Hey there, it's Ellen here to introduce episode 40 for y'all. This is another really exciting guest

episode featuring the one and only Karina Newsom, biologist and educator and birder and just all-around

phenomenal person. So Christian, unfortunately, was not on this call with me, but we still had a

really amazing time talking about Harris's hawk,

as well as the joys of science communication and wildlife work. So you guys are going to really

enjoy this one. Thanks y'all, we are here with Karina Newsom. Say hi, Karina. Hi, everyone. Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be

talking to you because you are kind of a team bird superstar. I'm honored to be called such a

thank you. So Karina, you are kind of a big name in zookeeping and science communication and wildlife education.

So I would really like it if you could tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are.

Well, I want to say firstly that good science communication is the reason why I'm in science.

So I've always been interested in wildlife, but I wasn't really familiar with what the career is in such a field would look like.

And then one day, someone reached out to me, a black woman at my local zoo, Michelle, who was the lead carnivore keeper.

And she said, hey, come shadow me behind the scenes at the zoo.

I'd never been to a zoo before.

When she gave me that experience and showed me what her

job looked like, that kind of changed the whole trajectory of my career. Then when I got to college,

I had a really phenomenal teacher for ornithology, which is a class for the study of birds.

I was not particularly interested in birds, specifically and definitely not native birds but because his

passion for studying birds and birding and looking at birds was so infectious i caught on and now i

have the bug and i've had it ever since um and so that's kind of how i got started in the realm of

wildlife and specifically when it comes to being on

team bird. That is really awesome. Was there any one bird in particular that like really got your

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