds you were tracking and how often you get data back from them.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Great questions. These little tags are programmed to transmit for eight to 10 hours and then turn off for 48 hours while they recharge. So we get positions hourly within an eight-to-10-hour period, and then the tag switches off for two days and then back up. So really every two days and then a series of points within that time. And remind me, Meaghan, what the other question was.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh, how many birds?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Good. Good question. We try at the National Zoo and at the Migratory Bird Center to really minimize our sample size so that we're studying the lowest number of birds that we can to get some of the conclusions that we need. So in each site we have deployed around six to eight tags, and that includes a couple of sites in Alaska and one in Canada. So six to eight tags at each site.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Cool. All right. And while we've been learning about that from you, we've had a lot of people giving us their ideas and we have a pretty split audience on where we think this jaeger was going, but it looks like most people think that it went actually to the Caribbean. So Autumn-Lynn, can you tell us were we right?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, there are long-tailed jaegers in the Caribbean, but this bird did not travel there. It actually went to the Indian Ocean. It went around South Africa and in the waters of Mozambique and the channel there.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh my gosh. So it went pretty far. It was booking it.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
It was amazing. That's a long migration.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So this is a beautiful tropical habitat. I'm loving this nice happy jaeger that we're seeing there. And he's having a great time in this tropical location. Can you tell us a little bit about what they're getting up to when they're there?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
There's really warm water when they're there in the winter. Our wintertime is summer in southern Africa, and this bird is using these warm waters of the Mozambique Channel, maybe following some fishing boats that are catching fish. They are known for being very smart with how they obtain their food. And we'll talk about that with the next species. But really enjoying these Mozambique travel photos. I wish I was there.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, I know. It's beautiful. All right, so this bird really did quite a trip, but let's take a look now at our next species, which is the parasitic jaeger. And I actually have a question from Ronan who wanted to know about this bird, why is it named that? He's asking, "Does it have characteristics similar to a parasite?"
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Ronan, did you steal our script? This is exactly what we're going to talk about next. The parasitic jaeger is named because it actually is a bit of a parasite. So all of the jaegers are known for this scientific term of feeding called kleptoparasitism. And kleptoparasitism, klepto stands for stealing. So klepto, steal. Parasitism, you're doing this to another bird species. So in this photo you see a parasitic jaeger, you actually see two, there's a dark face and a light face chasing these terns here, trying to get them to regurgitate what they've just eaten, or if they had fish in their mouth, they would drop the fish and then the parasitic jaeger would swoop in and grab them out of the air. So parasitic jaegers are known for this being one of the dominant ways they find food.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Wow, that is quite a lifestyle. And do other jaegers do this too, or just the parasitic jaeger?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
They do. It's thought that long-tailed jaegers kleptoparasitize other birds the least, and parasitic jaegers, of course, with their name do this the most. So this is another thing that we'd like to find out. We have very few at sea observations of what these birds are doing. So it would be really neat to track them with a little accelerometer that could tell us when they're chasing after another bird and when they're actually doing this behavior.
Meaghan Cuddy:
They're pretty cute, but they look pretty tough in this picture. So I definitely wouldn't want one chasing me around.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Very tough.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right, so now we know a little about our parasitic jaeger, and we want to know where is this one going? So we're going to launch another poll and tell us what you think. Do you think Autumn-Lynn and her team also tracked this parasitic jaeger to the Caribbean, Micronesia, or did it also go to Mozambique? Maybe all the jaegers were hanging out together. And we have a few other questions, Autumn-Lynn, asking about their colors, which we talked about a little earlier, but asking if males and females are colored differently.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
They look almost the same, males and females. There's a slight difference in body size. So females of the jaegers typically weigh a little bit more than the males. So sometimes we can tell that when we weigh them, but usually you need to actually take a blood sample to determine or feather sample to determine whether the bird that you're tracking is a male or female.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh, that's very interesting. All right, we've got a lot of answers from everyone joining. So I'm going to close our poll down in three, two, one. All right, and we are once again pretty equally split. There's a lot of indecision in here, which I think speaks to the fact that these are mysterious birds, but most people are thinking that maybe it goes all the way to Micronesia. So what do you think, Autumn-Lynn?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, this bird actually went to the Caribbean.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So what was it doing in the Caribbean?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So I love that the parasitic jaeger is the species that went to the Caribbean from Canada, because the Caribbean is this place where you think about pirates and pirate flags. And this really is a bird that's like a pirate. It steals from other birds. So there are lots of other seabirds in the Caribbean that nest in the Caribbean, birds to steal from. And then of course, good fishing in the Caribbean. So this bird is really capitalizing on all of that.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh yeah. Great place to steal a few fish. Chloe was asking, where are these birds in the food chain? They eat fish, but are they in the middle, at the top?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
We call them predators. So they are predatory seabirds. They are at the top of the food chain. But of course there are always some bigger species that might take a jaeger as a snack. And of course humans can affect them too. So these are predators.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. And Riley is letting us know that they love the sunglasses on this bird, which I also love. This is a bird on vacation and I love it.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Me too. And the artist, our friend Laurel Mundy, she's been working on a series of comics to tell this story, and this is her rough sketch that she just came up with. It's amazing.
Meaghan Cuddy:
She's awesome. All right, well we have one more jaeger to go, and that is the pomarine jaeger. So let's learn a little bit about that one.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So the pomarine jaeger is the biggest of the species. So it weighs, let's see, about five bananas. So even though it's the biggest, it's still not a very large bird. And the pomarine jaeger is a little different than the other two species. They tend to come back to the same nest site every year. So they find a place in the Arctic, they stay there to nest year after year, the pomarine jaeger roams all around the Arctic looking for lemmings, those cute little mammals, and finding a good place to nest that way. That makes it really hard to study because you often don't see the birds in the same place from year to year. So the migration path you're about to see is the very first record of a full annual cycle of a pomarine jaeger.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Wow, that is so cool. These are a very mysterious bird.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
They are.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. So this is our last one, everyone. So let's see. Where do we think the pomarine jaeger migrated to? Micronesia, Caribbean, or Mozambique? And Eunice would like to know, how long does it take them to raise their chicks?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Oh, that's a good question. The whole breeding cycle includes laying the egg, incubating the egg, and then raising their checks. Their chicks are pretty independent, not too long after they hatch, so they hatch and then within a few days they're already running around the tundra. So it's really hard actually to get a handle on that because it's hard to find the chicks. They're really well camouflaged, but pretty much when they hatch, let's see, in Alaska at the end of June, and then they're starting to get ready for migration the beginning of August. So sometime in there, their chicks are becoming really independent.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Okay, cool. Very, very quick growing species. Quicker than me. All right. It looks like most people have answered our poll. So let's take a look. And it seems like by process of elimination, a lot of people are thinking maybe this bird went to Micronesia. So Autumn-Lynn, tell us where did it go?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
This bird did go to Micronesia. It was a complete surprise for us. There are pomarine jaegers in the Caribbean. In fact, it's a pretty common jaeger there. So we thought maybe the birds that we tracked would also go to the Atlantic Ocean, but this bird went all the way to the West Pacific and it took an amazing trip.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, I cannot believe how far these birds can go. I know you tracked it on its whole migration, so about how far did it travel?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So this pomarine jaeger actually circled over all of the West Pacific 19,000 kilometers or 12,000 miles all during the winter period. So just kind of roaming over these coral atolls and reefs. And that's about five times as long as the Mississippi River. So about a six-month period, it made that whole trip around Micronesia.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is amazing. I know there's a lot of islands for it to visit, so maybe it just really wanted to get a good sense of everything out there.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Really beautiful.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Definitely. Oh my gosh. And we did have one question from actually a couple people wanting to know about the pomarine jaeger name. So is there any particular reason it has that name while we're still on this bird?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
You've stumped me and I've looked up that word before and I just don't remember at the moment. So if someone's Googling right now, you stumped the scientist [inaudible 00:42:53] the answer.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh, mysterious. These birds, even their name is mysterious. So they're traveling really far. They're traveling up and down the Mississippi River five times. That's crazy. So how are they actually able to do it? What are some of the adaptations that they have that allow them to make these really long journeys?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Thanks Meaghan for asking that. Yeah, they're really differently shaped than a lot of the birds that you might see in your backyard. One really special thing about seabirds that you'll see in a lot of seabirds is this shape of their wing. You'll notice that it's really pointy and long. It looks like a bit of an airfoil. So it's really designed to harness the wind, not designed to cut through forest or trees. For that you would need a shorter, broader wing, but these wings are just amazing or beautiful.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So that definitely, I'm sure helps them stay on this long path. And then what about these glands that they have?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So seabirds have some salt glands kind of right above their eyes, and that helps them to excrete salt from their prey and from water that they consume while they are foraging. So that really helps them process the salt.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That seems like it would make a lot of sense because I'm sure they're getting a lot of salt spray in their face as they're making these long migrations.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
When you feed from the ocean, you're bound to swallow some water at the [inaudible 00:44:26].
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh, definitely. There's some salty birds. We had a question asking earlier about if they're waterproofed in any way. Are they good at swimming?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
It's great question. A lot of marine birds do have kind of an oil on their feathers. So they have waterproofing. That's very common in birds like loons that it keeps the water from soaking into their feathers. And loons, for example, were used to create waterproof bags in the Arctic region. So their feathers, some skins were used for that purpose. So they have this kind of built-in waterproofing. Some of these birds dive, some seabirds dive, so they actually plunge dive, and that's just a different way of finding their food. A little more work than kleptoparasitizing maybe.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, definitely. So those are some really amazing migrations. I can understand why these birds are able to make these long journeys. And just to sort of recap, your team tracks these three species of jaegers all over the world. One went to Micronesia, which was our pomarine jaeger, the parasitic jaeger that you tracked went to the Caribbean, and the long-tailed jaeger went to Mozambique. But is this the end of the story? Do we now know that all these jaegers are going to these places? And Lucy is asking a similar question, why are they going to far tropical places if there's a tropical place that's closer by?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So this is really just the beginning of the story. These little satellite tags kind of serve as a pair of high-tech binoculars allowing us to, for the first time, watch where these birds go across the planet for their entire migration. Some jaegers have also been tracked from Europe, so some long-tailed jaegers and parasitic jaegers. And interestingly, those European birds also went to Africa, the long-tailed jaegers. And the parasitic jaegers from Iceland also went to the Caribbean. So this tells us a little bit about maybe the origins of how this species spread across the planet, their evolutionary origins. So that kind of gets at Lucy's question of why do they go here when they could go somewhere closer. Maybe when the Earth was shaped differently, when continents were distributed differently, that's when this species evolved. And so this becomes innate. So some genetics work and additional studies are needed to get the full story.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So it sounds like there's definitely more work to do.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Always.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So we're not sure exactly where they're going to, where they're going, or how every individual is traveling, but we do know that they all go back to the Arctic.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
They do.
Meaghan Cuddy:
And when did they start to make that journey back to the Arctic?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
So they're doing that right now, I mean right now. I logged in earlier today and one of the long-tailed jaegers, the one that went to the west coast of Africa, so Senegal and The Gambia, that bird is just making its way back to its nest right now. So its last positions were just off of Greenland, and then it'll be back at its nest site in a day or two.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. I can't believe that you're able to just of watch it while it's going on this journey. And we know that these jaegers are traveling across many different countries. So as we move into the last part of our program, I'd love to hear in the Q&A, just let us know, how many countries do you think these jaegers might be going through? And Autumn-Lynn, as they're crossing all of these nations, I'm imagining that there's probably a lot of challenges that they face and a lot of difficult things that they encounter. So what are some of the things that these birds have to deal with?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, I'd say the first thing is that migration is hard work. So it's very physically demanding. Just naturally, it takes a lot of work to make these migrations. And that again, gets to Lucy's question, why do this? There must be some payoff at the end. But it's physically demanding. So the birds that make it, succeed. And then as they're making these long migrations, they might encounter humans that are fishing and some seabirds are actually interacting with these fishing boats, they may follow behind them, mistake a bit of bait on a hook for food or get entangled in nets. So those risks are always there.
Meaghan Cuddy:
And then one other thing is impacting them too, and that's climate change.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Especially for birds that nest in the Arctic. So climate change will affect our oceans, maybe change sea surface temperatures, but for Arctic nesting birds, they may actually lose nesting habitat or redistribute. The Arctic is changing really rapidly. Trees are moving north. And so the Arctic typically doesn't have trees. And in some places, permafrost is starting to melt as well. So these changes to the Arctic, something that we're interested in for shorebirds and seabirds that nest there.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Definitely. And with all these changes, I think it's probably really important to protect some of the places where these jaegers are traveling, where they're nesting and where they're spending their winter. And on World Ocean Day, which is today, it's a day for us to think about how we should be protecting these places that are special for these species. And this year we're thinking a lot about this concept called Hope Spots, which are places around the world that have been identified by Mission Blue as places that are critical to the health of our ocean, and really important places where people are working hard to protect marine life. And luckily, two of these jaeger locations that we talked about today in the Caribbean and Mozambique are places that are Hope Spots. So people are educating their communities and creating protected areas to help animals like jaegers thrive. And there's even a proposed marine protected area at one of the jaeger stopover points as they return back to the Arctic.
So a lot of work is being done to protect them. But I'd also like to know from some people who are watching us today maybe what are some things they think they can do to help protect these jaegers and other migratory animals? And Autumn-Lynn, I know you have a lot of great ideas for this too.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, I'll be really interested to hear all the good ideas from the audience. And we at the Migratory Bird Center think about this a lot and thinking about simple actions that everyone can take to help protect birds.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So we're getting some great answers from people saying maybe things like beach cleanups or decreasing bright lights or leaving these birds alone. Maybe those are some good things to do?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Leaving birds alone if you don't have a permit to study them, keeping your distance on a beach when you see seabirds nesting on a beach, thinking about how pets that you're taking on a walk might impact birds. And so keeping dogs on a leash on a beach when seabirds and shorebirds are nesting, keeping cats indoors. And then others mentioned lights. Lights actually are very disorienting to seabirds, but to any migrating birds. So turning lights out at night and thinking about how your windows are viewed by birds as well. Planting native plants is something everyone can do in their backyards to attract birds and keeping plastics off the beach, reducing plastic consumption will help keep plastics out of our ocean. So lots of really great actions that everyone can do.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, those are all great ideas. And we're getting so many great ideas from all of you, especially thinking about things like reducing plastic bags, reducing our litter, and maybe even becoming a marine biologist when we grow up so we can help the seabirds ourselves, which I think is a great solution too.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Yes. And we got one question, actually. Oh, I'm taking the question from the Q&A's, but bird friendly coffee, I just wanted to answer really quickly while we're on the slide. There's a research program at the Migratory Birds Center around coffee and how it's grown in the tropics. And many traditional coffee farms are just kind of a single monoculture, but that doesn't provide good habitat for birds. So bird friendly coffee is coffee that is grown in more natural habitats with a range of different tree heights and species that birds like. And so you can find this in Whole Foods or order it online on the Migratory Bird Center in the National Zoo's website.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh, that is an awesome plug for some coffee that'll make me feel good about the birds. All right. So Autumn-Lynn, I learned so much today. Thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us about all of your research. And thank you to everyone for joining us. We do have a couple minutes for questions, but before we start questions with Autumn-Lynn, I do just want to remind everyone that it's World Ocean Week. So if you enjoyed this program, please join us for one of our other programs this week when we'll be talking about Adorabilis, which is a deep-sea octopus. We'll be talking about climate change in the Arctic, and we have a Spanish-language family program on Sunday, which is all about fish movement. So feel free to join us for any of those programs. But Autumn-Lynn, we're still on birds for today, so I do have some time to answer some questions.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Of course, absolutely.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. So if you have questions for Autumn-Lynn that you haven't already put in the Q&A, feel free to drop those in there now. But we have so many awesome questions from all of you already. It's going to take me a minute to pick out the first one to ask. All right. So we have one that I think is super interesting. Does it matter if the birds reach the Arctic on time and could they survive in the Arctic if they stayed there when it was cold?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
That's a good question and something that we try to assess with satellite tags. Because it allows us to observe when they arrived and when they depart. And one thing many of my collaborators are studying that live in the Arctic year round is when the insects emerge and if there is starting to be a mismatch between when the insects come out because of a warming Arctic and this more programmed timing of birds arriving at the right time to take advantage of those insects. So that's something that we'll likely study in the future. But definitely timing is really important. And also to make a territory and to find the nest site that you want getting there before other birds is imperative as well. So there's always a bit of territoriality.
Meaghan Cuddy:
A little bit of competition.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Exactly, exactly.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. That is really interesting, especially thinking about how that'll affect other species in the future too. Steve wanted to know, how do the jaegers and maybe other migratory birds navigate? So how do they know where to go as they're doing this?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
That's a good question. Not one that I study. There are colleagues that are studying navigation of seabirds. One thing I'm really interested in is how they find their prey. So this pomarine jaeger is roaming five Mississippi lengths around Micronesia. We do know that seabirds have a really good sense of smell. So that's one way that they can navigate to find their prey to cue into these little signals. And then some of this may also be genetically programmed. So one of the big questions is always, what do they respond to in the moment and what might be more genetically programmed?
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, it's pretty impressive that these little birds are able to find what they need in the giant ocean. All right. We have a question from William about you. So what advice would you give to an aspiring scientist?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Well, it's a good question. I did my degree in wildlife biology at Virginia Tech. So I went to college and majored in biology. You don't have to go to college to be a scientist. I actually think you can be a scientist and have a scientific mind without having all of those degrees. So reading books and learning is always a good first step. But I was trained in a lot of this, and I think I always wanted to be a biologist. I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in a place that there were people just that loved the outdoors. And so I spent a lot of time there. I did a lot of internships to learn more about other subjects, and ultimately got a Ph.D. in marine ecology and started doing this work. But again, I have many scientist friends that don't have those degrees. So I think just having a real passion for learning, not giving up, you can get a job in science. [inaudible 00:57:48].
Meaghan Cuddy:
Definitely. There's lots of great jobs in science and it's so fun to get to explore these questions and get to hang out with these birds and do all kinds of cool stuff. So it sounds like a cool job to me. All right. I think we have time for just about two more questions, maybe three, because this is a two-part one. We have some people asking, do these jaegers eat different types of fish or only a specific species, with a follow-up by Chloe, who would like to know, do they eat bananas?
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Chloe, that's a good question. I've never tried to feed a jaeger a banana. So I would say not a common food choice. They're actually not like gulls. So they will eat a wide variety of things. They will eat marine insects, isopods, they will eat songbirds, shorebirds, goslings a wide variety of fish, but they're not scavengers like gulls. So you don't see them at the landfills or the garbage dumps. But I think that question about what they eat over the ocean is something we know so little about. Given that for the pomarine, and this is the first time that we've gotten a full migration, we have a couple of other tracks, the partial migrations, but we just know so little.
So one idea I've had is to Google jaeger stealing food, and you actually get a lot of pictures of them chasing after other species and then you can identify maybe the fish that the other species had in itself. And so I'm thinking of maybe a crowdsourcing education project to get students involved and thinking, what are these jaegers eating at sea from all the people that take pictures and share them online?
Meaghan Cuddy:
Oh, that sounds like a great next step and a really cool project and a perfect place for us to end today's talk Autumn-Lynn. So thank you so much for joining us and thank you to everyone for all of your great questions and comments and for celebrating World Ocean Day with us. I learned so much and I hope you had as much fun as me.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Thanks everyone.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right, thank you. Have a great rest of your day. And make sure to check out some of our other video webinars throughout World Ocean Week. But until next time, bye.
Autumn-Lynn Harrison:
Bye.
