E26. We borrowed a phrase from human dating and tried to pin it on birds. Turns out they never needed the rulebook. Dr. Wenfei Tong, biologist and author of Bird Love, joins Scott to unpack what bird partnerships actually look like once you stop projecting our scripts onto them, from females who run the territory to males who guard their paternity in deeply weird ways.

In this episode you'll hear about:

Why the drabbest little brown bird in the garden has one of the wildest sex lives in the animal kingdom
How a female calls the shots when she holds the better real estate, and what the males do about it
The cloacal pecking payoff you have to hear to believe

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

Laysan Albatross audio contributed by Ted Miller, ML117679
Black-capped Chickadee audio contributed by Jay McGowan, ML202239
Spotted Sandpiper audio contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML516963
Northern Jacana audio contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML140224
Red-necked Phalarope audio contributed by Bob McGuire, ML235440
Black Coucal audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML3084
Papuan Eclectus audio contributed by Thane Pratt, ML169808
Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML249827
Red-winged Blackbird audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML94215
Red-capped Manakin audio contributed by David L. Ross Jr., ML57360
Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
Greater Flamingo audio contributed by Myles E. W. North, ML2443
Dunnock audio contributed by Niels Krabbe, ML249162