Hello and welcome.

This is the Science of Birds.

I am your host, Ivan Philipson.

The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners.

This episode, which is number 64, is all about the importance of temperate grasslands as habitat for birds.

When we say temperate grasslands, we mean those generally occurring in the middle latitudes.

You know, the Goldilocks zone that lies between the tropics and the polar regions, not too hot, not too cold?

Temperate grassland is one type of biome. Examples of other biomes include

tropical rainforest, tundra, and desert. Remember learning about biomes? If you're like me, you

learned about them in elementary school. We made diaramas of biomes in my class.

Do kids still make diaramas? Glue together some styrofoam, popsicle sticks, and construction

paper to make a little 3D model in a cardboard box. Anyway, I chose to make a diorama of a boreal forest.

There was a moose in there and a grizzly bear, both made out of Play-Doh.

And a bunch of spruce trees, of course.

It was pretty dope.

In fact, I'm pretty sure it was the best diorama ever seen at that school, before or since.

Not that I'm biased or anything, but forget about boreal forests. The biome of interest today is temperate grassland. Temperate grasslands

exist in several parts of the world. Some of them cover vast areas. Here in North America, we have the

Great Plains as a great example. This enormous region covers about 500,000 square miles, or

1.3 million square kilometers. The steps of Mongolia and the Pampas of South America are similarly

vast temperate grasslands. Many, many bird species around the world depend on such grasslands

for food and breeding habitat. Among them are raptors, sparrows, blackbirds, larks, pippets, a bunch of South American species in the oven bird family, for Nariadi, and the list goes on.

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