Eat the Invaders & Ask Sam Round-up

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This week we attempt to not only eat the invaders, but drink them as well. And this time, most of us were on board. Also, the Ask Sam hotline gets some attention as Sam answers questions about bird feeders, black flies, storm clouds, and dew.

Eat/Drink the Invaders

If you have Japanese knotweed in your yard, chances are you curse at it, hack away at it, do anything to try and kill it. But we thought we should at least *try* to eat it, and we found a guy who even found a way to drink it. Plus we put some in between two slices of bread which was weird, but not that weird.

Ask Sam Round-Up

Since we launched the toll free version of our Ask Sam hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837), people have been calling day and night with all manner of questions for Sam about the outdoor world. This time we talk to two different Sarahs (Saras? Or is it Sarah and Sara? Or vice versa?) one about birds, the other about black flies. Then Sam answers a question about thunderstorms and the clouds that accompany them, plus uncovers the mystery behind dew. So pop some popcorn, settle in, and get ready for the Ask Sam round-up.

Question 1: Sarah from Albuquerque, NM asks:

"I have a lot of bird feeders in my yard and I really like to watch the song birds, and my indoor cats chatter at them through the window. But a co-worker told me that feeding the birds, even if it's high quality bird food is actually harmful for them, because it makes them stay in places longer then they normally would if they are migratory, that it disrupts their natural diet. So is that true? Am I hurting the song birds in our eco-system by putting out bird feeders? Tell me if I'm a bird killer or not."

This is a question that has preoccupied the “don’t mess with the ecosystem” wing of the environmental movement for a long time. And there are three concerns:

1. Are We Messing With Their Migration?

Are we encouraging birds that should be migrating to stay in place, when they should be migrating? We’re worried about this because if they leave their summer range too late maybe they will suffer later in their migration: starve to death… freeze to death… get eaten by winter weasels… something. The counterpoint to this concern is that birds likely start migrating based on the change of the seasons—shorter days, colder temperatures—not availability of food.

2. Are They Getting More Diseases From Hanging Out At the Feeder?

When birds are all packed together because they’re clamoring to get these delicious seeds and nuts, are they then transmitting diseases to each other that they wouldn’t normally get? The worry here is that disease might lead to higher mortality than if the birds had to fend for themselves.

3. Are We Making Them Dependent Upon Us For Food?

Finally, what if you feed birds religiously for years, and then you move away or are kidnapped by pirates and suddenly the bird feeders vanish? Will the birds be dependent on you feeding them and not know how to feed themselves while you’re away?

Thankfully this question has been studied. (Thank goodness for science, or else we would have to call this segment “How the Hell Should Sam Know?”) The study that I found that seemed to best address the first two concerns was done using data from something called Project Feederwatch, which used data from backyard birdwatchers to assess the state of bird species that regularly hang around bird feeders. Think about it, if feeding birds were causing them to die while migrating or die from disease, you would expect the populations of the birds that eat at feeders to decline… right? Because it’s bad for them, right?

But that’s not the case, usually they’re doing just about the same, or maybe slightly better than the birds that never visit feeders.

And on the last point: do birds get dependent on feeders? This was tested twice on chickadees in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. They set out feeders for a whole bunch of chickadees and then after two years of feeding them, they took the feeders away.

The result? No effect. Chickadees in the areas that lost their feeders and the ones that kept their feeders had the same survival rates.

So, are you a bird killer? All evidence points to “No.” For now, feed with a clear conscience!

Question 2: Sara from Dunnsville, VA asks

"I have several friends who have hiked the Appalachian trail, thru-hik ed it, and another friend who's about to start, and she's starting up in Maine in June and we were talking about how she needs to get a head net to protect herself from all the black flies in Maine and in other parts of the Northeast. So my question is, why are black flies such a problem up in the Northeast, but they're not really problematic at all down here in the south?"

I love this question so much. I used to lead Wilderness Trips up in this region and I remember evenings when the black flies were so bad that we would spend the whole afternoon cowering in our tents, or cook dinner swathed in rain coats and rain pants even in the middle of summer. I remember a camper who had never been exposed to black flies before, was bit so many times her eyes nearly swelled shut the next day. So if you’ve never experienced a proper black fly swarm, be warned: when it happens, it’s intense and terrible.

The truth is, as Elmer Gray of the North American of Black Fly Association told me, there are black flies in the south, but there aren’t swarms of them. In places where the winters and therefore the streams and rivers are colder, the black fly season is short and concentrated. This is because the cold slows the development of the fly larva, and makes it so that the flies can only lay eggs once per year (they are “univoltine”) instead of the black flies in warmer parts of the world that can develop faster and have more than one generation per year (“bivoltine” or “multivoltine”).

In other words, we cram an entire year’s worth of black flies into one, three-week long, black fly season, as all of the black flies in the region race to come out from the rivers, find something to bite, and then mate and lay eggs so the next generation can start to mature again as quickly as possible, and do it all again the next year.

And if you start the Appalachian Trail in reverse in June, you’re headed straight into the belly of that beast. Oh, and haven’t you heard? Less river pollution means black flies are doing better than decades ago. Steel yourself.

Question 3: Margie from Concord asks

"A couple of years ago, I started noticing that the clouds just seemed enormous, just towering high. And maybe they're the same as they always have been and always will be, but my first thought was: 'There go our icebergs.' I just wondered if there is any connection between icebergs melting and cloud formation, height of clouds, volume of clouds."

Those clouds that you’re referring to are called cumulonimbus clouds: they’re the big piles of clouds shaped like anvils that create lightning storms, and while there are several ways these storms can form, the most important ingredients are hot air mass rising up through a cold air mass in a process called “convection.”

Now the question of how will climate change effect clouds is a very, very complicated one that is being worked on by lots of smart climatologists creating detailed and complicated climate models. But in general terms, the thing to remember is that warm air can hold more moisture, and so it’s a safe bet that a warmer globe will mean more clouds.

Now at the same time, we have an observed that here in the Northeast, over the past 50 years or so, the number of rain storms that drop 2 inches of rain in 24 hours have increased by 71%. And not only that, but Jonathan Winter, a Dartmouth climate scientist has looked at this data and recently found that most of this increase came in one large “step” that occurred mostly all around the late 90s. That sounds like the kind of thing that someone like Margie would notice!

Winter says a lot of these extreme rain events were in the summer, so it’s a good bet that a good chunk of them were these “convective” (*ahem* thunder) storms. BUT, his next study is to look more precisely into what kind of storms are on the rise. So we need only wait until that study comes out to answer Margie’s question for sure.

Now… are those clouds *actually* our icebergs? Meh, who knows.

Question 4: Emily from Tuscaloosa, AL asks:

"I'm a preschool teacher and I was taking my kids out onto the playground this morning, and we always have to check to see if the playground is wet, and since we go out so early, the ground is always wet because there's dew on the ground. I was just curious as to what causes the dew, because it can not rain overnight, and I know it has something to do with a drop in temperature at night, but what cause dew to fall down on our ground." 

This is one of those questions that I really like because answering it helps you to understand one of those fundamental properties of the world that shapes all sorts of little things that affect you.

So, for starters, there’s water in the air, and some days there is more water than other days. You know this as humidity. However, that dew exists flows from a single fact: the warmer the air is, the more water that air can hold.

Maybe you’ve heard of the “dew point” in some weather forecast or another. The dew point is the temperature at which dew will begin to form in the overnight hours. So say it’s summer-time in Alabama and the air is warm and humid. But then the sun goes away and that warm air starts to cool. Eventually it will cool so much that it won’t be able to hold all that water, and some of it will fall out (or precipitate!) as dew!

Graph of Dewpoint vs. Air Temperature at Varying Relative Humidities. Based on the Magnus-Tetens approximation.

Graph of Dewpoint vs. Air Temperature at Varying Relative Humidities. Based on the Magnus-Tetens approximation.

So what does this mean for your life? It means when you see a high dew point, you know that the air is pretty full of water and maybe you’re gonna want to turn on the air conditioner, or if it’s insufferably humid, you know that will be a bad night to sleep outside, because you’re going to get absolutely drenched.

Oh, and also! Once you know about dew point, you’re equipped to understand another weather number: relative humidity. When you see a relative humidity of 100%, that means you’re right at the dew point, the air can hold no more water, and water is condensing out of the air and evaporating into the air at exactly the same rate. This number is “relative” because it takes less water to fully saturate the air at lower temperatures, so 100% relative humidity when it’s 40 degrees out won’t feel particularly swampy.

What other ways does this knowledge help you? Why do your glasses get foggy when you walk inside in the winter? Moist warm air hits the cold glass and the moisture falls out all over your lenses. Why does your cold beer get covered with condensation? Warm air hits cold beer. Why is there frost on the inside of your window? I could literally keep going all day with these.

Outside/In was produced this week by:

Sam Evans-Brown, with help from, Maureen McMurray, Taylor Quimby, Molly Donahue, Jimmy Gutierrez and Logan Shannon.

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

This week’s episode includes tracks from Podington Bear and Ari De Niro Check out the Free Music Archive for more tracks from these artists.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Ask Sam Round-up

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Since we launched the toll free version of our Ask Sam hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837), we've seen a real healthy uptick in queries. This time around we decided to ask Chris Martin of the New Hampshire Audubon, and Dave Anderson from the Forest Society to join Sam in our quest to answer your questions about the outdoor world. We've got everything from the geometry of wombat feces to planting trees by the light of the moon.

Question 1: Matt in Australia asks

"I do a bit of hiking up in the highlands where I live, and I noticed that wombats actually poo in cubes, so I did a bit of research and it said it stops it from rolling down hill. I was wondering if that would be beneficial, or not, to them?"

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Oh, Matt... Matt, Matt, Matt. You do know this show is based in New Hampshire, right? Your average New Hampshire naturalist is about as likely to know the difference between a wombat and a wallaby as we are to know how to survive a week in the bush in your shockingly deadly country. Regardless, we're nothing if not resourceful, and I can find you an answer.

The standard answer that you can find swimming around on the internet is that wombat poop is square to help mark their territory, but we called up Alyce Swinbourne, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, who is a little bit internet famous because she has figured out how to make wombats pee on demand. She doesn't buy the cube-shaped-scat-so-it-doesn't-roll-away explanation. "They're not a territorial animal," she says, "and they tend to have a latrine. They just go to a common area, where they poo."

Alyce thinks this is basically just an odd quirk resulting from wombats' incredibly efficient digestive process. "Essentially where they live is a semi-arid environment, and so their gut basically tries to compact and draw out as much water as possible... and so they come out as really compact, really really dry little bricks." She says that when working with wombats in captivity, who have constant access to water, this square shape goes away." They would look like little love hearts, or kidney bean shapes."

There you have it, Matt. Sometimes things, like wombat poop, are just weird. 

Question 2: Sally from Dover, New Hampshire asks 

"I was hiking this morning with my dog near Great Bay in Durham and I looked out over the water and I saw two swans and I took my phone out and I took some pictures, because I thought this was an exciting rare bird siting. But then I thought, I couldn't imagine that swans are native to New Hampshire. So I was wondering if swans are an invasive species? Were they someone's pet that got loose? I'm curious and I'd like to know."

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So many of our listeners come up with questions while wandering around outside! I love it!

Our resident bird-guy is Chris Martin, NH Audubon's senior biologist, and he was all over this question. North America does have two native swans—the trumpeter swan and the tundra swan, also known as the whistling swan after the noise its wings make in flight. However, his guess was that the bird Sally saw in Great Bay was most likely a mute swan, a bird introduced from Europe by wealthy folks who wanted the graceful birds to adorn their sprawling estates. Mute swans are big eaters, and can be very aggressive towards other waterfowl, (and hell, even towards people, as this poor soul found out) so local biologists aren't huge fans of them and many states have programs in place trying to reduce the population.

Ok, you've Asked Sam, now Sam Asks: why are all the swans named after the sounds they make/don't make?

Question 3: Tim asks

"Yesterday I was planting trees in my yard, and last night as I was lying in bed with the full moon's brightness kinda keeping me up, I thought about that old thing about, if you dig a hole during a full moon and you try to put all the soil back in during the wane moon, the soil won't fit in? Or it will? But my question translates to, does the volume of the earth, change with the moon? It's a broad question, but I'm curious."

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This question has been around FOREVER. You can find it discussed on gardening blogs, physics forums, and yes, the pages of the Old Farmer's Almanac. I personally don't think there's much of a question here: sometimes you dig a hole and fail to gather up all of the dirt that you scattered about and it seems like you've got too little, other times, (because you're probably digging a hole to put something in it) you fill your hole back up and there seems to be too much. But maybe I'm just a kill-joy. [Editors note: Sometimes Sam is a kill-joy. Other times he's just a party-pooper.]

However, this whole question of planting by the moon is "as old as dirt," according to Janice Stillman, editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac. The basic idea, she says, is that traditionally people believed that one should plant root crops when the moon is waning [going from full to new] and above-ground crops when the moon is waxing [going from new to full]. This belief "dates back to the ancients, and even the earliest almanacs dating back to the Egyptians were astrological," she explains. 

However, if you try to practice evidence-based gardening, you should know that it doesn't seem that anyone has really studied this in a controlled trial; probably because the science-y-est of the of science-y feel this is a silly question. That doesn't mean its not worth doing—Stillman says its a great way to "learn to observe" the natural cycles around us—and hey, it can't hurt.

Question 4: Bennett from Belfast, Maine asks

"I've had something that's been bothering me for a while, it has to do with this e-vo-lution and i was just thinking about, the other day, we was talking about shahks and they ain't changed much in a long time. But I'm under the impression that every generation of shahk that comes out or anything else for that matter, you got yourself, some of 'em, that are wicked suited to the environment that they was born in. And there's some of 'em that wahnt. And when you got an environment doesn't change much, then the ones that are most successful id be the ones that haven't mutated or nothin'. Dey ain't changed. So is that e-vo-lution in that situation or is there some other word for that? That's what I been wonderin'." [Editor's note: we really tried to capture the essence of this question in writing, but we strongly recommend listening to the audio for the full effect.]

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Well, it took our panel about 5 minutes to get on the same page with this question, simply because Bennett's spectacular (perhaps, somewhat enhanced?) Maine accent led two of us to believe he was asking about "shacks": as in the small out-building used to store tools or boil maple syrup. This question on its own is reason enough to listen to this week's episode, by the way.

However, we did eventually get back on track. The consensus is that Bennett was, in part, correct. Sharks haven't had to change quickly because their environment has changed fairly slowly. However, Chris Martin (again, as an "ologist" he gets to act as our resident devil's advocate) pointed out that there are obvious and dramatic examples of how sharks have evolved since their Devonian roots. Just think of the hammerhead shark's dramatic face-blades. If that's not an argument for the power of evolution, I don't know what is.

All of this is to say, that one can say that while sharks *are* incredibly ancient, they are *not* totally unchanged by time. In the words of one shark researcher, "Dating back at least 425 million years ago, sharks are among the oldest surviving vertebrate groups. But as we have seen, the popular conception of sharks as creatures that have somehow sidestepped the processes of evolution and arrived in our time virtually unchanged is pure bunk."

Oh, and if you'd like to hear about how shacks haven't really evolved much, you should listen to the podcast.

Outside/In was produced this week by:

Sam Evans-Brown, with help from, Maureen McMurray, Taylor Quimby, Molly Donahue, Jimmy Gutierrez and Logan Shannon.

Thanks this week to Chris Martin and Dave Anderson for being some-what willing participants. You should also check out their podcast, Something Wild!

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

The Early Birder Gets the Bird

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In 2013, Neil Hayward was depressed. He had just left the biotech company he helped start, and he was getting over the end of a very serious relationship. He had disposable income, and free time. Suddenly, he found himself doing a lot of birding. A LOT. In this episode Sam delves into the subculture of extreme bird-watching. Plus, this week’s Ask Sam is all about assassin crows.

I’m terrible at identifying birds. Not worse than someone who has never paid any attention to birds, but worse than anyone who has ever called themselves a “birder.” If I’m really being honest, I didn’t realize what it really meant to be a birder until last year when my wife and I went to a “bird weekend” on Star Island, off the coast of New Hampshire.

Here’s what I thought we were getting into: a relaxing weekend spent learning the names of some birds from a knowledgeable local naturalist, Erik Masterson. While not learning about birds during idyllic strolls through the island, we would almost certainly be eating delicious food and enjoying hot beverages on the hotel porch while reading.

The agenda was more rigorous than I expected. The first bird walk began at 6 am and continued until breakfast, around 9 am. I wake up every morning ravenous for food, and my wife prefers not to wake up in the mornings at all, so the deck was stacked against us. This “bird weekend” was not going to be our ideal vacation. Breakfast was followed by more birding, which lasted until lunch. We enjoyed a brief post-lunch break from birding, but ended the day with, you guessed it, more birding. An hour or two, just to be sure no new birds had settled onto the island throughout the day and gone unnoticed. It was so early in the season that the hotel itself,and its bright and airy dining hall, was not yet open, so we were left eating with the island’s staff in the dining room of an adjacent stone building stacked full of cardboard boxes filled with food supplies.

I should mention that Star Island is not big. If one were to jog the island’s longest trail, which goes along its perimeter, it would take no more than five minutes to complete. Over the course of two and a half days, we spent upwards of ten hours patrolling this tiny island for birds.

Screenshot from Google Maps

Now, this is not to say that it was not a lovely weekend. It was. But I had not realized the extent to which birding, for some people, is a deep obsession. The second day featured a trip to a neighboring island, Appledore Island, to see a bird banding station, where researchers were capturing song-birds in mist nets, banding them and quickly releasing them. For me, it was the highlight of the trip, but one of our new birding friends declined to join us. I asked Erik why.

“Appledore Island is in Maine, and Star Island is in New Hampshire,” Erik told me. He must have realized how far out of touch I was from birding culture at that moment, because clearly I had absolutely no idea how that was supposed to be an explanation. “He is working on his New Hampshire list,” Erik explained, “Any bird he sees in Maine won’t count.”

For some, birdwatching is as much about the numbers as it is about the birds. It’s like a game, and like any game there are rules and competitions. Rules about which birds count and which don’t, and competitions to see who can pile up the biggest lists.

 
 

 

The Big Year

In 2013, Neil Hayward was depressed. He had just left the biotech company he helped start, and he was getting over the end of a very serious relationship. He had disposable income, and free time. Suddenly, he found himself doing a lot of birding.

“I could put in a lot of hours and wait for birds, and that always paid off,” Hayward says, “I waited for eight hours for a hummingbird in southeast Arizona, and just as the sun was setting the bird came in. And I had been sitting outside through two thunderstorms and rain, and was about to give up… and it was just the end of a great day.”

Hayward, who lives in Boston, is among the birding elite. Back in 2013, he did something birders call a Big Year, trying to see as many species of birds in the US and Canada as he possibly could in twelve months. This meant he had to criss-cross US and Canada in airplanes and rental cars, leaving behind his loved ones for weeks while he huddled on windblown islands in western Alaska, all the while hoping for bad weather to blow birds across the Pacific Ocean.

In the end, the Big Year cost Hayward, “Less than I thought, but more than I’m prepared to say.” (Though he says it was somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars range.) Meanwhile, he accumulated something on the order of 250,000 frequent flier miles.

Neil Hayward & his wife Gerri Hayward | Photo: Jimmy Gutierrez

Why birds?

Birdwatching is BIG. 60 million people told the latest census they are birdwatchers. And within that 60 million there are, of course, varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some just do it in their backyards, but there are tens of millions of people who travel, who actually go to far away places just to see different birds.

So why do so many people bird, and so few do things like head out to go “herping”?

“In New England there’s something like five or six species of frog, so it doesn’t take very long to see them all,” Hayward theorizes, “Whereas birding, it’s almost like the ideal number, you could spend your whole life birding and see new ones every year.”

 

He pauses to consider this a little more, “I think a lot of birders, they like bringing order to the universe,” he says. Collecting, categorizing, listing.

“Certain people end up birders,” explains Eric Masterson, “I’ve seen characteristics and character traits prevalent amongst a lot of the birders I know. You throw in a little bit of anxiety, throw in a little bit of obsessive compulsion, throw in a little bit of over-achievement.”

So, let me tell you how the extreme variety of elite birding works.

When a bird shows up somewhere outside its typical range, birders notice. Now this doesn’t have to be a rare bird--it could be a robin - but if it shows up somewhere it’s not supposed to be, suddenly it’s a rarity.They call this a vagrant.

And word starts to spread. Texts are sent, blogs are updated, email listservs put the word out. It doesn’t matter what time of day, it doesn’t matter what day of the week, birders drop everything to chase the bird. (In the UK, those who chase rarities are called “twitchers”, because of the way they react when rare bird alerts come in.)

 
 

 

Masterson remembers two instances of this happening that were kind of extreme. Once in Ireland, when a rather common American bird appeared. “There were jets from as far away as Geneva to see this thing. Privately chartered jets, get a few people together to privately charter a flight.”

And this is not just a European phenomenon. Earlier this year, someone spotted a European redwing on an athletic field at a New Hampshire high school and more than 500 birders from all over the country flocked to the spot.

“Now picture Hollis high school,” says Masterson, “We’re in an era when if you have 500 middle-aged men with optics descending on a high school it kind of rings alarm bells.”

Confused police officers, disgruntled neighbors: this is what extreme birding looks like.

The birding umpires

Shockingly, when December rolled around, despite having only started his Big Year in earnest back in April, Hayward had seen 740 species of birds, just eight shy of the record.  

“And it was exciting,” he says, “and I thought, well there’s a good chance that I won’t break the record and then does that mean that this is all a failure, that I didn’t do what I was supposed to do?”

In the last month Hayward traveled frantically: from Texas to way out in the Aleutian islands, then to California and Florida, then way up North to Homer Alaska trying to spot those last 8 birds. Finally, he ended the Big Year on a boat off the coast of North Carolina where he saw a Great Skua. His final count was 747 birds…one shy of the record. But he had three provisional birds-- ones never before seen in the US or Canada - which, if they were approved by the birding powers that be, would put him over the top.

If there was any doubt that birding is, in its way, a sport, the existence of the American Birding Association should lay those doubts to rest. Early on the ABA was expressly about “serious birding” (as opposed to science or conservation, which it didn’t want to get wrapped up in at first) and it maintained the official list of birds that had been seen in the US and Canada.

The ABA decided which birds count and which birds don’t. If you see a bird that’s not on the list, you’d better have a camera with you and you’d better get a good photo. Hayward saw a Eurasian Sparrowhawk and spent all day trying to get a good picture by holding his iphone camera up to his telescope lense, but ultimately his sighting was rejected .

In the end, the Big Year cost Hayward, “Less than I thought, but more than I’m prepared to say.” (Though he says it was somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars range.) Meanwhile, he accumulated something on the order of 250,000 frequent flier miles.

Neil Hayward & his wife Gerri Hayward | Photo: Jimmy Gutierrez

Neil Hayward & his wife Gerri Hayward | Photo: Jimmy Gutierrez

He also saw a California Condor, a bird which had nearly been wiped out, and then released back into the wild. Their population was rebounding, but according to the ABA rules: “They hadn’t been in the wild long enough,” says Hayward. “Ironically the year afterwards, then they were added to the list, so if I’d done my big year in 2014, I would have been able to count that.”

Print and color your own bird from Neil's Big Year!

So, birding: it’s got rules, it’s got competitions, and it’s got super-stars. Eventually Neil Hayward’s Big Year was declared the biggest ever (and he wrote a lovely book about the experience). A common redstart and a rufous-necked wood-rail that he saw were both accepted by the ABA, and he broke the big year record by one bird in June of 2015. His record didn’t stand for long though. This year there are two birders who have already passed his mark, and a third might still get there.

So will he try to recapture the title?

“When I started doing my Big Year, before that I told people I would never do a big year. It sounded crazy and insane and a lot of work and a lot of travel...and I ended up doing it,” Hayward says, “So even though now I say that I’ll never go back and do it again, who knows.

*An earlier version of this post stated the ABA rejected Hayward's Eurasian sparrowhawk sighting. This was incorrect. It was actually the Alaskan Records Committee*

Outside/In was produced this week by:

Sam Evans-Brown, and Jimmy Gutierrez with help from Logan Shannon, Molly Donahue, Taylor Quimby, and Maureen McMurray.

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into.

Leave us a voicemail at: 1-603-223-2448

Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

This week’s episode featured tracks from Aaron Ximm, Broke For Free and the Blue Dot Sessions, and it came from Free Music Archive.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Tiny Terror

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A mini episode about one of the world's cutest predators. 

The Shrike

Henry David Thoreau

Hark—hark—from out the thickest fog
Warbles with might and main
The fearless shrike, as all agog
To find in fog his gain.

His steady sail he never furls
At any time o' year,
And perched now on winter's curls,
He whistles in his ear.