Episode
Okay, but what can we learn from a drawer of birds?
- Podcast
- Okay, But... Birds
- Published
- Apr 23, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2118
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://okaybutbirds.com
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Summary
E20. Less than 1% of what's in a museum is actually on display. So what's happening with the other 99%? Scott talks with Dr. Sushma Reddy, Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the Bell Museum and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, about the extraordinary scientific afterlife of a specimen in a drawer. In this episode: How birds collected 150 years ago are answering questions their collectors never imagined, from air pollution to insect decline Why falcons turned out to be closer to parrots than hawks, and what other surprises fell out of the bird family tree The case for making museum collections more open, especially to scientists from the places these specimens originally came from If you have a few seconds, please follow, rate, and leave a review for the show. It makes a huge difference in helping others discover it. Thanks for listening! All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows: Bald eagle sound contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML 200943 Red-tailed hawk sound contributed by David McCartt, ML 229578 Gyrfalcon sound contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML 516973 Kea sound contributed by William V. Ward, ML 8523 Small ground finch sound contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML 86711 Iiwi sound contributed by Doug Pratt, ML 5888 Sickle-billed vanga sound contributed by Anonymous, ML 100013