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The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
PTFO - World War Tree: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Competitive Bird-Watching
00:59:56
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- [00:01]
Pablo Torre
Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
- [00:09]
Dan LeBatard
The North American podcaster. A modern species of extreme abundance. One defined as much by its curiosity as by its tweets.
- [00:26]
Pablo Torre
Right after this ad.
- [00:28]
Experian Ad Voice
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- [00:32]
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
- [00:33]
Experian Ad Voice
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- [00:44]
Pablo Torre
And guess what?
- [00:45]
Experian Ad Voice
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- [00:56]
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- [01:31]
Pablo Torre
So this is appearance number four for you, Mickey.
- [01:33]
Mickey Dujay
Fourth time. Yeah.
- [01:34]
Pablo Torre
It's no exaggeration to say that you are perhaps our most honored and weirdest correspondent.
- [01:41]
Mickey Dujay
I'm gonna make some business cards. That's. That's flattering. Thank you.
- [01:45]
Pablo Torre
I mean, you've allegedly broken the law for us sawing down a goalpost.
- [01:50]
Mickey Dujay
Had to go away after that for a little bit.
- [01:52]
Pablo Torre
You revived your former life as a goth tennis player. Also, you literally shoveled for us investigating Nikola Jokic's horse racing obsession. So what have you brought us today?
- [02:05]
Mickey Dujay
So, Pablo, we are living in a golden era of side quests, whether it's learning to get fit or hiking up a mountain learning to play a new instrument. This is a real moment where maybe because work life in 2025 leaves a little bit to be desired, or it just gives us a great excuse to get off of our phones and tablets. All of these pastimes are really booming.
- [02:32]
Pablo Torre
So just to preempt what I think you're about to do here, you're staging an intervention for me?
- [02:37]
Mickey Dujay
Well, I'm worried about you, Pablo. I mean, we've even reached the point where subjects of yours are tweeting that maybe you need a hobby.
- [02:47]
Pablo Torre
You've also, I think, astutely understood that the best way to get me to do something is to Trojan Horse it in the form of an episode of this show.
- [02:57]
Mickey Dujay
But I need a hobby, too. So I've brought a solution, actually, for both of us. It includes plants, which you love. I do. It includes tweeting. And not the tweeting you're kind of thinking, but this kind of tweeting. Oh, God, Pablo, that song that you just heard, that siren song is the sound of your very own new nemesis bird.
- [03:30]
Pablo Torre
Okay? So to just understand the concept of the nemesis bird, which is stunningly not a thing that PTFO correspondent Mickey Dujay just made up for us, we do need to go back about six months or so, because Mickey is a very busy and Emmy nominated documentarian and artist and animator whose original illustrations you can see as this episode unfolds over on our YouTube channel. But in a rare bit of free time, earlier this year, Mickey found himself at a party. A party that can best be described as elderly.
- [04:08]
Mickey Dujay
Elderly, okay. And as the subject of hobbies came up, I was doing my usual. I don't have a hobby, and I could probably use a hobby, yada yada. And as I was doing that, an older gentleman stepped up through the crowd and he was carrying a bottle of wine. And he came over to me, topped off my wine glass, and cryptically asked me if. If I had ever had a nemesis bird. And it was like such a spooky moment because he's staring at me.
- [04:44]
Pablo Torre
At which point, Mickey realized that he wasn't at any old, old person party. He was being watched. He was being watched by an increasingly tipsy group of largely bald and very serious bird watchers. The kind of obsessive competitors, in fact, who would argue about records and statistics and asterisks and honor, all of which turns birdwatching into something like a sport. And so now I'm visualizing, you know, the binoculars, the bucket hat, the bird.
- [05:21]
Mickey Dujay
Watching sort of regalia, all that gear, that glorious gear. And collectively, they all kind of flocked together, as it were, and started to tell me that having a nemesis bird is actually the most epic side quest you could ever have.
- [05:40]
Pablo Torre
Because a nemesis bird, it turns out, is a flying Moby Dick. It is the creature that keeps eluding you. And sure, if you only cared about statistics, you could technically just lie and say that you saw your nemesis bird whenever you wanted. Because bird watching, not unlike pickup basketball, does rest upon a certain code of honor in self reporting fouls, as it were. But the oddest thrill of the chase itself is kind of the whole point of this hobby in the first place. You may know where this nemesis bird nests when it migrates. And yet, despite Repeated quests to lay eyes on its feathers. It remains a ghost, which is a torture felt by birders of all ages all across the world, as we'll see.
- [06:39]
Mickey Dujay
But sometimes you can still hear it without seeing it, which sounds like it's even more torturous than if you can't see or hear it at all.
- [06:47]
Pablo Torre
So in that case, this bird is not merely ghosting you, but kind of haunting you.
- [06:52]
Mickey Dujay
Yes, that's the best way to put it.
- [06:58]
Pablo Torre
And just to be clear about what you're haunting me with already, that sound is the sound of, I'm not gonna.
- [07:03]
Mickey Dujay
Reveal too much more about your nemesis at this point, because I really want you to come to appreciate the real agony and ecstasy and even almost spiritual religiosity of this practice of birding. I've previously spent my life considering bird watching probably to be the lamest of all hobbies.
- [07:26]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I feel like a lot of our viewers and listeners may be thinking that very same thing to themselves right now.
- [07:31]
Mickey Dujay
Totally. And six months ago, I was right with them before, it was kind of my side quest outside of, you know, my old person party. And some of these people have traveled the globe to see thousands of birds each. Some have vanished into thin air amidst having a war with other mysterious birders. Or else they've spanned decades and continents, bushwhacking through rainforests, climbing up active volcanoes just to see their one single nemesis.
- [08:04]
Pablo Torre
So I should say that I think I actually, at this point in my life, appreciate birdwatching in theory more than you used to. I have gone to Central park, for instance, and, like, stared up at a tree among other people, looking at Flaco, the now deceased escaped Central Park Zoo owl. I've seen red tailed hawks in Washington Square park attack, you know, squirrels. And I have been a rubbernecker, if not a watcher. I just didn't realize that today, apparently, I would get to mix the metaphors here. A personal white whale, you will come.
- [08:38]
Mickey Dujay
To appreciate things like this. So this sound.
- [08:50]
Pablo Torre
Which, the more I hear, it feels like a crowd at a baseball game. Sort of like building an applause to Rudon, a pitcher.
- [09:00]
Mickey Dujay
So that sound, Pablo, is actually the mighty tail swish of the ruffed grouse.
- [09:09]
Pablo Torre
Okay, I see you're doing okay. We're doing the David Attenborough thing now.
- [09:13]
Mickey Dujay
And that, Pablo, is actually a close relative of the longtime nemesis of just one of the many birders that I met for you.
- [09:22]
Sharon Staetler
My name is Sharon Staetler, and I'm known online as Birdchick.
- [09:27]
Mickey Dujay
And Sharon described to me the satisfaction of finding Your nemesis as being this kind of ecstatic experience.
- [09:36]
Sharon Staetler
So when you do finally see a bird that you've been looking for, it's a dopamine rush. It is a high. I mean, I get this sensation in my chest and it, it is, it's up there with like having a 16 year old scotch or, you know, a really amazing orgasm. I mean, it's just. Actually, I kind of describe my perfect day as getting the trifecta of birding, bike riding, and banging. If I can have that, that is a perfect day.
- [10:03]
Pablo Torre
Shout out to Sharon. Shout out to bird chick. This, by the way, is the. This is the big, beautiful build I was hoping for. Birding, bike riding and banging.
- [10:12]
Mickey Dujay
It's the much better BBB for all the obvious reasons. So Sharon's search for her nemesis bird, the spruce grouse, coincided with a period of time in her life where she was also going through a divorce.
- [10:25]
Sharon Staetler
So right before the pandemic, my marriage ended and I went a little wild. And some people were talking to me about showing me spruce grouse. And the adult son of a friend of mine was like, sharon, I'd really like to help you find us. And thinking about the other person, I just said to myself, I was like, I wonder if I just started like offering like, I don't know, blowjobs for a spruce grouse, if that would be a good dating strategy. I'm just thinking out loud. I'm single now. I don't know what to do.
- [10:56]
Pablo Torre
You know, What I'm finding out today is that somehow the bird watching episode is also the most explicit one we may have done to date.
- [11:05]
Mickey Dujay
So Sharon actually gets in so deep that she starts dating a guy who actually has the same nemesis bird as her.
- [11:14]
Pablo Torre
A tale as old as time.
- [11:16]
Sharon Staetler
It's like, okay, the world's falling apart, but we're gonna get a spruce grouse.
- [11:20]
Mickey Dujay
While biking alone in Alaska.
- [11:24]
Sharon Staetler
I see this dark blob in the road moving and swishing its tail. And I just knew. And I gassed and I stopped and I tried to untangle myself.
- [11:33]
Mickey Dujay
She tries to untangle from her bike. Her bike falls over.
- [11:37]
Sharon Staetler
I'm trying to set up my spotting scope that I had in my bike pannier and I'm on the ground and I just.
- [11:43]
Mickey Dujay
She manages to take what she calls a craptastic video.
- [11:48]
Experian Ad Voice
Oh, my God, there's a second one coming in.
- [11:50]
Dan LeBatard
Holy, holy.
- [11:52]
Pablo Torre
Oh my God. Be cool, Sharon.
- [11:56]
Dan LeBatard
Be cool.
- [11:59]
Pablo Torre
What's funny about that video is that the Blair Witch style narration belies the absolute focus and clarity that we get on this video, which we're showing on YouTube, by the way, of the bird, you can very clear. I mean, Mickey. And it is. It's a big, beautiful bird.
- [12:13]
Mickey Dujay
It's presenting. It's swishing its tail feathers.
- [12:16]
Pablo Torre
It has, like a red sort of like, crown deal on top.
- [12:19]
Mickey Dujay
It's really puffed up and strutting its stuff. So Sharon describes this moment almost like seeing a celebrity, like seeing George Clooney.
- [12:29]
Sharon Staetler
Somebody might get super excited seeing George Clooney walk down the street, like, be cool, be cool. Don't freak out. Because if you freak out, the bird's gonna freak out and the bird's gonna go away. You wanna stay here and you wanna watch it. You don't want the bird to think you're a.
- [12:41]
Mickey Dujay
She describes it as a top five life moment. So just to complete the picture, here, here's a photo of Sharon right after seeing the spruce grouse.
- [12:57]
Pablo Torre
So what you see as she's wearing her bike helmet and her sunglasses is her celebrating, pumping her fist into the sky, framed by evergreens, as if she just scored the game winner in the World Cup.
- [13:09]
Mickey Dujay
Just look at the ecstasy, Pablo.
- [13:11]
Pablo Torre
It is, dare I say, an orgasmic level of satisfaction.
- [13:14]
Mickey Dujay
And given that, I mean, don't you wish that was you?
- [13:43]
Pablo Torre
So one big thing that Sir David Attenborough will not tell you, as much as I love the BBC documentary Planet Earth, is that the world of birding has been shaken by a lot more than merely the tremors of the human orgasm. It has been overwhelmed by technology and electrified by a civil war for its soul. But before we continue this parade of competitors whose eccentricities will truly rival those of the birds themselves, you should know that in the United States, the bird started going from something to be shot and worn to something to be watched and counted. Not that long after the actual Civil War, around the late 1800s, a much.
- [14:34]
Mickey Dujay
More humane brand of birding emerged. An ornithologist named Florence Bailey wrote a series of books and field guides aimed more towards an amateur audience. And the most famous of these books was a book called Birds through an Opera Glass.
- [14:51]
Pablo Torre
And an Opera Glass, for the record, is like a pair of kids binoculars with a stick.
- [14:56]
Mickey Dujay
Yeah. And they're, you know, things that kind of the upper class use when they go to performances.
- [15:02]
Pablo Torre
These are golden.
- [15:03]
Mickey Dujay
But moving from the scope of a rifle to opera glasses brought a totally different enthusiast into the world of birding.
- [15:12]
Pablo Torre
And in 1901, thanks to the work of an enthusiast and ornithologist named Edmund Seles over in England, the term bird.
- [15:22]
Mickey Dujay
Watching was hatched he, like other ornithologists, would also kill birds to study them. But then Dr. Selles had this epiphany. On June 23, 1899, at precisely 3:15 in the afternoon, he began to watch a pair of Eurasian nightjars. The nightjar, as Dr. Sellis wrote in issue 699 of the Zoologist, harmonizes to absolute perfection with the sandy ground, dry sticks and pieces of fir tree bark amongst which it so often lays its eggs. I once belonged to this great poor army of killers. But now that I've watched birds closely, the killing of them seems to me as something monstrous and horrible. So the last century of birding has actually been really, really interesting. What started as just a really scientific study or just this hobby of rich people has increasingly become more and more of an everyman's activity.
- [16:27]
Pablo Torre
I mean, it is even popular, it turns out, among your balding friends at that old person party.
- [16:33]
Mickey Dujay
Absolutely. And contrary to popular belief, it's not just popular among the hairless, as I discovered when I met the man that they call birding Jesus. Is it okay if occasionally I call you Jesus as well?
- [16:50]
Charles Clarkson
If you would like to, yes. I have no qualms with that whatsoever.
- [16:54]
Pablo Torre
This is not an exaggeration. If you are not watching on YouTube, this man looks like Jesus if he loved birds and also had a perm.
- [17:06]
Mickey Dujay
So birding Jesus, AKA Charles Clarkson, is the director of avian research for the Audubon Society of Rhode island and someone who also runs, like, a very successful bird touring company. Charles told me that the barrier to entry is so low nowadays that birding as a hobby even contributes $300 billion in revenue to the United States.
- [17:30]
Pablo Torre
$300 billion?
- [17:32]
Mickey Dujay
Yeah. And that over a million people are employed in the American birding industry.
- [17:38]
Charles Clarkson
Yeah. I am inordinately happy to sit and watch one of the most common species for hours, just do its thing so I can better appreciate its behavior, its evolutionary history. And so one of the biggest things for me that brings me great joy is when I go to the tropics, these incredibly speciose countries where you've got thousands of species present, to have a client of mine who's on one of my tours see these really charismatic, beautiful birds that I've seen thousands of, but to see one right in front of them and then to see the look on their face and to hear the oh, my God, that comes out of their mouth when they see this bird is just such a rewarding and amazing experience to me. That, that just, you know, it's a kind of a cup overflow moment for me. My quest is to make sure that I can, prior to my death, captivate as many other people as possible with the beauty of nature and the mystery of humanity.
- [18:37]
Mickey Dujay
So I spoke to a few romantics like this who commented on, like, the always on quality of birding. So when you're commuting to work, you could be birding. If you're smoking a cigarette on your lunch break back behind the restaurant, you could be birding. One of my spiritual new friends actually called it a quote, lifetime scavenger hunt. But there are others. There's a subset of birders who get way more hardcore and competitive about it, keeping elaborate lists on birding apps and trying to stay atop these leaderboards of, like, who's got the most birds seen in their life.
- [19:17]
Pablo Torre
So these are the volume shooters.
- [19:19]
Mickey Dujay
Totally, yeah. Total volume shooters. And these people are known as big listers because all of these people will log their life lists, usually on websites or apps. The biggest app is an app out of Cornell called Ebird, which is sort of like the Wikipedia meets JSTOR for bird. It's moderated by volunteers, and also the data is kept for scientific purposes. So, you know, you log in, you log your geolocated checklist, and you can be sure that it's safeguarded, along with like, half a billion other sightings that this digital community has pulled together. But you should know that birding Jesus has a problem with Ebird.
- [20:06]
Charles Clarkson
I think it has helped to lower that barrier. But Ebird is also largely responsible for the gamification of birding. You know, this is an app that creates leaderboards where people can compare themselves and their bird lists to the lists that other people have submitted. And it does tend to kind of expose that, that dark underbelly of competition where people are acting in their own self interest and they have the singular mission, which is to best the other competitors.
- [20:32]
Pablo Torre
This is beyond David Attenborough now. This is get. I mean, this is getting a little real, according to birding.
- [20:38]
Mickey Dujay
Jesus, you have no idea.
- [20:49]
Unknown Speaker
You know, guys, it feels pretty good when you accomplish something you've dreamt of. For a long time. I've been feeling really, really lucky to not just make it to 30, but to be doing all of the things I ever wanted to do, including working here on the Dan LeBatard show with Stu Yachts. And when you think about it, the origins of this show were once just a dream for them. That dream turned into the show and business that you're listening to today. And starting your own business is a dream that lots of us share, but too many of us just let it remain a dream. Don't hold yourself back thinking what if I don't have the skills? Or what if I can't do it alone? Those what ifs turn into why not? With Shopify by your side, Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, including 10% of all U.S. e commerce. Whether you're Mattel or you're just getting started, Shopify's got your back. Not a web designer, not a problem. Shopify has beautiful ready to go templates. Need help with the details? Their AI tools can enhance product images, write descriptions, and even generate discount codes. Worried about finding customers? Shopify makes marketing easy with email and social media tools. And if I ever get stuck, Shopify's award winning 24. 7 support is always there. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com batard go to shopify.com shopify.com.
- [22:14]
Dan LeBatard
B.
- [22:18]
Pablo Torre
So bird watching. Very possibly an actual sport. And as I realize now that this is also clearly a story about the humans involved that I need to know who the my nemesis bird is. Who is the official nemesis bird of Pablo Torre? Finds out.
- [22:36]
Mickey Dujay
Well, I haven't told you because I haven't introduced you yet to the absolute goat. The former senior inspector for the U.S. state Department is this guy named Peter Kasner.
- [22:53]
I
Does it work better with the reading glasses or not?
- [22:55]
Mickey Dujay
I would say without just because it has some shine.
- [22:58]
I
Okay, my name is Peter Kastner.
- [23:02]
Pablo Torre
So the greatest birdwatcher alive is an actual spy?
- [23:06]
Mickey Dujay
Not a spy, but Inspector Kastner did tell me that he's not a spy.
- [23:10]
Pablo Torre
But he's by inspired.
- [23:10]
Mickey Dujay
He's an inspector that after 36 years working in the Foreign service, living in places from Afghanistan to India, I was.
- [23:18]
I
In a fairly high stress business as a diplomat and I found that whether I was dealing with a plane crash or visiting an American in jail, or talking to a family of a deceased American, getting out in nature was just a wonderful way to disconnect, to refresh, to re energize my spirit and just enjoy.
- [23:45]
Pablo Torre
So just as a matter of scouting here, what makes Inspector Kastner the goat?
- [23:51]
Mickey Dujay
So Inspector Ksner is the world's preeminent big lister.
- [23:55]
I
I am kind of crazy about numbers. I have always had a real number connection with numbers and I don't know why. If I'm tuning a radio and the the proper volume is at number 13 I'll change it to 15 or 10 or 12. Because I, I can't have it stop on it. On a prime number. It just, it just, it's just not right. It's got to be an even number. It's got to be divisible by five. Got a ten. I mean, ten would be perfect. So I mean, it's just an affliction that I have. But to me, 10,000 is like the ultimate. And it's interesting because it's resonated a lot in the birding community. I think a lot of people see that as not the Holy Grail, but certainly an almost unattainable goal.
- [24:54]
Pablo Torre
10,000. Like we should just do the math here for a second because how old.
- [24:59]
Mickey Dujay
Mickey is Inspector K. Inspector Ker is 72 years old.
- [25:03]
Pablo Torre
Okay, so let me just do some math here. Right, so 72, 365. All right, so we're looking at 26,298 days.
- [25:12]
Mickey Dujay
Oh, and also he said that he started burning at four years old.
- [25:18]
Pablo Torre
Sorry, so.
- [25:19]
Mickey Dujay
So take that out.
- [25:19]
Pablo Torre
Excuse me. Yeah, 365 times four, minus that. Okay, picking up 1461. Inspector Casener has spent 24, 837 bird watching days on Earth. Which means that 10,000, I mean he's, he's saying that he intends to see a new bird species every other day for the span of his entire life, which seems, needless to say, impossible.
- [25:49]
Mickey Dujay
It does. But you gotta realize that this guy is in the Guinness Book of World Records. He was the first person to see an example of every single bird family in the wild. And he's also like the only recreational birder who's ever discovered an actual new species of bird. He discovered this bird called the Cundinamarca ant pitta in Colombia.
- [26:18]
Pablo Torre
What is the all time scoring list? What does that ranking actually look like?
- [26:22]
Mickey Dujay
So you should know that a life list that is over 8,000 species is considered like insane. There's a list with only 32 people on it that have ever gotten that number. And only 10 people all time have ever had lists over 9,000.
- [26:40]
Pablo Torre
And so the all time record is what then?
- [26:44]
Mickey Dujay
So it was thought before Inspector Kastner came along that the all time long list record belonged to this British Canadian guy named Philip Rostron. He's got a list that has 9763 on it. And Inspector Kastner was climbing the list through eBird, which again is the Wikipedia of birdwatching. Meet JSTOR with the community of scientists who are monitoring, you know, the progress. But the Inspector also used a Separate website called Igo Terra, which is kind of more of like an IMDb, which.
- [27:19]
Pablo Torre
Is a less academic fact checking.
- [27:21]
Mickey Dujay
There's more species available. So Inspector Kasner, he made a pretty big deal out of it in the birding community.
- [27:27]
I
I had it all planned out. I was going to do it. My 10,000th bird was going to be a wonderful thing called a tufted puffin.
- [27:34]
Mickey Dujay
Which he would get on US soil.
- [27:37]
I
And Oregon standing on US soil. I mean, this is going to be.
- [27:41]
Mickey Dujay
The best after going to 195 countries and territories.
- [27:45]
I
And then all of a sudden then.
- [27:47]
Mickey Dujay
Came along Dr. Jason Bourne. I mean, I mean, Dr. Jason Mann. Oh, Jason Mann.
- [27:57]
I
This Jason Mann shows up and he's almost behind me.
- [28:00]
Pablo Torre
Who the is Dr. Jason Mann?
- [28:04]
Mickey Dujay
So Dr. Mann, as far as I can tell, is an American health care investor who's living abroad in Hong Kong. And he'd been logging his bird sightings on this other less popular birding website called surfbirds.com. so out of nowhere, Dr. Mann's list pops up on Igo Terra, which is a legit site and where Inspector Kastner had been climbing gradually the leaderboard past the 9,000. When Dr. Mann shows up, suddenly he's right there and he's got over 9,000 as well.
- [28:43]
Pablo Torre
So what you're telling me is that this is the real life Dragon Ball Z meme in which a guy has a power meter and he's saying it's over 9,000.
- [28:53]
Dan LeBatard
It's over 9,000.
- [28:55]
Mickey Dujay
What 9,000.
- [28:58]
Pablo Torre
That is literally what's happening now.
- [29:00]
Mickey Dujay
Yeah, totally. And the race was on.
- [29:06]
I
I became aware that Jason Mann had moved his list to Igo Terra and that he was only 50 birds behind me. I said, holy moly, this guy has caught up 3, 300 birds in three months. That's, it's a little unusual. So since I had put my plans out there, I snuck off to Taiwan and I really, absolutely snuck off. I didn't tell anybody I was going except for one guy, in fact. And I really, I'm not sure I should say this in public, but I kept birding in ebird as if I was in my backyard while I was in Taiwan. I have a, a streak of like 7,000, 8,000 days in a row that I've done ebird checklists and people actually follow me and they say, oh yeah, well, I see, see you're ebirding in in Florida or I see your e birding in in Malaysia, whatever. So I kept ebirding in my backyard and I didn't put the birds in, in Taiwan until I left Taiwan and then I erased all the erroneous data and replace it with the Taiwan data because I didn't want anybody to know I was there.
- [30:24]
Pablo Torre
Try not just read between the lines of Inspector Kastner. He's alleging that something nefarious, something maybe a little dishonest may be afoot.
- [30:35]
Mickey Dujay
I mean, the race to 10,000 at this point goes full cloak and dagger with each man crisscrossing the globe in this high stakes pursuit to reach the finish line first.
- [30:46]
Pablo Torre
Right now I have Maguire and Sosa. Now I have the two of them, like barnstorming around the world, competing, keeping.
- [30:53]
Mickey Dujay
Up with each other in this world. It was that big. So Dr. Mann is in Colombia, where there are tons of species of birds. So Dr. Mann takes the lead. When he's there in Colombia, Inspector Kastner sees this. He decides to go from Taiwan to the Philippines.
- [31:10]
Pablo Torre
Well, hello, Inspector Kasener.
- [31:13]
Mickey Dujay
And then on February 9, 2024, I.
- [31:17]
I
Just posted a photograph of myself and the back of my camera showing the orange tufted spider hunter with a little sign saying 10,000. And that was it.
- [31:30]
Pablo Torre
So this is where birding big listing becomes actual sports. He's doing the Wilt Chamberlain thing.
- [31:38]
Mickey Dujay
Totally.
- [31:38]
Pablo Torre
He has his big round number and.
- [31:42]
Mickey Dujay
He looks so happy in the photo too. So the inspector posts these photos everywhere. He puts them on I Goterra, he posts on Ebird, he posts on Facebook. This is top moment for him. And it seems like Inspector Kastner has won this epic race. But then it actually comes out that Dr. Mann had actually done his own post just 12 hours before. 12 hours, claiming that actually he was the first to 10,000.
- [32:18]
Dan LeBatard
My God.
- [32:19]
Pablo Torre
So Dr. Man's production values here seem to be even greater than Inspector Caser because he has graphically edited like digital medallion he's given himself in gold where it says 10k and it has lifetime birds underneath. Is that fake? Did he put fake confetti? Like golden confetti? He's like sweaty in a jungle, but he's like superimposed confetti. And it says new world record Jason Mann and has a little illustrated bird on the side.
- [32:52]
Mickey Dujay
This is his trophy for the world.
- [32:54]
Pablo Torre
And the reaction is what?
- [32:57]
Mickey Dujay
So Inspector Casener says that with these things happening at the same time after.
- [33:02]
I
You know, a lifetime of nobody ever coming close to 10,002 people doing it and claiming it on the same day is just nuts. And the birding world exploded. It really did.
- [33:15]
Pablo Torre
It's a little suspicious. Dr. Mann, is he legit? What do you Think, what do you know?
- [33:24]
Mickey Dujay
So Dr. Mann did not respond to many texts and emails that we sent him over the last few months. And he keeps like a very low profile online. He even took down a bunch of his LinkedIn profile after we initially reached out to him.
- [33:40]
Pablo Torre
So I'm now just like, I'm doing some, some just cursory research into Dr. Mann and there's this thread on, on birdforum.net it's, it's a comment thread. And the quote, I think says what many viewers and listeners might be thinking. Quote, either this guy is the luckiest birder alive, having rediscovered several lost species, or his list is not to be trusted. End quote.
- [34:09]
Mickey Dujay
Yeah. So a lot of the species that Dr. Mann had on his Aigoterra list did raise eyebrows. Inspector Kastner said that it would be headline news, for example, to see or hear a bird as rare as the New Caledonian nightjar. You'll remember from the great epiphany of 1899 in issue 699 of the Zoologist, the song of the nightjar. But this is no ordinary nightjar, Pablo. The New Caledonian nightjar has not been seen on Earth since 1939.
- [34:49]
Pablo Torre
Which is all to say, I suppose, that if you had in fact found such a nightjar, you would not bury it on your list. You'd be shouting this from the rooftops.
- [34:59]
Mickey Dujay
Or treetops, for sure.
- [35:01]
Pablo Torre
I'm looking at just the other pages available to me on birdforum.net and here's the quote from one of the pages. Jason Mann reports several dozen extremely fishy species that besides him, no one has claimed to have seen for decades. Some occur only in war regions on islands that can only be visited by scientists on remote mountains that can only be accessed via helicopter. These include the following near mythical species. The bare legged Swiftlet. The buff breasted saber wing.
- [35:37]
Mickey Dujay
The buff breasted button quail.
- [35:40]
Pablo Torre
The scaled flower piercer.
- [35:42]
Mickey Dujay
The Sulawesi Woodcock.
- [35:44]
Pablo Torre
The Papuan whip bird.
- [35:47]
Mickey Dujay
The Taliabu Bush Warbler.
- [35:50]
Pablo Torre
The Kangian tit Babbler.
- [35:53]
Mickey Dujay
The black throat.
- [35:54]
Pablo Torre
Of course, this now is like an NC17 rated bird watching episode.
- [35:59]
Mickey Dujay
Oh, and we haven't even gotten to a very important birding term.
- [36:05]
Pablo Torre
What term have we somehow not gotten to yet?
- [36:09]
Mickey Dujay
That's jizz, Pablo.
- [36:25]
Pablo Torre
So I. I should disclose that you got me? Yeah, I'm hooked. I think that's very clear to everybody. Now I am ready to start collecting some nice big round numbers on one of these many apps available to me.
- [36:39]
Mickey Dujay
So we all know that you get your ecstasy from competition, but let's recall that before we got distracted by the dirty birdie names here, that our friend Charles birding Jesus. Right, Birding Jesus mentioned that big Listers actually represent the dark underbelly of birding and kind of like the gamification of what should be a spiritual experience. So I got Charles to talk about this race to 10,000, and Jesus got angry.
- [37:10]
Charles Clarkson
Pablo I can't fathom the idea of spending large sums of time and money to go to some faraway location only to, you know, zoom around the country in a very short period of time, jumping in and out of cars just to see one bird, check it off a list, get back in the car, and drive to another location. There's nothing else. That, for me personally, is as impressive as the lords of the air flying all over our planet. And so they've always been a source of my motivation, and in many ways, they are a pretty consistent source of my happiness, Viewing them as a source of competition, you know, even on a personal level, to. So you try to set a goal of seeing X number of species. And to me, that's. That's kind of the antithesis of why I love birds.
- [37:56]
Pablo Torre
The lords of the air being the birds and not the people.
- [38:00]
Mickey Dujay
So consider the nemesis bird, Pablo. It's not about finding it or not, even though it seems to be. It's really about the search, investigating, interrogating, noticing things, being out of cell phone service. To not be immersed in cyberspace, but actually be immersed in reality. And after doing that, you can witness these, like, small, majestic miracles. So, I mean, you're probably tweeting right now.
- [38:33]
Pablo Torre
I have multiple tabs open for the record.
- [38:37]
Mickey Dujay
But to hear Jesus tell it, for a birdwatcher to actually successfully find their personal nemesis bird, you almost have to put yourself in, like, a sensory deprivation chamber for your soul.
- [38:52]
Pablo Torre
Okay, I'm closing, closing my other tabs.
- [38:57]
Mickey Dujay
So birding Jesus longtime nemesis bird was the rufous vented ground cuckoo, which is known as the ghost of the forest for being really one of the most elusive birds on Earth. They spend their time chasing ant swarms through the jungles of Panama and Colombia. And there are all sorts of birds and other organisms that use them as a food Source. So after 30 trips down to the jungle over, you know, 10 years, as Charles was walking by himself through the jungle, he heard the call of. Of an oscillated antbird. He refers to this call as the holy grail of antbird calls, because those birds only really hang around the most massive ant swarms.
- [39:50]
Charles Clarkson
And so, you know, my Heart rate went up, and the swarm seemed to be a few hundred meters off the trail. So I plunged headlong, bushwhacking into the rainforest as I typically do. As I transitioned from this very high light environment, I had to let my eyes adjust to this low light environment. I started seeing more and more birds. I would see wood creepers, I would see flycatchers. There were toucans on the ground, mots in the trees, ant birds. And they were all kind of profiting from this army ant swarm, which was absolutely massive. And it just sounded like it was pouring rain because of all of the ants kind of scattered, towering through the leaf litter. And as I was kind of surveying the scene, I saw this blur of this bird that just disappeared over the hilltop. And based on its jizz, which is a birding term that refers to general impression of shape and size, everything about this bird screamed, Rufus Bennett, ground cuckoo. So my heart absolutely stopped.
- [40:49]
Mickey Dujay
And yes, in case you were wondering, Jesus wept.
- [40:53]
Charles Clarkson
Yes. Well, yes, I did have tears in my eyes. It wasn't a nemesis bird of mine, because it was a bird. I wanted to check off a list. I was just absolutely captivated, enamored, fascinated by this group of birds that have evolved this incredibly unique lifestyle. This one individual would then choose to spend an hour and a half in close proximity to a human was just, I felt, a very special experience. So after a while, I called my wife and I whispered to her as I was kind of sobbing, you know, I found my bird. I'm staring at a Rupus Bennett grand cuckoo right now. It's just a few hundred feet away from me. To which she responded, that is so wonderful. I'm so happy for you. I'm going into Home Depot. I'll call you later.
- [41:44]
Mickey Dujay
So the question now, Pablo, is are you a believer?
- [41:48]
Pablo Torre
I could not be. Yeah, more. More subscribed to the religiosity that you've brought me here.
- [41:56]
Mickey Dujay
All right. So I asked Birding Jesus himself to help us choose the official Pablo Torre finds out nemesis bird. And he had looked at some charts and lists on your behalf. He considered a couple of wood warblers for you, like the ovenbird. Charles also liked a bird called the American redstart. Has big orange spots, but we thought maybe that was a little too trumpy for Morning Joe. Pablo, Bert. But then Birding Jesus settled on your nemesis, which is the northern parula.
- [42:31]
Pablo Torre
The northern parula.
- [42:34]
Mickey Dujay
Beautiful bird. Pretty small bird.
- [42:36]
Pablo Torre
A beautiful yellow belly.
- [42:39]
Mickey Dujay
That's technically called. It's bib, Pablo.
- [42:42]
Pablo Torre
It's bib. All right, noted.
- [42:43]
Mickey Dujay
They tend to live in the Caribbean, but they fly up to eastern North America to nest at this time of year, which is migration season.
- [42:52]
Pablo Torre
Its song. Can we play that one more time?
- [42:56]
Mickey Dujay
So Charles told me that the song of the Northern Parula is actually so high pitched that people that start to lose their hearing, they lose the ability to detect your nemesis bird's song, which.
- [43:08]
Pablo Torre
Feels like a bit of a metaphor that I am unable to currently translate fully.
- [43:12]
Mickey Dujay
It's a young man's bird, Pablo.
- [43:14]
Pablo Torre
Right.
- [43:14]
Mickey Dujay
A thinking man's bird.
- [43:16]
Pablo Torre
And so what do I do? What do we do?
- [43:21]
Mickey Dujay
So Charles told me that of all places, the birding Mecca is really Central Park.
- [43:26]
Pablo Torre
We're going to go to Central park now? You want to take me to Central Park?
- [43:30]
Mickey Dujay
We're going to. I mean, let me just ask you this. What other kind of reporting could deliver a transcendent orgasmic moment of joy? And Pablo, Jesus has risen. Please meet birding Jesus.
- [43:53]
Pablo Torre
Hello.
- [43:55]
Mickey Dujay
There he is.
- [43:55]
I
How are you?
- [44:00]
Pablo Torre
What the is happening.
- [44:12]
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- [44:51]
Pablo Torre
So if you're not watching on our YouTube channel right now, what is happening is that we are being called to gather our gear by birding. Jesus.
- [45:01]
Charles Clarkson
My wife is Catholic. She hates that you guys are calling me this.
- [45:05]
Pablo Torre
There's nothing more Catholic than Harrison. And so we followed him out of our studio and toward the elevator. Here at Meadowlark Media, it has occurred to me that Meadowlark is named after.
- [45:17]
Charles Clarkson
It is one of the most imperiled birds in all of North America.
- [45:20]
Mickey Dujay
Really?
- [45:20]
Charles Clarkson
Yeah. 75% of the entire population's disappeared since 1956.
- [45:24]
Mickey Dujay
Oh, that's how.
- [45:24]
Pablo Torre
And what's the.
- [45:26]
Charles Clarkson
It's a grassland.
- [45:27]
Pablo Torre
And it turned out that I had a lot of questions for our guide, whose government name, once again is Charles Clarkson, about New York City's whole birding ecosystem. What's your sense of like a red tailed hawk eating a rat? As we began descending into the subway, I couldn't help but feel this burning desire, a deep, almost primordial urge to turn this episode into a nature documentary. And yes, to hire David Attenborough.
- [46:07]
Dan LeBatard
The North American podcaster. A modern species of extreme abundance. One Defined as much by its curiosity as by its tweets. An exotic subspecies, however, known as the Filipino American Podcaster, or FAT for short, has become increasingly difficult to find outside of the studio and out in the wild. But all of that changes as we land on Planet Pablo this afternoon. The podcaster has camouflaged himself, swapping out the trademark blue cardigan of the species for the cheap blue vest of the common birder. Our rare sighting begins during spring migration outside the American Museum of Natural History.
- [47:27]
Pablo Torre
You see that? So we have the pigeons with a fault on top of an eagle behind it. So.
- [47:37]
Dan LeBatard
Before long, the podcaster ventures into Central park, also known as the Madison Square Garden of bird watching, a very veritable mecca, even if one of its most colorful residents is a Baltimore oriole.
- [47:58]
Pablo Torre
I guess it makes sense for a show that is definitely a sports show to see the mascot of an actual sports team.
- [48:08]
Dan LeBatard
The obsessive Filipino American podcaster travels in a flock, most often with an extra, extraordinarily endangered breed. The freelance reporter.
- [48:25]
Mickey Dujay
When you said that the parallel might be watching us, I thought about predator. Oh, yeah, you know, hiding in the.
- [48:32]
Pablo Torre
Slathered in mud. Yeah, that's what we gotta do. And we are doing that technically.
- [48:37]
Dan LeBatard
And on this day, they are guided by a true wonder of nature, indeed, a mythological creature who simply goes by the name of Birding Jesus.
- [48:53]
Charles Clarkson
So American robins are singing. Yeah, we've got some vocal activity. American robins are singing.
- [48:58]
Pablo Torre
Loved on the sky. I just point to my ear and suddenly Burning Jesus is like, that's an American robin.
- [49:03]
Dan LeBatard
The podcaster is jubilant.
- [49:06]
Pablo Torre
This is a great friend to have.
- [49:07]
Mickey Dujay
Definitely.
- [49:08]
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
- [49:08]
Charles Clarkson
Everybody needs a birding friend, I think.
- [49:11]
Dan LeBatard
Suddenly, the freelance reporter sniffs out a lead.
- [49:15]
Mickey Dujay
You were saying that kind of. The migration period is wider.
- [49:19]
Charles Clarkson
Most of the time, males arrive on territory prior to females so that they can compete with one another for access to a territory.
- [49:26]
Dan LeBatard
But the obsessive fap, having become perhaps unaccustomed to the great outdoors, provides the.
- [49:35]
Charles Clarkson
Pending females with all the resources they need to build a nest.
- [49:38]
Dan LeBatard
Seems on this day to have become particularly distracted.
- [49:43]
Charles Clarkson
And then assess the quality of the male based on the territory he was able to procure.
- [49:46]
Mickey Dujay
Show me what you got.
- [49:47]
Charles Clarkson
Exactly.
- [49:48]
Pablo Torre
Pending Females is also a good band.
- [49:50]
Mickey Dujay
Name, by the way.
- [49:51]
Dan LeBatard
The podcaster, hungrier than ever for content and thirsty as they come, seeks his prey.
- [49:58]
Pablo Torre
The name of my nemesis, Mrs. Bird.
- [50:01]
Mickey Dujay
Is the Northern paralla.
- [50:03]
Charles Clarkson
The Northern paralla. That's correct.
- [50:04]
Pablo Torre
Northern paralla.
- [50:05]
Dan LeBatard
So driven is he by the algorithm.
- [50:09]
Charles Clarkson
Last year, there was one documented right here in the Ramble. So we are still within the realm of possibilities of finding a northern parallel.
- [50:17]
Dan LeBatard
But the podcaster will stop at nothing.
- [50:21]
Pablo Torre
We will find them.
- [50:22]
Charles Clarkson
We will.
- [50:23]
Pablo Torre
Wherever they may be hiding.
- [50:24]
Charles Clarkson
Even the caveat here is they, you know, they weigh as little as 5.
- [50:29]
Dan LeBatard
Grams, and especially at the incontrovertibility.
- [50:34]
Charles Clarkson
And pick out the movements of birds that are moving around in a canopy that's being pelted with rain of the elements.
- [50:42]
Mickey Dujay
Nobody said this quest was going to be easy.
- [50:44]
Charles Clarkson
That's right, and it shouldn't be. This is a nemesis bird.
- [50:46]
Dan LeBatard
Nothing can stop the podcaster.
- [50:49]
Pablo Torre
But here's the thing about a nemesis.
- [50:50]
Dan LeBatard
Bird and his very own brand.
- [50:52]
Pablo Torre
We have not seen the nemesis bird yet.
- [50:55]
Dan LeBatard
Of climax.
- [50:56]
Pablo Torre
But the nemesis bird also hasn't seen us.
- [51:04]
Charles Clarkson
Canada goose.
- [51:05]
Pablo Torre
Canada goose.
- [51:05]
Charles Clarkson
Yeah, Canada goose.
- [51:07]
Pablo Torre
Canada goose.
- [51:08]
Mickey Dujay
Wait, the jacket or the bird?
- [51:10]
Charles Clarkson
There's a northern cardinal making a chip note behind us over here. You're hearing far more than you're seeing. So boning up on the vocalizations of birds is an absolute essential aspect of data collection or bird watching in general.
- [51:26]
Pablo Torre
I've been stunned by the amount of boning that goes on in the birdwatching community. In general.
- [51:32]
I
I'm sure.
- [51:33]
Charles Clarkson
Yeah, it's a randy sport.
- [51:39]
Pablo Torre
It is a romantic pastime. Yeah. And even like the rain, the wet.
- [51:46]
Dan LeBatard
The wetness, the podcaster is distracted.
- [51:51]
Pablo Torre
The clouds sort of shrouding, hiding, but also revealing.
- [51:54]
Dan LeBatard
It's very beautiful, which is precisely the point.
- [51:58]
Pablo Torre
As if it's pulling up a stocking on the skyscrapers of New York of bird watching. Beginning to get it. Yeah, kind of beginning to get it.
- [52:08]
Dan LeBatard
Instead of podcasting.
- [52:14]
Pablo Torre
I've greatly enjoyed this. Even though we have come up very empty and very wet. The northern parallel has evaded us. But I don't want to give up yet.
- [52:28]
Charles Clarkson
Good. And you shouldn't.
- [52:30]
Dan LeBatard
It has been, as the Filipino American American podcaster himself might say, an exclusive skeleton key for a time machine into the Kremlinology of what you might call the last American monoculture, with nothing less at stake than the very nature of nature itself.
- [52:55]
Pablo Torre
What I found out is that even though I've gained a nemesis, I've also gained a friend. Absolutely pruning Jesus.
- [53:04]
Charles Clarkson
You're very welcome. I'm so happy that I could facilitate this very wet day in the park.
- [53:09]
Mickey Dujay
Before we go, though, I have a very New York City way of us continuing our quest. I've put together a series of flies.
- [53:19]
Pablo Torre
Have you seen this bird? With a black and white photo of the northern part?
- [53:24]
Mickey Dujay
So I think we should hang it up.
- [53:26]
Pablo Torre
Oh, and you have the tearaway tabs at the bottom. 51385, Pablo that is actually our hotline.
- [53:32]
Mickey Dujay
Put that up. Oh, yeah, like that.
- [53:34]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 51385 Pablo the Northern Kingbird need not apply. We're coming for you. Emphasis on coming. Is that too much? Is that a little much?
- [53:57]
Charles Clarkson
No comments. It's your show.
- [54:02]
Dan LeBatard
But first, Pearl Jam. Sorry, is this. Have I. Have I got the wrong program? Slightly confused?
- [54:22]
Pablo Torre
And that, for the record, was not the real David Attenborough. It was actually some guy named Guy. And you can find guy over on cameo.com voiceoverguyuk. But this has been Pablo Torre finds Out. A metal Arc Media production named after one of the most imperiled birds in all of North America. And we will hopefully talk to you next time.