25 years ago, a mysterious cause of eagle and osprey deaths plagued a small town in Arkansas. And in this special episode, we get to the root of it all: small unassuming weeds, also known as invasive aquatic species. In conversation with aquatic plant experts Stacy Holt Jr. and Greg Bugbee…

In the 1990s, eagles in the Southeastern U.S. began dying of a mysterious brain disease. Many years of research identified the culprit: a cyanobacteria that grows on an invasive aquatic plant called Hydrilla — also known as waterthyme. Fish ingested the cyanobacteria, and eagles ate the…

John Edmonstone was born on a timber plantation in British Guiana, and enslaved by Scotsman Charles Edmonstone. He learned taxidermy techniques by accompanying a naturalist on expeditions. In Scotland, he became a free man and began working as a taxidermist. One of his students was a…

During her first year at the Yale School of Architecture, Kenyan graduate student Barbara Nasila was tasked to design a hypothetical outdoor pavilion in a local neighborhood called Dixwell, featuring an original copy of the enslaver John James Audubon’s book, The Birds of America. As…

In June of 2022, Adé Ben-Salahuddin worked as a volunteer research assistant on a tiny island off the coast of Maine at a Common Tern breeding colony. Every once in a while, the colony would suddenly go dead silent as all the adult terns took flight and dove over the rocky cliffs…

Like today’s swans, the extinct species Annakacygna hajimei and Annakacygna yoshiiensis were quite large. But unlike their modern relatives, these birds lived most of their lives out at sea, and their fossils reveal remarkable adaptations to this unusual lifestyle. This led the researchers…

Thousands of years ago, giant raptors lived on what is now Cuba. Gigantohierax is an extinct genus of eagles whose fossils have been found in local cave deposits and tar seeps. With an estimated weight of nearly 30 pounds, Gigantohierax suarezi, the larger of the two named species, would…

In this episode, Adé Ben-Salahuddin, an evolutionary biologist in training, reflects on how his connection with birds has changed over the years. The simple fact that birds are the only living dinosaurs left was what drew him to birds for a long time. He would share that fact with visitors…