I want you to imagine there's an apple tree outside your window.

And I want you to imagine that you have a little ritual, where every morning you wake up and you count the apples you can see from your home.

Most days someone will come to the tree and pick an apple off of it, and some days you'll notice a new apple

has grown large enough to be visible from your window, or another has grown ripe enough to fall

off naturally. Some days you can count more apples, some days you can count less, but on

average day, you'll count about a hundred apples from your vantage point.

Then, one day, the owner of the property puts up a low fence, and nobody is allowed to visit

the apple tree anymore. You carry on with her counting ritual and expect that over time,

in the absence of apple pickers, the number of

apples will now grow larger. You expect that your daily count is going to get a little higher.

But strangely, even after some significant time, the average remains. About 100.

Today we're going to talk about the apple picker, the red billed oxpecker,

buffagus erythorincus. I'm Mackin. This is species.

Welcome to the show.

I just want to take this introductory minute to give a massive shout out to the donors who fund this show.

This podcast has a rather large audience, but it's funded entirely by an incredibly small group of generous people.

It's no exaggeration for me to say that I could probably fit everyone who has ever donated

to this show into my apartment. But a little generosity goes a very long way, and this small percentage of listeners make this show possible for everyone.

No ads, no premium content, no catches, no benefits.

This show is funded entirely by good old-fashioned generosity.

So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you, Eric and the animals, for

playing me in. And now without further ado, I present to you the oxpecker.

...