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.

And I'm happy to say today is a good day because it is Random Bird Thursday.

Random Bird Thursday episodes are relatively short and sweet, and in each of them I spotlight a bird species that I probably won't feature in a full-length episode.

Because the thing is, there are over 11,000 bird species in the world.

And Random Bird Thursday gives us an opportunity to put a dent in that number to cover

some of these species on the podcast, and we can celebrate some of the ones that we might

otherwise overlook.

So without further ado, let's figure out which species we're talking about today by hitting

the Random Bird selector button.

Excellent.

We have the bicolored ant bird, gymnopithous bicolor.

This is a small bird found in Central and South America.

And this is great. This will be fun. And let's go ahead and get right into it. The bicolored antbird is a chunky, short-tailed bird.

The wings, too, are relatively short, and they're broad,

and they're designed or adapted best for fluttering around rapidly in the forest

over short distances rather than for high speed or for long

sustained flights. That short tail is often held slightly fanned out and the bird regularly flicks

its tail upward and then slowly lowers it. One thing that sticks out to me when I look at

pictures of the bicolored ant bird right away is that it has really big eyes, these big dark brown eyes, and has kind of an astonished or shocked look.

And those big eyes make it look pretty cute, because again, it's a chunky little stocky bird with big eyes.

In terms of size, it's about five and a half to six inches long from beak to tail, which is 13.5 to 15

...