He Had His Father's Voice: Tracking A Rare Bird Hybrid

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2022

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

When Steve Gosser heard the song of a scarlet tanager in the woods, he knew to look for a bright-red bird with black wings. But when he laid eyes on the singer, he saw instead a dark-colored head, black-and-white body, with a splash of red on its chest. "Well, that sort of looks like a first-year male rose-breasted grosbeak," he said. The song of one bird coming out of the body of another suggested this little guy could be a rare hybrid. Gosser enlisted the help of some pros, including biologist David Toews, who conducted a genetic analysis to see if this was truly the offspring of two species that diverged 10 million years ago, and today run in very different circles. On today's episode, Gosser and Toews fill Aaron in on this avian mystery, and what hybrid animals can teach us about evolution.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Well, this happened just about 30 minutes north of where I live at a place called Steve
0:12.0	Gasser is a wildlife photographer and a self-proclaimed diehard birder.
0:17.2	He lives outside Pittsburgh and he didn't know it yet, but he was in for something unexpected.
0:23.0	You know, I got there kind of early in the morning and got out of my car and now usually
0:30.0	the first thing that I start noticing are the bird songs.
0:34.0	There were warblers and those are probably my favorite birds to try to find and get pictures
0:42.0	of.
0:43.0	There is a scarlet tanager.
0:45.0	I thought, oh, you know, I've already got plenty of pictures of that just recently, so
0:51.0	I'm not going to even bother with that bird.
0:54.0	And there was a northern parula.
0:58.0	And that was the bird that I was really hoping to spot.
1:05.0	So I went over to the spot where I heard it singing and as soon as I get over there,
1:10.0	it completely goes quiet.
1:13.0	So it basically just seemed like it vanished.
1:18.0	So I was like, well, that scarlet tanager is still up there singing away.
1:25.0	So he starts looking for it up in the tree canopy.
1:28.0	And I remember seeing it with my naked eye fly out from this one spot and scarlet tanagers
1:35.0	are bright red birds with black wings and usually can spot that bright red like a mile away.
1:43.0	And I remember when I saw this bird come out, it was like, look, it's real dark to me.
1:48.0	So I can like immediately knew that it wasn't a scarlet tanager.
	...

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