Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds.

I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a light-hearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners.

This is episode 89.

I'm publishing it right at the beginning of 2024, and it's a review of some fascinating things that happened in the world of ornithology and bird conservation

over the last 12 months in 2023.

I've done a review episode like this every year since I started the podcast, and it's always a good time.

Naturally, this isn't an exhaustive review of every scientific discovery about birds in

23. That would be too much. An exhaustive review would be, well, exhausting. Maybe not for you,

but definitely for me. Instead, I'll tell you about a handful of studies and projects that I think you'll find interesting.

These gems were hand-selected by me for your educational pleasure.

So let's get on with it.

I present to you the 2023 Annual Review episode.

Music annual review episode. The first bit of bird biology news I want to tell you about has to do with

space weather.

Did you know that there's weather in space?

There is, but not like clouds and rain and boring stuff like that.

No, space weather includes super cool things like solar flares, plasma eruptions, solar wind, and geomagnetic storms.

Space weather, in our corner of the universe, results from radiation and charged particles

blasting outward from the sun and then slamming into Earth's magnetic field.

This solar wind from the sun can cause trouble

for satellites, spaceships, and city power grids. It can cause trouble for birds, too. Maybe you

remember that birds use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate during migration. So anything that throws the magnetic field out of whack

...