SPEAKER_00 0:00

His mom are having a nice time at a bird walk, then you know, like then I'm having fun. So if they're having fun, I'm having fun. So it's more like a people thing for me now.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

You mean bird walks in Central Park? How did that get started?

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Oh, that's a good question. In the early 1990s, I was hired by the New York City Department of Parks.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hi everyone. Welcome to Blackbird Joy, the podcast where we explore birds, nature, and the amazing people who study and protect them. I'm Nation and I love birding. Each episode I'll take you on adventures to meet bird experts and learn cool things about the birds all around us. For this episode, I got to talk with Dr. Bob. We first met on one of his birdwalks in Central Park, where he has been helping people discover birds for more than 25 years. Dr. Bob is a bird scientist who has studied bird migration in New York City and around the world. And I wanted to learn how he first became interested in birds and why he loves sharing birding with others. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Mason, who's the portrait behind you? There's a person that I see a painting behind you. Who is that? Is that your grandmother? Is that a person who's important in the family?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Mom got in pollen because she said it said something to her or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Ah, okay. So are you liking 100 degree? See, I'm gonna ask all the questions. I have a whole list of questions, too. So you like in a hundred degree heat right now, or are you you okay in the air conditioning?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Um good in the air conditioning.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, did you try going out there today?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Uh no.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, yeah. Well, here it's about 75 degrees and cloudy. Well, it's getting a little sunny.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

That's what that's what that's better than here.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, it's different. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is the cloud forest. Okay, you're looking at your paper, you want to ask away. Okay, shoot, as they say.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Can you talk more a little bit? Thank you. Should I tell you what? Who? Oh good. Thank thank you for talking with me.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Oh, okay. I'm talking to Mason. My name is Bob DeCandero, Dr. Robert DeCandero if you want formalities. I'm from the Bronx, New York City, and we met in Central Park in late May, early June. I think it was mid-June, early June, I think. And Mason was amazing. He was amazing. He was finding birds, he was asking questions, he didn't get tired, he didn't at any point say to his dad, who's a really wonderful guy, he didn't say, like, I gotta sit down, I gotta have a chocolate bar, I don't like this. He was always nice, and then I just casually asked, okay, since I use sound, I said, I wonder what bird sound I should play next. And Mason was like listening, and he jumped in right away and you made a suggestion. I think it might have been the cuckoo call, and then we got the cuckoo. Yeah, oh, you remember okay. So I thought that was like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that was good, Mason. That was you know, like I wish I when I was your age, you know, like 16, like you are now. Yeah, as a joke, I wish I was as focused as you. That's really good. Okay, next question.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

How long have you been bird aid?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Wow. Well, when I was a kid, so in the Bronx, and we had flowers, and I remember seeing a hummingbird one day and a Madonna lily, and I was amazed. And then my grandmother used to put up bird feeders in the yard, and back then in the Bronx, every winter you would get chickadees and tid mice. Now, maybe once every 10 years that happens, but so from about the size the age that you are now, but then there was a gap from when I was like probably 14 to 22. Uh other things were important, and then I got back into it. Okay, you got another one.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, how did you first become interested in birds? Which oh I had birds on my back hummingbird, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

The hummingbird, yeah. It's always how did you get interested in birds?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Well, I was first interested in reptiles, so that kind of led to birds. Oh, I didn't know that. Wow, I read a lot of reptiles, and then eventually in a couple of books, mentioned birds. So then I started reading about birds.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, you know, if you can get your mom and dad to take you to the Bronx Zoo, they have a great reptile department, and then there's a nice walk along the Bronx River, you can look for birds too. So you can do a bunch of stuff there. Okay, next question.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

What keeps you excited with birds?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Early on, it was like seeing them, you know, all the colors, the movement, especially if there was like a new bird I had never seen before. I used to collect stamps too, so it was like collecting stamps, except you know, I didn't have to paste anything into a book or really do anything, I could just put it on a list. Yeah. And now it's not so much birds, I like being with people. So, like if the people like Mason and his dad and his mom are having a nice time at a bird walk, then you know, like then I'm having fun. So if they're having fun, I'm having fun. So it's more like a people thing for me now.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

You mean birdwalks in Central Park? How did that get started?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Well, that's a good question. In the early 1990s, I was hired by the New York City Department of Parks while I was getting my PhD, and they wanted a biologist. They had a bunch of people who were rangers who didn't know much about birds because back then in the city, how many people looked at birds? You know, you knew what a sparrow was, you knew what a pigeon was, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

You know what a seagull was.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah, yeah, the usual suspects, you know. I mean, and then if it was an insect, it was a roach, you know, as my mom used to say. Anything that moved that had uh six legs was a roach. You know, it could have been a bee, it could have been a praying mantis, but it was always a roach. So they hired me to run bird walks since I seemed to know a little bit about birds. So 34 years later, I guess I'm still doing this, you know. If I had any talent, I would do something else, you know, like go to the moon, you know, become a big time banker, a professor, you know, all the smart people. I never became, I just came became like a bird walk leader, you know, a bum. Is that okay? Is it okay to be a bum in life and watch birds?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Have you introduced a lot of people into bird?

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Yeah, that's been the nicest thing because we Deborah and I try to make things fun. You know, we don't treat the group like they were in church and we have to be silent, you know. We we see what people are interested in and we try to help them out. So that that that's why. So when we see like you're smiling, okay. Why is Mason smiling? We got to figure out what bird he wants to see. You know, we we take requests, you know, we're like DJs. Okay, what do you want to see? Uh let's see what we can bring in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Have you ever had someone completely fall in love after one walk?

SPEAKER_00 7:10

I can say have I ever had what?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Um, as somebody have gone on a walk with you and they completely fall on birds in love with birds after.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah, yeah, that that's you know, yeah, you are exception because you like birds before we met. But other people kind of just you know stumbled in because the walks are cheap, you know, they're like ten dollars. You can you can hardly buy a hot dog in New York City now for ten dollars. So somebody will show up because they heard of birds, and then they're like, wow, this is nice, and then they keep doing it. So it's nice to watch people get better over the years, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

What do you hope people take away after spending a morning birding with you?

SPEAKER_00 7:48

They had a good time and they say nice things, you know. I don't know that they had fun and they want to do that again. That's the best thing that I could that I could hope for for what I do. You know, it's not just like a one-off. They, you know, they want to look for birds like out their window, wherever they live.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

One of my favorite parts, our family ships in New York City was birding with you. How many wasps had in red sex?

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Hey, I don't know if we could do the math. Let's see. These days we're not there 52 weeks of the year, but up until about 2005, we were. I don't know, 10,000, 20,000. I don't know. I lost track. They've all become one giant walk to me. You know, like I started at the tip of Tierra del Fuego all the way in South America, and now I'm walking to the North Pole. You know, I don't remember individual walks. I just know that I'm on this journey that I'll never stop walking until I'm dead. So, Mason, you were visiting New York? Where do you guys you guys live in Colorado? Where do you live?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

We live in New York now, but we did live in Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Oh, okay. Do you miss Colorado?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Sometimes you miss your friends back there that you made.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah, that's tough.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Also, I kind of wish that I saw more birds there because there's some really cool birds there. Yeah. Like this, like Williamsing Sapsuckers. We still have this burning book of birds of uh Colorado. Uh-huh. And I was like, I wish I saw that Williamsing Sap. You know, you have other birds down there.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You know what you have to do? You know, one of your friends back there, you have to negotiate with your mom and dad and say, I want to go see one of my friends. And then tell your friends, if I if I stay over there, will your mom and dad let me sleep in the house? And then go bird. You gotta like negotiate all our you gotta eat like all your vegetables for a week for dinner without complaints, and then say, Okay, if I do this, uh what kind of what can I get in return? You know, negotiate.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah, I get to go to the most sap suckery place in the world.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, that's a nice one.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

What makes Central Park such a great place for birds, even though it's in the middle of a huge city?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah, good question.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

It's New York City is one of the huge cities, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Well, you know, there's not many other green spots in in in Manhattan where birds can stop. So you're you're flying along, you're coming up in spring, and you're in New Jersey, and all of a sudden you cross the Hudson River, and now you're tired, you want to rest. You know, there's not so many green spaces around where you can you can rest and spend the day, and Central Park is the biggest one of them all. So that's what makes it important. I think in the bigger scheme of things, it's a park that the media has access to. And if New York City is nothing else, it's the media, you know. So it's easy for them to do a story on birds in Central Park. And there's a lot of birders who, you know, uh have big voices in Central Park, you know, like somebody like you know that you're talking to right now, you know, they never stop talking. So they make it seem more important than it really is. You know, in the grand scheme of things, it can uh make people aware of birds in many places because it gets on TV and the news and print, you know, and movies or whatever, you know, and a lot of important people with a lot of money live here, so then they can donate to like bird groups, bird reserves, bird whatever's, you know. So that in that way. But insofar as Central Park is an important habitat, it's not as important as the rainforest or you know, or the African savannah, or you know, places like that. But it's important in its own way. And you know, it's like not all of us like have to be an important doctor. You can be an important mechanic, you can be an important cook, you can be an important taxi cab driver, you know. So Central Park is like uh an important lawyer, it's not quite a uh a doctor like your mob there, you know, PhD doctor, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

This is one of my favorite questions that I want to ask you. Have you ever worked walked when birds just disappeared?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah, that's like a that's like a nightmare I have every night when I go to sleep. You know, I'm gonna go to the park. But it does happen. You know, there are some days, no matter what I do, I could like you heard me, heard me say, I could stand on my head and make all sorts of calls, nothing shows up. And that often happens like right now when it's very hot, you know, about starting about 10, 11 o'clock in the morning, the birds don't like people, they don't want to move, you know. So you know, you could see like a sparrow, a grackle, you know, yeah, a robin, but you know, you want to see some other birds, so that that but that's like a recurring worm and black. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. That's it. Some casual birds that you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Oh, and I had a follow-up question to the last question. I think it was late April or May. There was like there was a bunch of American woodcocks, and on the news, there was an American woodcock in Bryant Park.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yes, yes. How is that possible? That's a green space. You know, what happens is when woodcocks land there, they can't hide because there's no this occasional shrubs here and there, and there's not much understory. So if there's a woodcock there, everybody knows about it. And woodcocks generally are migrating all in the same weather conditions. So some nights you could, some days you could have five or ten there and they can't hide. Just as many may land in Central Park. The problem is when they land in Central Park and become motionless during the day, because they're often sleeping, is that there's a lot of place for them to hide, you know. And a lot of times the only way we find them in Central Park is if somebody's dog is off the leash and they run through the woods and they scare up a bird and it flies a woodcock and it flies right past us. But otherwise, if it's motionless, you know, your eyes can't pick it up. But in Bryant Park, they can't hide. So good question.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, because that was like there's a woodcock on the news, yeah. Yeah, and that was like one or two days before I saw my first woodcock.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Oh, where'd you see it?

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Um, we were here in Ithaca, and there's a Cayuga bird club, and uh we took a night walk with some owls. We didn't see the owls, but we did see a woodcock, which was yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Was it doing its little woodcock sky dance going up in the air and making that funny sound? Yeah, that's it. You got it.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Uh do you ever hear a bird and immediately know what it is?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Oh, you mean identify birds by sound? Yeah, it's not difficult. Like I, you know, I would if I close my eyes and I heard your voice in the crowd, right? That's Mason, you know. Don't worry, like they say, it's not rocket science. The most difficult ones are the ones you're not expecting. Like if there's a rare warbler from the West, what's what's that one from the the the young pines and in Michigan? I forget what the name of that word. It showed up once in what what Kirtland's warbler? Yeah, Kirtland's warbler. See, I I knew somebody would know. I knew somebody by the name of a mason, yeah, would know. Yeah, thank you. It showed up, and you know, if somebody heard that sound in Central Park, they would not know what it was. But because they didn't know what it was, would make them curious about you know, what is that? So, but this one guy, Chris, I forget Chris's last name. Chris mostly birds only in the spring because he likes to identify birds only by sound, and he doesn't come in the park that much in the fall because most birds aren't singing, or you know, they they have little attenuated songs. After we get a we stop this conversation, you know, tomorrow. I'll send Chris an email and say, you know, you should have maybe should go out with Mason on a bird walk in Central Park. You know, I think he he would he would uh appreciate this because you really like birds, and then you could see how good he is. Chris has got a really good ear for birds.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Can birds fool you with their songs? Like uh there's a bunch of copying birds around here, like I've seen brown thrashers around here. Today I saw a northern mocking bird, which I was really excited about, and then there's gray catbirds in the backyard, so there's all birds that copy. I've heard the gray cat birds copying so many different words, songs prayers, robins, carbon notes.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, well, think of the voices of people, you know. People have different make different sounds. We're all the same species, we're all the same, you know, but they have different sounds, and think then from like can you hear a difference between somebody's from Colorado and somebody from upstate New York? You know, it sounded like you were from the Cayugas, you know, you see, so they're like dialects, you know, with what we call dialects. So even with people, so that's why it's so difficult to do a field guide because you're trying to get one example to represent everything, but look at the diversity of people, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

I found something hard with field guides, it might say, Oh Robin, chuly, churuop, but like if I imagine it, or Rob could be saying anything that I wanted that I think, because like let's say you say let's say I look at saying love leap, love leap, or something like churry, chirrill is chiroop.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

It could be like anything, so that's why I think harness yeah, yeah, and then they they can vary it, you know, they have typical calls and then like alternate calls, and you know, and in the spring, people who try to identify them by sound, there's only very few males that sing all the time. Usually they sing a song for 10 seconds, and then maybe two minutes later they sing it again. So that's what makes it tough with sound.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

How is birding in Ecuador different from New York?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

That's a good question. There's a lot more birds here in terms of species. What do I mean by that? In the tropics, you have bigger diversity, but the numbers of birds are per each species or less. I'll give you an example. We're in Central Park, how many robins can you see? A hundred, two hundred, you know, blue jays, ten, twenty, twenty. In the tropics, like here in Ecuador, you don't see groups of a hundred whatever. What you see is one of this, one of that, one of this, one of that, and pretty soon you have ones of like 50 species in front of you. So what we say is in the tropics, species are common, but individuals are rare. Now, in the temperate area, in New York, for example, we say that individuals are common, but species, the diversity, you know, like robins, blue jays, rackles are not as common as in the tropics. So you have fewer species, but more individuals of each species in the north. In the Quator, it's flipped, it's reversed.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Okay. Which bird has been your favorite so far?

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Owls. I like owls.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Have you seen any owls while you're in uh Ecuador?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

We've been hearing them, and I'm mad. Know why I'm mad, but I can't bring them in. They call back to my tape, and they're not flying into the tree outside my room. I don't like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

That upsets me too when I try to call a bird in. I was like, I can't like I once try to put bar an owls, and I got so close to seeing one. That's a bird that I've never seen before. And I'm like, I need to see this bird. It is like maybe 30, it was maybe like 20 feet into the trees. They're coming closer, but they're not flying over my head.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Because I'm in this little clearing in Tony's backyard, and I'm calling it, it's on one side. I want to fly over me onto the other side.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Yeah. So were you calling him by making your own calls?

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Oh, wait. I'm looking for the barn out over your shoulder now.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Um uh and uh have you seen any birds that you've never seen before?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

In Ecuador? Yeah, yeah. I'm looking for birds that I know from up north, but they're all up north right now. If I was here in November, December, January, you know, red-eyed berrier oarper, sweets and straw. But yeah, there's a lot of new birds, you know. It's the nice thing. It's like walking into an ice cream shop. If I go to an ice cream shop in New York, it's gonna be like temperate birds. I'm gonna have vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, and there's gonna be a lot of eat, you know, a lot of vanilla, a lot of chocolate, a lot of strawberry, right? Now I'm in an ice cream shop called Ecuador, and there's like so many kinds of ice cream, says, you know, but almond and uh chartreuse, you know, maybe a hundred types of ice cream, but they come in little cups, not many. You see, but in the north, I get a lot of but the same stuff. That's the difference. You get a lot of different types of ice cream in Ecuador in the tropics, but not so much ice cream, you know, like a little bit to taste. Then you go to the next one, and up in the north, yeah. You're getting hungry over there, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Tell your mom. I was good at tell your mom. Bob said I was good on uh on this call over here. So to take you and your sister off for ice cream today.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Has your favorite bird changed over the years?

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, does it change for you? Yeah, probably. When does it change? Why do you change it?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Well, I change it when it kind of gets older, but I think there I kind of like feel like there's I feel like there's another board bird that I think I would like more than this bird.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Yeah, yeah. No, I kind of like this, you know. My favorite bird is kind of like, oh, I look in the field guy, I really want to see that one. And then when I see that one, I was like, okay, well, I want to see that one. Then that becomes my favorite bird. But generally I like owls. I used to work a lot with hawks in Asia, in Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, worked a bit in Israel, and I used to do studies.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I got some uh I got I got some questions for uh owls and uh hawks. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah, why don't you ask me about those? Yeah, they equate those places in Asia.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

There are a little bit questions, uh lot of questions away, but I think we can do it. Is there a bird that you've traveled all the way there hoping to see?

SPEAKER_00 22:48

To Ecuador? No, mostly I think I took Deborah out of New York so we could get out of the summer heat and see what we could see. You know, we're like that, we're like driving a car, and we're like, okay, what can we see? What are we gonna find today? I don't think we had any particular thing in mind.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Dr. Bob, thank you so much for talking with me today and sharing how you became interested in birds. I loved hearing about your journey, and I hope everyone listening feels inspired to get outside and discover the birds around them. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow Blackbird Joy so you don't miss future adventures. I'll be talking with bird scientists, birds, authors, and other people who love birds as much as I do. Until next time, get outside, look up, and find some joy birds. Bye.