Our Wild Lives
Our Wild Lives takes listeners into the heart of wildlife conservation, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. Each episode dives into the wild lives of diverse species, explores complex ecosystems, and unpacks the urgent issues facing wildlife conservation.
Our Wild Lives
The Secret Lives of Sagebrush Songbirds with Emily Shertzer
In this episode, we delve into the life of sagebrush songbirds with Emily Schertzer, a PhD candidate at the University of Wyoming. Emily shares her journey into ornithology, her methods for tracking these tiny birds, and the impact of human development and climate change on their habitats. We explore the intricacies of these songbirds' lives, their nesting habits, migration patterns, and the importance of clear scientific communication. Emily also describes the different species she studies, including Brewer's sparrows, sagebrush sparrows, and sage thrashers, and their interactions with each other and their environment. Lastly, we discuss the future of songbird conservation and the collaborative efforts needed to protect these migratory species.
00:00 Introduction to Sagebrush Songbirds
00:08 Meet Emily Schertzer: A Journey into Ornithology
01:04 Understanding Songbirds and Their Habitats
01:44 Emily's Path to Bird Research
02:34 Field Research in Sagebrush Habitats
04:42 Tracking Tiny Birds Across Continents
07:12 Challenges and Discoveries in Bird Tracking
07:56 The Importance of Sagebrush Habitat
11:07 Human Impact and Climate Change
12:24 Post-Fledging Period: A Critical Time
15:16 The Role of Communication in Science
18:02 The Significance of Bird Conservation
20:00 Migration Patterns and Connectivity
25:33 Predators and Threats to Songbirds
26:19 Conclusion
Learn more
Brewer's Sparrow Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Sage Thrasher Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Sagebrush Sparrow Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Wyoming Cooperative Research Unit
What's life like for a songbird that weighs less than 10 paperclips? And how are scientists keeping tabs on them? In this episode, I chat with Emily Schertzer, a PhD candidate at the University of Wyoming, about her research on sagebrush songbirds. We get into her unexpected path into ornithology, how she tracks tiny birds traveling across the continent, and how human development and climate change are reshaping their worlds. We learn about the secret lives of sagebrush songbirds and why clear scientific communication is just as important as the research itself. Let's just break it down from the beginning. What constitutes a songbird? What, you know, what's that distinction?
SPEAKER_00:So songbirds, they're part of the uh order passeriformis or passerines. So typically they're smaller birds, although something like a crow or a raven is still considered a songbird. So they're different from raptors. Most of the small birds that you see flying around are songbirds, or they might be closely related to songbirds, something like a woodpecker. And the birds that I study are sparrows and then thrashers. So sparrows, lots of different sparrow species around. Like in cities, you might see house sparrows, that's like a kind of sparrow. And then thrashers are related to mocking birds and in that group, but they are all considered songbirds.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. So how did you get into this? Were you always a bird person? Was it just kind of, you know, something for you to study to be able to go to school? Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I I did my undergrad at Cornell University, and that's sort of what brought me into the bird world because Cornell has like a really big bird program there, and you might have heard of the Cornell Lab for Ontology. So when I uh started in undergrad, I knew that I was interested in conservation, biology, but I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do. So I joined a lab because I was interested in doing research, and that's kind of what led me to birds. And I don't know, I remember the first time I held a bird, we were banding chickadees and some other birds at bird feeders, and it's just like an amazing feeling to just realize how complicated and interesting their lives are and get to see that up close. So I think that's really what got me really excited about birds.
SPEAKER_01:Let's get into your work now. You're base in the sagebrush when you're doing field research. Explain to me exactly what we're doing out in the field these days.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so well, I'm actually done with collecting my data, which is sort of nice. But um, the last, oh gosh, five summers, I was going out um to Pinedale, Wyoming, which is on the western side of the state, and working in sagebrush. So all three of the species that I study, which are brewer sparrows, sagebrush sparrows, and sage thrashers, are considered sagebrush associated, at least songbirds. Some people call call them obligates, which means that they require sagebrush habitat, although um it's a little bit complicated. I think brewer sparrows can be a little bit more flexible than that. But um yeah, so in the summers, I would go out and I would catch birds and band them. So I put little bands on their legs that are colored so that I can actually recite individuals from afar and know who they are. And then I put out different tags to track them. So I was studying a few different periods and movement during a few different periods, including the post-fledging period, which is the time after birds leave the nest, but when they're still in family groups. And then I'm also studying migration. So I'd catch birds, put tags on them, let them go again, and then track them, you know, outside of the breeding period. But I did all my field work during the breeding period because it's a lot easier to study birds when they're on a nest. It's easy to find them, to track individuals, and so we would go out, find nests, catch those birds, and then track them, you know, over multiple years after that.
SPEAKER_01:All right, so you're not getting to go down to Mexico and hang out with them when they're down there.
SPEAKER_00:No, I wish. I thought I was trying to find an excuse. Well, a couple of my first burrows actually go to Baja, and so I've been like, oh my gosh, I really need to check out those wintering grounds. But no, I haven't been able to do that. I think it would be going forward a really cool opportunity like to work with researchers in other places. And I think that's a really cool thing about migratory birds is like no one country or person or region like you know, owns these birds. They cover a lot of the globe, and so the birds in Wyoming spend half the year down in Mexico. And I think it would be a really great opportunity to collaborate across different countries in the future. But yeah, I didn't have a chance to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Awesome. So let's get into how do you track because I got to hold one of these, I can't remember which one it was, but it was so small, like the size of my thumb or smaller. What are you putting on them to be able to track them from Wyoming to Mexico and back?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so these tags are super cool. Um, people a lot smarter than me came up with them maybe 20 years ago now is when people started using these tags. But the tags that I use to track them during migration are called light-level geolocators. And yeah, you pointed out that these birds are really small. Brewer sprows uh are only like 10 to 12 grams. And we're required to put tags on that are less than 3% of their body weight, because more than that, the concern is that it'll affect them and affect their survival. And so that means that we have to put on tags that are like 0.3 grams or smaller than that. So the light-level GLA cutters are super tiny, and all they are are they have a little light stock on them, and then they have a tiny battery, and they can just collect information. They can't actually send out information because sending out a signal would take too much weight. And so the tags just collect light information, and I have to catch the bird again the next year. So I take the tag off the following year, and then I get this graph of light and time. And I can tell based on the timing of sunrise and sunset, and also how quickly the sun rises and sets where the bird was at a given time. Because if you think about it, like you know, if you're far up north in the summertime, then your days are gonna be super long. And also those sunrises and sunsets are gonna have a very gentle slope versus if you're closer to the tropics. So you can actually tell where the bird was using that information.
SPEAKER_01:That's really cool. So how like how accurate is that? You kind of get, you know, like a between this latitude and that latitude, or are you able to pinpoint even more specific than that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's um definitely not as accurate as GPS. And I think the average error is 200 kilometers error in like latitude and then about 50 in longitude, but it does depend. Um, so if a bird is in one place for a long time, so if they go to their wintering grounds and just hang out there for a long time, then we can get more accurate estimates of their location. Also, the timing of year can affect it. So, like around the equinox day length is very similar across a lot of the world during the equinox, and so sometimes it's harder to pinpoint locations during that time, but then you can pinpoint it at other times. So it sort of depends. But yeah, that's about the average error.
SPEAKER_01:That's so interesting. So, how successful are you with the birds that you're tagging and then coming back to Wyoming and you being able to find them again?
SPEAKER_00:So, and that's another one of my questions is trying to understand how faithful they are to certain sites. And what we saw is we got about a third of our birds back every year. So like 30 to 40 percent would come back every year. And so we got, I think, yeah, it was about 30% of the tags back. So I think I put out 150 and I got back 45, so a little bit less than a third. Yeah, but then part of that is also sometimes we would get birds that came back and we saw them and they had their tag on, and I couldn't actually catch them again because they get to know me and they they know what I'm up to. So they learn your tricks. Yeah, they do, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so their habitat, you talk about them being obligates, meaning that I did not know that that meant that they needed sagebrush. There that same type of sagebrush habitat is down in Baja, Mexico, or are they changing their habitat depending on the time of year? What is that like?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they probably are changing their habitat, and it seems like from our uh data they are. So um they need sagebrush during the breeding season because they build their nests in sagebrush shrubs most of the time. But in the wintertime, they're just spending time in shrub step habitat in general. So it's still shrubby habitat, still like kind of similar structure, but not necessarily sagebrush. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_01:So you spent a lot of time in the sagebrush, and I think a lot of people don't really understand the complexity of that habitat, and I got to spend a week there with some of your other lab mates, and so I really got to see, you know, just how different and how variety this habitat is, even though it just looks like a sagebrush seat. So can you tell me a little bit about like when you look out in the sagebrush, what do you see? What do you feel?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is really complicated. And you know, for me, I was always going out to the same breeding sites every year. So I spent five years out there, and like you just said, even though it might look all the same to someone who doesn't know the area, you really get to know differences in the habitats. There's taller sagebrush, there are areas called like Mima mounds that with tall sagebrush and these draws with tall sagebrush, and shorter sagebrush. And what's really cool is that one thing I was doing with my project was tracking adults across multiple years and trying to understand how faithful they are to certain sites. And they also see the sagebrush the way that like you and I do. They they recognize very distinct features. And so we would have um, especially males, come back and nest within the same 20 meters every single year. So they went all the way to Mexico, but they recognize those areas. So when you're working out there, you sort of start thinking like a bird too, and you can you can tell that there are differences in the landscape and you recognize areas and you know it feels very familiar in certain areas and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So if I'm a songbird on the housing market, what am I looking for? What's my ideal habitat? Like where where are you going to find these kinds of songbirds?
SPEAKER_00:It sort of depends on the species and sometimes even the time of the summer, because they'll nest multiple multiple times throughout the summer, what kind of shrubs they're looking for. But things like burr sparrows, I usually see them in sort of larger sagebrush shrubs, but then sagebrush sparrows, they don't mind the really tiny shrubs. Usually they prefer areas that are a little bit denser with shrubs. Um, so if I'm in an area of sagebrush that's kind of like really short and sparse shrubs, then I won't find nests as much. One thing that is not a good idea if you're one of these birds, but they don't seem to recognize this, is nesting near things like natural gas development or human structures can actually be really negative for them. In these areas, there are actually more rodents, which are nest predators, and so your nest is less likely to be successful if you're near human development. However, these birds, it seems like they don't seem to really recognize that that's a problem, and they keep nesting in those areas anyway. So those are kind of some of the things that they're looking for.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so you've been out there for five years. How have you seen more human development? Because a lot of the a lot of your area sites are on public land, correct? So then they're getting these oil and gas leases. How how have you seen that evolution going back, you know, five times of the impact that that's having on these species?
SPEAKER_00:A lot of our questions are related to natural gas development and how that's influencing these birds. So we specifically chose sites that are spreading across the gradient of natural gas development. But they're continuing to add new wells. And so while I've been out there, I've seen new wells go in. Um there's also uh a lot of like truck traffic and things like that. A lot of times they have to mow down the sagebrush to add in pipelines and things like that. So there's a lot of change on the landscape from all that. And then also another sort of nebulous thing that I've definitely seen, but it's harder to pinpoint on, you know, like a building or something, is there's a lot of change in the climate too. So I two of my years were pretty extreme compared to the historic average. So we had like a really, really hot and dry year where very few nests were successful and the birds left early, and then we had a crazy wet year another year, and you know, with climate change, extremes like that are also becoming more common. Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint, you know, how different it is, but that also has a huge impact on nest success, nest predation, that kind of thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So you start studying them specifically after they fledged the nest. What is that experience like? Is it like a dramatic nat geo jumping off the cliff and they never come back? Or, you know, what does that look like?
SPEAKER_00:They're not very ready for the world when they leave the nest. So what's kind of unique about these birds is so they're shrub nesting birds, and so their nests are really close to the ground, which means that they don't have to fly when they first leave the nest, and they actually can't fly within the first few days. Some birds, you know, that might be in a tree or something like that, or if they're in a nest box, they might wait a little bit longer before fledging. And the other thing is that for these birds specifically, they have a lot of nest predators, and so the nest is a pretty dangerous place. And the parents especially want to get those kids out of the nest as fast as they can, because if a predator comes while they're all in the nest, then that parent is going to lose all that effort for all their nestlings. So these guys, they leave the nest pretty early. And when they leave the nest, they can't fly. Their feathers are not fully developed, they're starting to come out of the pins, which is feathers start as like pins and then they kind of open up. But they, yeah, they're not very developed. And so what I found is that actually these birds they did better, especially in the first few days of the post-fledgling period, if they had longer legs. So it didn't really matter how well they could fly, but it mattered how well perhaps they could run and how well they could like find shelter by running. So yeah, they hop out of the nest, they'll oftentimes split up. So like one parent will k take a couple of the fledglings, and then the other one will have the other two, and they'll sort of split up that way. But they don't move that far in the beginning. You'll find them within like 50 meters of the nest in the first couple days, and then they start to roam a little bit further away, and then within a week they're flying, and then they start kind of zooming all over the place in a family group.
SPEAKER_01:That's so interesting because when I think of birds fledging, I just think of them flying away, not kind of stumbling out of the nest and then navigating the gr on the ground. So yeah, that learned something new today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's pretty crazy. And you know, the post-fledging period isn't as well studied as the nesting period, just because, you know, it's hard you have to track them and it's like a lot harder to find them. But it seems like it's a pretty risky period and potentially more risky than the nesting period. And so it's a really important time to understand what's happening. And that's a cool thing. One thing that I am really excited about with my research is like trying to understand different periods because there are different levels of risk during different parts of your life. And so trying to understand which parts of their life is more risky and maybe we should focus on for conservation is kind of cool.
SPEAKER_01:So based on your research, that's really what's going to come out of it then. When should we focus our resources on trying to protect these species?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that that's part of it. Yeah, trying to understand when more mortality is happening, yeah, across the the whole annual cycle, but that includes things like the post-fledging period and that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:I know a lot of word people are really good at mimicking like bird songs and birds. Are you able to do it? Like you spent so much time with them. Like, what do their songs sound like? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I am not very good at that, so I don't know if I can sing them. I mean, I can tell you what they sound like. They have some pretty distinct songs, and so like brewer sparrows, and I'm sure you heard them when you were out there and maybe caught some of it, but they have like this long buzzy song, and they actually will sing a different song when they're paired and ready to go with a partner versus when they're not paired. Sage bush sparrows, oh gosh, I don't think I can sing any either, but they have like a pretty distinct like little song. It's like a little bit complicated. And then for sage thrashers, they're always funny because it just seems like they're just like talk, they just want to talk. And so they just like uh I just tell people that if you hear something warbling out in the sagebrush, it just like keeps going on and on and it's kind of like changing. It's a sage thrasher.
SPEAKER_01:So you have a minor in creative writing. How much do you use that? I I feel like that's kind of an interesting pairing with all of the scientific research. How do you use that in in your work and in your life?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, when I was in undergrad, I sort of like wasn't sure what I wanted to do, and I loved to write too, and I was always interested in like communication and that kind of stuff. And so that's why I have a minor in creative writing. Honestly, I wish I wrote more. I mean, science involves a lot of writing and a lot of communication. Like, you know, we're writing scientific papers, which are mostly for, you know, a scientific audience, but also I do a lot of talks and things like that at conferences and then for the public. And so I think communication is a big part of science and really important because it's easy to just get like sucked into like I love spending time out in the stage brush, and it's easy to get sucked into what I'm doing and not share it with other people, but it's not going to make an impact unless I share it with other people.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people, that is the most daunting part of science, is then going to communicate it. How do how do you approach that? Do you have any tips for that?
SPEAKER_00:It's definitely challenging. I think one thing is thinking broadly is important. So thinking about why this is important for our species, but also why is this important for ecology more broadly. I mean, always the question why is this important to know is is like the first thing you have to approach. And yeah, I mean, to me, I'm I'm really passionate about birds and about conservation. And I know that, I mean, many bird species are declining, including the ones that I'm studying. And so to me, I know why that's important, but I have to consider what my what the audience values as well, and why is that important to the people that I'm talking to. So I I don't know, I think that's like what I think about when I think about communicating my science.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So why so what do you tell people when you tell them this is why my science is important?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, I the species I'm studying, like I said, are declining. And I think that they just have intrinsic value for existing. I think everything on Earth does, and like, you know, we need to respect everything that exists on Earth. But even beyond that, uh, declines of birds are it's scary and it's gonna impact all of us eventually. You know, birds are important pollinators, birds can influence everything else in in the ecosystem, like insects, which are really important pollinators. Diversity increases the resilience of ecosystems. So if we start losing species, um, then ecosystems themselves could collapse, and that would have a huge impact on like our ability to even survive. And so I think that's a good reason to, you know, think that this is important, even if you don't care about brewer sparrows themselves. Losing species like this and losing diversity like this is going to have huge impacts on our ability to survive in the future as well. Also, you know, these birds are getting impacted by habitat change and also by climate change, and it's sort of like a canary in the coal mine situation. If we see these declines happening with some species, you know, we know to look out for what's happening to other species in the future. So I think that's another reason why it's important. And, you know, I think birds are really cool to look at. It makes our world more interesting. Um, one thing I noticed, like, because I'm I grew up in Philadelphia and now I live in Wyoming. And when I go back home, it's like a subconscious thing. It sounds like home, and the reason is because I hear all these birds that I grew up with singing, and so we might not even notice what's around us, but like the world that we grew up in, you know, is created by these ecosystems that we grew up in, and so we don't want to lose that either.
SPEAKER_01:Thinking about like you say that, and I can hear what my home sounds like based on the birds that I, you know, morning doves and carnals, and I grew up in central Texas, so we kind of get a lot in that flyway, but yeah, that was really I really loved that. So these migratory birds, what like how do you have numbers on how far they're traveling, how long it's taking them to do that? And just how are they doing that? They're so small. You said they're like 12 grams. How the heck are they flying from Wyoming to Mexico and back?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's crazy that they can do that. It's pretty amazing. They tend to spread out, so some will go to like Texas, actually, um, and like some will winter in San Antonio, some, especially sagebush pharaohs, don't go quite as far. They'll go to like New Mexico or Texas or northern Mexico in that area. Some of them just spend their time in Utah and Colorado, so they kind of stick nearby. Others go to Baja, so they spread out all over the place. On average, they go about a thousand kilometers for this for these, the three species that I'm studying, which actually, I mean, it's it's a long way, but compared to a lot of birds that breed in North America, it's actually not that long of a migration. So many birds go all the way to South America, and the birds I'm studying, they don't, they go to like Mexico and southern US. And they'll do this, they do it in a few different ways. So some of the birds that I look at, they'll just go straight there. They'll be on the breeding grounds and then they just go straight down to their wintering grounds and they'll do it in like a couple days, which is pretty crazy. Yeah. Um, but then others will have some stopovers, and all of these birds, they they do something called a molt at the end of the breeding period. So they have to regrow their feathers every year because their feathers get worn out. So some of them will molt on the breeding grounds and then they just head right down there. But other ones will go somewhere else and stop over for a while and do their molt and then they go down to where they're gonna winter. So it sort of depends on the bird and how long it takes them to get there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so birds are all spreading out. You know, you'd think they would kind of all just follow the same thing. Is it just habit?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great question. And and that's actually something that I'm thinking about a lot right now, and I'm really curious about because yeah, so people are trying to figure out um it's called migratory connectivity. So like it's like how connected are populations across different parts of the annual cycle. And migratory connectivity can have a big impact on conservation because if you imagine if a population is going to the same place during the non-breeding period, then habitat change on the breeding or the non-breeding grounds could influence that entire population versus if that population is spreading out, that can actually be good for the population because it diversifies the strategy. So not all individuals are going to be influenced by habitat change. And we still don't know like what drives migratory connectivity that much, like what makes some populations spread out versus other ones not spread out. One theory is that like in a brood, it it's advantageous if every fledgling or young bird will go to a different place, and so they that's how the population spreads out, and then every year that bird will go to the same different area than its siblings, if that makes sense. But what's surprising is so a few of my birds, I was able to track them for multiple years, which is pretty rare for songbirds because, like I talked about, those tags that I use are really hard to use, it's hard to catch the birds again, and so I was really lucky that I I was able to track some of them for multiple years. And what I actually found was that um individuals were going to completely different places in different years. Um I had you know a couple birds that spent one year in Baja and then another year in like San Antonio, like totally different places. Wow. Um and so I don't know what's up with that. It's that's sort of unexpected, and usually we assume that adults have site fidelity, meaning they are faithful to the same area across multiple years. But it seems like for these species, they maybe aren't site faithful. And that might be a good thing. That might mean that they're flexible enough that they can actually respond to environmental change, or something else might be going on. You know, they might just like I don't know, maybe something weird happened to their habitat and they couldn't go to the same place, you know, and they went somewhere else. So who knows what's happening. And another uh, I guess, unfortunate thing about my research is the only birds that I can see where they went are the birds that actually survived to the following year so that I could get the tag back. And so it's possible that the birds that I'm getting back are the ones that are actually they're smart enough or flexible enough that they can respond to change, and other birds are going to places that are not great for them, but then they're dying, so I can't actually see where they went.
SPEAKER_01:So Yeah, there's definitely so much to consider there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So these are three different species of songbirds. How are they interacting at the breeding grounds that you can see? Are they friends? Are they fighting? You know, what's going on there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because they do all use sagebrush, so they're sort of probably competing for at least nest shrubs and that kind of thing on the breeding grounds. But I honestly don't really see them interact that much. What's interesting is they do build their nests in different parts of the shrub. So like brewer spurrows will build their nest often in the top of a shrub, but sage thrashers might be at the bottom of the shrub. And but I never see like a brewer spurrow and a sage thrasher have a nest in the same shrub. So they must be in some way competing for different shrubs. But on the breeding grounds, it does seem like their territories overlap. But they I mean their territories will be separate within the species. So like two brewer spurrows will fight each other for a territory, but then they might it might overlap with like a sagebrush sparrow or something like that. So it seems like they're able to coexist. And like one thing I was interested in with the geolocators was seeing if these three species are going to different non-breeding areas as well. And it does seem like they they do go to different places. So even though they're all breeding in the same place, the three species do seem to spread out to different non-breeding areas relative to each other as well.
SPEAKER_01:Very cool. What if you're a brewer spur or a sagebrush thrasher, what are you looking out for? What's what's taking your babies in the night? You know, like who who are our main enemies here?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, they have a lot of enemies on the breeding grounds. But actually the most common nest predator is deer mice. So even though they're really small, just because like eggs are super easy for them to eat, and then like little nestlings, they can't do anything, they're kind of helpless. So deer mice are a big predator. But then um, there are a lot of predators out there. There are badgers, there's a lot of ground squirrels, there are a lot of aerial predators, so like loggerhead shrikes will predate them, northern harriers, basically any raptors. Yeah, I mean, everything eats sagebrush songbirds, unfortunately. But once they're able to fly, then it's not so much of a problem.
SPEAKER_01:Gotcha.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thanks for joining me, Emily, and for teaching us all about sagebrush songbirds. Uh, if people want to learn more about this or more about your research, do you have any links of places they can go to check that out?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um, I don't I guess the co-op unit has a website that you can go to. I don't know the exact address, but um yeah, we have information about our research there. Um and then yeah, I think that's the main place. There's also the University of Wyoming has this Wild Bird Initiative that has a website that's more about like birds in general, but that website also has information about birds in Wyoming.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for tuning in to the Our Wildlife podcast brought to you by the Wildlife Society. If this episode sparked a new idea or just made you appreciate wildlife a little more, let us know. Leave a review, send us a message, or tag us on social media at the Wildlife Society. Want to get more involved in the world of wildlife conservation? Head to wildlife.org. We'll catch you next week with more stories from the wild.