Heath Discusses the “Role of Raptors” on Local Podcast

The Zamzows Show with Callie Zamzow: Role of Raptors

Summary

The podcast, hosted by Callie Zamzow, features Dr. Julie Heath, a professor of biological sciences and interim director of the Raptor Research Center at Boise State University. They discuss various aspects of raptors, their research, and conservation efforts. Dr. Heath explains the definition of raptors, their characteristics, and the current state of raptor populations worldwide. She highlights the success of conservation efforts in North America, particularly for species like peregrine falcons, bald eagles, and ospreys. Dr. Heath shares insights into the Raptor Research Center’s work, including long-term studies on American kestrels and golden eagles. The conversation covers the impacts of climate change on raptors, with examples of how it affects different species both positively and negatively. They also discuss the challenges in raptor research, the use of DNA studies, and the importance of public engagement in raptor conservation. Throughout the podcast, Dr. Heath emphasizes the inspiring nature of raptors and their significance in reflecting ecosystem health.

Chapters

Introduction to raptors and the Raptor Research Center

Callie Zamzow introduces Dr. Julie Heath and her role at Boise State University. Dr. Heath defines raptors as birds of prey with specialized body parts for hunting, including hawks, owls, falcons, eagles, and vultures. She discusses the state of raptor populations worldwide, noting that more than 50% are in decline due to human activities, habitat degradation, and poisoning. However, Dr. Heath mentions that many North American raptor populations are recovering, particularly after the regulation of chemicals like DDT.

The Raptor Research Center and its work

Dr. Heath explains that the Raptor Research Center at Boise State University focuses on studying the ecology of raptors, their habitats, and prey. She highlights the center’s unique master’s program in raptor biology, which attracts students from around the world. Dr. Heath describes some of their research projects, including hands-on work with golden eagles and monitoring studies to understand habitat use.

Climate change impacts on raptors

Dr. Heath discusses two contrasting examples of climate change effects on raptors in the Treasure Valley. She explains how American kestrels have adapted to warmer winters and earlier crop planting, leading to earlier nesting and even double brooding. Conversely, she describes how climate change has increased the prevalence of parasites in golden eagle nests, causing higher nestling mortality.

Research methods and challenges in raptor studies

Dr. Heath outlines the research process for raptor studies, including field observations, hands-on work with nest boxes, and data collection. She mentions the challenges of controlling variables in natural settings and dealing with small sample sizes, especially with larger raptors like eagles. Dr. Heath also touches on the use of DNA studies to understand genetic factors influencing raptor behavior and health.

Wildfires and their impact on raptors

Dr. Heath explains how wildfires affect raptors both directly through smoke and particulate matter, and indirectly through habitat changes. She gives an example of how fires in shrub-steppe ecosystems have led to changes in prey communities, forcing golden eagles to alter their diet and potentially exposing them to new diseases.

Public engagement and conservation efforts

Dr. Heath encourages public participation in raptor-friendly practices, such as preventing window collisions and avoiding the use of harmful poisons. She suggests ways for people to get involved, including supporting nonprofits, contacting legislators, and simply observing and appreciating raptors in their environment. Dr. Heath also mentions the availability of bird identification apps for the public to use.

Action Items

1. Dr. Heath mentioned continuing to support Raptor Research through donations or becoming members of related organizations.
2. Dr. Heath suggested writing to state legislatures or governors to express support for Raptor Research.
3. Dr. Heath encouraged people to participate in raptor-friendly practices, such as preventing window collisions and avoiding the use of harmful poisons.

Dr. Heath recommended using bird identification apps like Merlin to help people identify raptors they see.

Callie Zamzow: Welcome to the Zamzows Show. I’m your host, Callie Zamzow. I’m a fourth generation business leader here in my family’s 90-year-old chain of stores called Zamzows. We’re lawn garden and pet supply stores in the Treasure Valley. And on this weekly podcast, we talk about all sorts of things relating to Idaho life. Gardening, pets, all sorts of things. Today’s gonna be one of the “all sorts of things” and I’m super excited about it. If you feel compelled during this podcast or any time to share your thoughts or ask a question, you can always go to speakpipe.com/theZamzowsShow or you can go to Zamzows.com and search podcast or the little link will come up and you can press the little button and record your own voice asking the question and then we will play it on air and answer your question or respond to your comment. So please feel free to do that.

So I wanna tell you a little bit of a story. I’m a big wild bird enthusiast. I feed them in my backyard and we have windows. In fact, we have people laugh at us all the time because windows are taped.  We’ve tried putting decals and whatnot but because of how close the feeders are to our windows, the decals don’t seem to work. And so we put big blue paint tape across, we have X’s across all of our windows to keep them from flying into our windows. That’s how much we love our birds is that we’re willing to like, you know, do this crazy stuff with our windows.

Anyway, one day, this has been not too long ago, the birds were kind of watching them and they were eating along and in swooped a raptor and scared up a bunch of doves and got a hold of one. And then right in front of the window sat and tore that thing to shreds. And my husband came in and said, what is going on? I was like, I’m in shock. I’m like, look at what’s going on. He was like, oh, that’s really something. And then there was like this pause and then we kind of looked at each other and I said, well, it’s still feeding the wild birds, I guess. And so we realized that this is part of the circle of life and as much as most of the time we’re feeding these little birds that are eating seeds, sometimes other birds are eating our birds.

So that is actually the topic of today’s conversation, which I’m very excited about. So today we have in studio Dr. Julie Heath. She’s a professor of biological sciences and the interim director of the Raptor Research Center here at Boise State University. Welcome to the studio!

Dr. Julie Heath: Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Callie Zamzow: Oh, gosh, it’s so great to have you here. We were talking before we got started this morning about there’s connections all over from with Boise State and with our family and the company and I’m particularly excited to have you here. I love Raptors. And I love to have an expert in the studio that can talk to us about the Raptors. So before we get going too far down that road, will you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah, sure. I grew up in Southern California where I had great access to all different sorts of ecosystems like the beach and the desert and the mountains and really fell in love with wildlife. And after I got my bachelor’s degree, I really wanted to come to a place that had a real hands-on training with wild predators.

And I was so excited to be accepted. I went to the Raptor Biology graduate program for my master’s at Boise State University and just had an amazing time learning from so many different experts about raptors and their behavior and their physiology and their ecology and what was threatening them at the time.

And I went on to get my PhD from Florida, and I took a job in New York but was so excited to come back to Boise as a faculty member in the Raptor Research Center and raise my family here and get to be in Idaho and experience all the wonderful outdoors Idaho has to offer.

Callie Zamzow: Very cool. New York. Did you do? Were you doing research in New York?

Dr. Julie Heath:  Yeah. In New York, we weren’t working so much with raptors, but more songbirds. But I was actually on Long Island, which you wouldn’t know it, but the migration pathway through the Northeast often goes through Long Island.

When you think about whales and butterflies, songbirds from the Northeast, it’s actually really biodiverse. We actually, one time for our ornithology class, we went to the top of the Empire State Building at night and watched migration at night through all the lights, because birds are flying over Manhattan Island. You could see hundreds of different species coming over. It was pretty exciting.

Callie Zamzow: That’s awesome.

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah.

Callie Zamzow: So do you like birds in general?

Dr. Julie Heath: I do, yes.

 Callie Zamzow: OK, very cool. So what kind of led you to the raptor end of things?

Dr. Julie Heath: Actually, one of the things you said in your story, I think, is really awesome about raptors. And that is they really give, they’re something that really inspire people, and it’s not often that you get to see in your backyard a predatory event, right?

And they’re something that really inspire people when they see them because of their beauty, because of their incredible morphology and their power, but also just the fact their behavior, and to see something like that, watching something like a hawk take a songbird in your backyard, you’re right. It’s a part of nature, it’s a part of the ecology of these animals, and that’s really exciting to witness to see that phenomenon happen. And so for the same reason you put out the bird feeder and you get to witness birds interacting and competing for the food and feeding, it’s still really also exciting to see the raptors come and eat their prey. And so I love that raptors inspire people for all those different kinds of reasons and that they’re close to us. And I think they’re also great model systems for understanding, like how is the environment changing?

Because they are a top predator, they really reflect what’s going on in ecosystems. And so if there’s something happening, even to the vegetation or to herbivores or prey or other species, that’ll often be reflected in raptor populations and how they’re doing with their numbers or their distribution or their behavior. And so I think they’re really a cool system for studying biology, for training students. And I’m also interested, of course, in their conservation. As top predators, there’s lots of threats to raptors. And so it’s important to do the science so that we can manage these populations well.

Introduction to raptors and the Raptor Research Center

 Callie Zamzow: I have so many questions after you just saying all that. I’d like, can we just start really quickly, just in case our audience is not sure what a raptor is? Should we back up for just a second and describe what a raptor is? What makes a bird a raptor and not another type of bird?

Dr. Julie Heath: Right, right. Yeah, of course. So, yes, raptors are birds of prey. They’re birds that hunt and kill other animals for their food, and typically they have specialized body parts or morphology for that, so they usually have a hooked bill for tearing flesh. They have really strong feet and legs for capturing prey. They often are really fast and agile fliers. And so these are things like hawks, owls, falcons, eagles, and vultures also.

Callie Zamzow: I’m curious about, are Raptors endangered at all? Are there any of them, are they doing just fine? Are we solid gold there?

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, worldwide, yes, they are definitely, I think, more than 50% of raptors are in decline worldwide. And so, again, because they are these top predators, they definitely are threatened by human activities, habitat degradation, poisoning is still a common problem with raptors, even direct persecution–of people shooting raptors. And so their populations still are threatened. And this is, in North America, though, I’ll say, a lot of our raptors are doing much better, especially after we started to control some chemicals that were affecting their populations, like DDT.

We’ve seen great recoveries in things like the peregrine falcon and the bald eagle and osprey. So these are all animals that we have here in the Treasure Valley at different times of the year. And their populations are growing because of changes we’ve made in regulating chemicals.

Callie Zamzow: That makes sense. My husband and I were driving down, it was Warm Springs, kind of near where the Shakespeare Festival is. And they have those little trees lining the road. And my husband all of a sudden stopped, and he flipped a U-turn. And he was like, I think there was a Bald Eagle just sitting in that tree. And I was like, that close to the road? I’m like, you must have been seeing something. Flipped around. Sure enough, there it was. And we actually were able to get out of the car, and we didn’t get too close. But it was real close enough to see how humongous they are. That is a massive animal.

Dr. Julie Heath: For sure they’re huge and we have a great wintering population of bald eagles along our water systems especially in the Boise River and also on the Payette you’ll see you know bald eagles sitting out on trees especially kind of around the winter months.

Callie Zamzow: Why are they so inspiring? They just are.

Dr. Julie Heath: Exactly I mean, that’s that’s my point, right? Rafters are inspiring they’re beautiful they’re majestic they are large you can see them right? Somebody whose birds are kind of small and brown and you might not notice the details but rafters show you who they are and that’s great.

The Raptor Research Center and its work

Callie Zamzow: I’m excited to dig into this further We are we’re talking about Raptors today. This is the Zamzow show. I’m your host Callie Zamzow. We’ll be back after this Welcome back to the Zamzow show. I’m your host Callie Zamzow.

I’m here with Dr. Julie Heath. She’s the she’s a professor of biological sciences and The interim director of the Raptor Research Center at Boise State University. I I’m curious about that. I don’t know that there’s a lot of people I know about the research the Raptor Research Center because I dated a guy when I was in college that was over there all The time so I was over there all the time And so but I’m curious if the rest of do people know what you’re doing over there I guess let’s let’s share that with the audience like what what happens in the Raptor Research Center

Dr. Julie Heath:  Yeah well the Raptor Research Center is a research and student training entity of Boise State. We focus on studying the ecology of raptors and their habitats and their prey and we also train students especially in our master’s a raptor biology program where it’s the only graduate program that has a specific raptor biology focus in the world. So yeah I would say that people know who we are especially actually internationally if you asked folks you know about Boise State a lot of times we’re hearing about the Raptor program because people again have these interests in these birds of prey and they know about this program.

Our graduates are really successful in going on and staying in the field either as academics or researchers or natural resource managers. We think our program’s really successful because we have a great curriculum that focuses on problem solving and critical thinking but we also have these really great partners like the Peregrine Fund that offer these really authentic training experiences for our students so that they get real world experiences and thinking about birds of prey and their management and their biology and of course Idaho presents this great natural laboratory especially like the Snake River Birds of Prey area for studying raptors and so that also is you know a world famous site for having a high density of prairie falcons and golden eagles nesting along the Snake River Canyon right there and that’s why it’s a conservation area that’s so that’s of such great interest to all of us so a lot of our students are working there to learn more about those ecosystems and how the importance of raptors in it and how they relate to their prey and the landscape.

Callie Zamzow: So do you guys, do you guys get to be like up close and personal with these Raptors often, or are you mostly dealing with like, like, like, do you actually get to interact with them and like,

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah, I mean, it definitely depends on the focus of the research project, right? We have a project right now where we’re studying golden eagles, and the golden eagles are being affected by disease and parasites, and so to study that, we do have to, we rappel into the nest, and we will bring, look at the nestling’s health, and honestly, if they have a disease, we can treat them for the disease and reverse it so those nestlings can survive. And so that’s an example where we’re doing really hands-on work. At other times, we might be doing some sort of monitoring to look at habitat use and maybe doing distance observations of like what birds are where and different parts of the landscape, so there wouldn’t be as much hand-on use, or hands-on research. So yeah, it just really depends on the research question.

Callie Zamzow: Okay. I, and it’s a side story. I’ve got, unlike my father, I’ve got lots of side stories. I, when I was trying to get into vet school, I did an internship with Boise Zoo. And one of the things I got to do is I got to help out with the redtail hawk that was there.

And I, one of the points I got to feed and, you know, there’s a whole, like, you know, you wear the glove and, and the hawk would fly and then would fly and land. And you’d like have to hold your hand out with this bird, this big bird with this massive claws would like land on your arm. And it was, it still thrills me when I think about it. It was such an amazing experience for me to be that close to a bird that is that powerful. And a redtail hawk, I mean, when you compare it to like a bald eagle or golden eagle, that’s a smaller bird, but it was big to me. Like it felt really, big.

Dr. Julie Heath: Redtails are really definitely powerful. That’s nothing to say, oh, that’s a little thing. I mean, even our smallest falcon can really take down birds its size or twice its size even, I’ve seen. And a lot of it has to do just again with their predatory behavior and almost, I would call it a personality of being a go-getter. And size is not necessarily indicative of a power, although definitely the eagles are inspiring with their large talons and their huge body. It’s so great to see.

Climate change impacts on raptors

Callie Zamzow: So cool. Okay, so I, last week, I had Dr. Jen Pierce on. She’s also from Boise State in the geosciences, and she was talking to me about climate change, various things going on. I did a little bit of research on you, and I think that I, I think this is a good question to ask you and have our listeners understand. Is there an effect of the climate change on these raptors? Is there, are we seeing, or in birds in general?

Dr. Julie Heath: Definitely, birds in general, but the Treasure Valley actually has two really interesting climate change stories from my point of view with raptors.

One of them has to do with American kestrels, which are our smallest falcon and probably many of your listeners might think, oh yeah, I’ve seen kestrels sitting on power lines before. They often sit and they bob their tails. The males are these really gorgeous blue-gray colors. These are birds. In fact, when I was waiting in your waiting room here, there was one outside on the sign of your Zamzows. I’m not kidding. Yeah, yeah, they’re kind of within our lives and we see them quite a bit. These small falcons nest in nest boxes. We are so fortunate to have a long-term project on them just out around Kuna, where we’ve been monitoring this population for over 30 years. What we’ve seen is that over time, they have nested earlier and earlier and earlier, almost about a month earlier than they were in the 1990s. We’ve been doing research to understand, well, why is that going on? There’s lots of different reasons. One of them has to do with warmer winters. The Treasure Valley, we have much warmer winters with much less snow cover than we used to. Birds don’t necessarily migrate as far as they used to, or they might not migrate at all, which means that they’re here earlier to start breeding earlier in the spring.

Another thing that’s really interesting that I think is going on is kestrels do a lot of feeding in farm fields. Farmers are often planting their crops earlier because the ground is thawing earlier and plows can go through earlier to avoid the heat of the hot summer that’s getting hotter. The timing of crop planting in the Treasure Valley is shifting to be earlier. Kestrels eat the food in these farm fields. They’re tracking the timing of their food, too. They’re eating rodents in the farm fields and insects in the farm fields. The timing of the rodents and insects is following the timing of the crops, and the birds are following the timing of those prey. Actually the kestrels are doing pretty well with tracking, resulting from climate change. In some of the most early breeders, they can actually have two broods of young per year, which is unheard of in the past. This is kind of a climate change, a species that here in the Treasure Valley is doing well because of climate change associated environmental change.

On the other hand, our golden eagles that we’re studying in the Snake River Birds of Prey area, we’re seeing them have increased incidence of disease in parasites, and a lot of this is associated with climate change cascading effects on the ecosystem. The parasites that they have are called poultry bugs, and these are like human bed bugs. They live in the nests of the eagles, and they climb out, and they feed on the blood of the nestlings, and they make them anemic, and in fact they can eat so much blood that the nestling actually dies, or even falls out of the nest to its death. The nestlings can’t escape because they’re on this nest that’s infested with these parasites. These parasites are surviving here and actually moving their range northward, again because of our warmer winters. And so these parasites are becoming more and more prevalent and killing the young eagles. And so that’s a big problem with climate change, is often the redistribution or changes in abundance of parasites and disease vectors.

Callie Zamzow: So would it be that then, if the colder winters, I would assume, take care of some of the population of some of those parasites.

Dr. Julie Heath: Exactly.

Callie Zamzow: And that it’s not getting as cold.

Dr. Julie Heath: And so… Right. The parasites are wintering in the nest, and so the cold winters would knock their populations back. And then as it starts to warm up, they go through these generation cycles, but there wouldn’t be as many as there are now. Now we’re having high overwinter survival of the parasites in the nest, and so there’s a lot on the nestlings, and so many that they’re killing nestlings.

Callie Zamzow: And you’re actually you can actually see that it’s like I’m guessing as you go north. And so as you go north, are you noticing that this is kind of traveling up?

Dr. Julie Heath: The first paper that was published on the incidence of these parasites in the Snake River area was in 1996, but it was well known in the 60s and 70s to be a problem like in Arizona and New Mexico. And so this is something that we see kind of this this northward range expansion of the parasites Although they we do think they might have been here earlier, but just not in the same population size for the parasites.

Research methods and challenges in raptor studies

Callie Zamzow: Okay. Well, it’s time for a break. You’re listening to the Zamzow Show. I’m talking to Dr. Julie Heath. We’re talking about raptors, and I’m fascinated. Stay tuned. We’ll be back in just a few. Welcome back to the Zamzow Show. I’m your host, Callie Zamzow. I’m here with Dr. Julie Heath, Boise State University. We’re talking about raptors and birds in general. This is a wonderful conversation. I hope people are liking it as much as I am, because this has been fascinating. Thank you for being here with us. If people have questions, you can go to speakpipe.com/theZamzowShow, and you can record your message. You can also send a message to Zamzows at zamzos.com.

We certainly could get any questions over to Dr. Heath if we needed to. I’m sure you would be willing to help us with any questions that people might have. That’d be awesome. We were talking about this a little bit on the break, but I think listeners might find it interesting. When you talk about research, when you’re doing research on raptors, or any birds, I suppose, what does that look like? What are you actually doing?

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah, well, you know, it depends on the research question, but a lot of times our research are kind of asking questions about sort of basic biology and ecology and evolution. Or we might be asking a type of research question that might have a more applied management type result or outcome. And so we design studies, you know, trying to address specific questions and collect the appropriate data and control for all sorts of other types of variables that might influence what we’re interested in. But when it comes down to it, what it often means is going into the field and witnessing raptors in their natural environment for us. And so, like I said, those could be observational studies or they could be hands-on studies.

In the American Kestrel Project that I mentioned earlier, you know, we have these nest boxes posted around Kuna and South Boise, and those have been there for, you know, many, many years. And those are great opportunities for us to go out, monitor the boxes, are there American Kestrels nesting? And if there are, we capture the birds. We band them with unique identifiers. And so if people find them or we find them again, we can follow the fate of that individual. We monitor their breeding, how many eggs they lay, when they lay their eggs, how many of those hatch, how many young, what are the health of the young? And we band the young as well. And these nest boxes provide great opportunities for our students, both our undergraduates and our graduate students, to get hands-on, handling birds, which is great training. So they learn how to, you know, properly capture the birds, properly handle the birds, collect data in a really reliable way. And yeah, and then on the backside of that, that means coming back to the office to manage the data, analyze it, and then answer our question.

And of course, make sure that we disseminate that information so that the work we’re doing is not just happening, you know, for our own benefit, but to definitely benefit the birds by getting out through education and papers and presentations. So that’s kind of the whole picture of what a research project might look like.

Callie Zamzow: Oh, man, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s great. When Dr. Pierce was here, I mentioned to her that I went to Boise State, and I got my degree in biology and did some graduate work in soil microbiology. Most of what I did was controlled.

I mentioned this in my last podcast. When I think about what you do, I don’t know how you control variables. It seems like when you’re in nature, there’s so many things. I mean, to me, that would be the crazy making part of what you do.

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah. Huge challenge with our work, honestly, is controlling the other variables that affect our systems. Also with Raptors, especially something like Eagles, our sample size, there’s only so many Eagles that you can capture, right? You can’t have just these replicates of greenhouse pots or test tubes. I mean, there’s only so many Eagles that you can get. So that’s definitely a challenge, but fortunately, we’ve got great teams to work with that have good quantitative skills to being able to deal with these sort of other environmental variables or having the low sample. Yep.

Wildfires’ impact on raptors and other raptor research

Callie Zamzow: Yeah, it’s fascinating, fascinating. So another thing that Dr. Jen Pierce and I talked about, a lot of what we talked about was wildfires. That was her main focus. I’m just curious, obviously we’ve got the smoke in the air currently, and it seems to be that, and she was mentioning this, that we definitely, this is something that’s happening more and more.

Dr. Julie Heath: It’s much more of a challenge now than it was say 20 or further years ago.

Callie Zamzow: Is that affecting our raptors and our birds?

Dr. Julie Heath: Definitely, wildfires affect them both directly, you know, the smoke and particulate matter on individuals, and then often indirectly through changing their habitat. So for example, in our shrub steppe ecosystems around the Treasure Valley, a lot of fires have led to the conversion of those systems to cheatgrass, and with that, the prey community in those systems have changed. There used to be many, many black-tailed jackrabbits, which was the preferred prey of golden eagles. Now there are many fewer jackrabbits, and they have to switch what they’re eating to something else. In fact, some of the times they switch to eating pigeons, which are a vector of a disease called trichomonosis. And so if you could kind of follow the wildfire causes the change in the vegetation. The vegetation leads to changes in prey. The changes in prey lead to different things that the eagles are eating, and that actually leads to them getting a disease that they wouldn’t have gotten if they were eating black-tailed jackrabbits. And so these long links within these ecosystems of environmental change, and that’s what I’m talking about when I say raptors are reflecting that in their health, in their population sizes, in their behavior, they reflect these changes.

Also we’re looking at one of our faculty members in the Raptor Research Center, Jen Cruz, is looking at how landscape change in wildfires is affecting ground squirrels, which again, they’re the main prey of prairie falcons, which are also really common in the snake for birds of prey. And she’s looking at how ground squirrel distributions in abundance and prairie falcon foraging, she’s actually tracking the falcons with transmitters, and how that affects their movements and their reproduction.

Callie Zamzow: I mean this is fascinating work so and I think for the benefit of our audiences how how when you decide that you want to come up with a study is it does it sometimes does the study choose you sometimes or do you are you always the one who’s like kind of developing the study I mean do you know what I’m saying does that question make

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah it definitely does and well personally I’m very fortunate and I work on two really two projects that really long-term data sets the Kestrel with over 30 years the American there was I’m sorry the American Kestrel with over 30 years and the Golden Eagles with over 50 years of data and from those types of long-term studies you can see changes and for example for the Eagles we see declining occupancy in the Snake River Birds of Prairie or you know there are fewer and fewer Eagles there and so right away that begs the question why right and then that leads to well let’s go look at their reproduction let’s look at their survival and that kind of forms you know we so we see the patterns that inspire the questions and then usually as we’re addressing those questions we see new patterns that inspire new questions and so it’s kind of this really cyclical event but it’s it’s also really fun to be able to pursue these lines of questioning yeah

Callie Zamzow: So when you bring, obviously you’ve got a lot of students that are in your care and that you’re teaching and that you’re working with, do they have a tendency, do you notice that they, you know, something, a question will pop up and then they will migrate towards that? Do you notice that there’s, is that kind of how that works or do you sort of like, we need somebody to, this is something we need, is anybody interested? Or do you have a tendency, do they have a tendency to be drawn towards things?

Dr. Julie Heath: You definitely see people who might be working on one of our projects get really inspired by something they’re seeing and want to pursue that, and then sometimes we might get funding for a project and just say, wow, okay, we’re going to do something addressing these sorts of questions, and we’ll advertise and students will be attracted to it.

When I go back, though, and say that Boise State’s Raptor Biology Program is so unique, we get applicants from all around the country wanting to come here, and so they seek us out, and they might be inspired to either study raptors or perhaps they’re interested in migration or perhaps they’re interested in toxicology. So they’ll definitely pursue us and bring those questions to us, too.

Callie Zamzow: I like to demystify science, I always feel like I think when I was growing up it’s like anything scientific first of all when I was growing up I think when especially when I was really little scientists were men so that’s one of the shifts that’s happened and you know within my lifetime that’s a lot more women doing it but I also just like I think sometimes when we’re very first learning about science it and kind of how you go about doing a study and you know the systems and all that fun stuff it can be a little intimidating so I like to demystify it I like to imagine you know somebody who’s just interested in something they get really passionate about it and then they dive into it and and then people like you help them figure out how to study it and do it properly and and all that fun stuff so that it’s actually usable data and and that sort of thing but it really is I mean it’s really human beings doing this this is you’re a real human being that I’m talking to you. Now that’s for sure.

Dr. Julie Heath: I am and I mean that’s part of one of my joys actually being an advisor to is is really trying to welcome as many people and make the paths to some being a scientist as as easy as possible for all different types of people because it’s and I think we all are so interested in life and how does it happen right raptors again going back are so inspiring so let’s let everyone who’s interested in study them study them

Callie Zamzow: Agreed. It’s time for a break. We’ll be back in just a moment. Welcome back to the Zamzow show. I’m your host, Callie Zamzow. I’m talking with Dr. Julie Heath. She’s a professor of biological sciences at Boise State University.

And she’s the interim director of the Raptor Research Center at Boise State. This has been a great conversation. I hope that our audience has appreciated as much as I have. I kind of feel like I’ve geeked out a little bit here for the last hour. It’s been fantastic. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Julie Heath: Thanks for having me.

Callie Zamzow: That’s awesome. So I was looking through some of some of your work and it looks like you are, obviously you do field studies and that it sounds like there’s also some DNA studies that you’re doing. Can you can you tell us a little bit about that because I found that very interesting as well.

Dr. Julie Heath: Yes, I work with my colleague, Dr. Stephanie Gala, who’s also an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and a Raptor Research Center faculty member. And she has this great perspective. She says that the DNA contains the story of raptors. And I think that’s so cool. And so she and I have worked together to understand what are the genes that underlie the timing of when birds do things.

So I was talking a little bit earlier about the timing of reproduction and how that shifted earlier. Birds have a circannual clocks, kind of like how we have circadian clocks. They also have circadian clocks. Like they have a certain type of day that they wake up or that they fly or that they eat. We might have a certain time of day that we naturally get hungry. That mechanism in our brains is the exact same that’s in the American Kestrel brain. It’s been conserved across lots of vertebrates. And that system also tells them what time of year is it? What time is it? The time of year to breed? Is it the time of year to migrate? Is it the time of year to molt? So we were looking at the genetics underlying the timing of when birds do things. And we found that some birds tend to do things early and some birds tend to do things late. And those are actually called chronotypes. And you might think of it like, are you a night person or a day person? Are you a morning person or a night? Birds are kind of the same way. And so that’s been really fascinating to study.

Callie Zamzow: So you mean like within, so you might have two kestrels that look the same and one might be more of a daybird and the other one might be more of a nightbird?

Dr. Julie Heath: Uh, I will call it maybe early or late. Like one bird might be sort of like, I’m ready to breed in March. And another one might say, Oh, I’m ready to breed in May.

Callie Zamzow: Okay, isn’t that interesting while but you wouldn’t be able to tell except for their DNA, right? Yeah interesting, that is fascinating.

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah, Stephanie is also doing this really cool project with The Peregrine Fund and collaboration with them in Alaska, where they’re looking at gyrfalcon DNA. Gyrfalcons are really close relatives of peregrine falcons, but they only live in the Arctic Circle. And so they’ve only been exposed to very limited numbers of diseases and parasites, whereas peregrine falcons live all over the world, and they’ve been exposed to lots and lots of different disease and parasites.

Callie Zamzow: So they’re looking at the genetics of their immune systems and comparing them to see how are they different, and is there more variation in the genetics of their immune systems and peregrines than you would predict for gyrfalcons who only live in the Arctic Circle.

Dr. Julie Heath: And that’s going to become really important, again, as we loop back and think about climate change, how the Arctic Circle is going to change and maybe exposed to those gyrfalcons to different types of pathogens.

Callie Zamzow: You’ve talked a lot about various different birds. I’m now just, this is scratching my own itch here. Do you have a favorite bird?

Dr. Julie Heath: I usually say the one I’m looking at yes, I mean it’s hard I mean I’ve handled hundreds of thousands of kestrels and every time I capture them I’m blown away this is such a beautiful bird the one that I’m holding yeah you know it’s…they’re wonderful

Callie Zamzow: Yeah, you’ve got a cool job, a very cool job. I’m also curious Do you do I how does how what’s the relationship with the Intermountain Bird Observatory with you guys? What how does that are you kind of one on the same do you overlap? What is the relationship there?

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah, actually, the Intermountain Bird Observatory started with a student from the Raptor Biology Program. Greg Kaltenecker was a master’s student in our program associated with the Raptor Research Center. And he found the migration site at Lucky Peak and started the Intermountain Bird Observatory. And they work, they do a lot of environmental education, a lot of community work. They run these sites to do migration studies on the river and at Lucky Peak. And they do some student training. So we do more maybe the academic side, working, training with students, the graduate studies, and we’re more faculty-based with the Department of Biological Sciences.

Callie Zamzow: Yeah, okay, cool. I just was curious about that. I love it. I didn’t realize growing up here that there were so many, I don’t know, I knew we had a lot of birds here. I guess I didn’t realize that this was kind of a special area for the scientific part of it.

Dr. Julie Heath: It really is kind of the Mecca for studying raptor biology and I think it started you know in the 1980s Tom Cade from Cornell University brought The Peregrine Fund here to start to breed peregrines and do reintroductions of peregrines Our governor of Idaho at the time, Cecil Andrus, was really supportive of that movement and he worked out starting the Raptor Research Center at Boise State So that there being academic component for the peregrine fund to work with to learn more about birds of prey and since that time we’ve continued to work with the peregrine fund and they’re doing their nonprofit doing conservation work.

We’re doing the academic side the student training. The basic research and understanding, you know, what is the biology that might lead to management or what are the emerging threats and how do we deal with them? And yeah, it’s a great collaboration and you know again with the Snake River Birds of Prey Area, which is a perfect system.

Callie Zamzow: I hear a story like that, and I think about, you know, as human beings, we have these drives to do things. And then sometimes we, you know, we hear a calling, but we don’t pay attention to the calling. But some people pay attention to the calling. And when they do, it changes the whole course of things. Just in just what you just said, there were several people that you named that have made this all possible. Now it’s a full, this is a deal, like this is a thing. And it wasn’t at one point. It took people to be interested in this area and to bring it here and to get it started and have that passion.

And it just is a good reminder that, you know, for anybody who’s out there, it doesn’t have to be birds necessarily. But if you have a passion for something and you’re, something’s tapping you on the shoulder, you could be the person that makes the difference to change things in whatever it is that inspires you. Exactly.

Dr. Julie Heath: I want an incredible legacy to leave, not just for the people who are trained, but the birds who are protected. I mean, it’s in the science that gets done. It’s really great, yeah.  

Public engagement and conservation efforts

Callie Zamzow: I thought, oh, it’s cool that it’s here. I love that it’s here. So can you share with, if there are people at home that are feeling inspired and they either want to be involved or somehow support, how can they do that if they wanted to?

Dr. Julie Heath: I think, first of all, just making sure that people are participating in raptor-friendly practices. I think that’s great. The example you gave of stopping collisions with your windows with putting up the tape, that’s really important. That’s actually a huge source of death for all kinds of birds.

Being careful in what you’re using in your property and not using poisons that might make it through the ecosystem up to raptors like anticoagulant rodenticides, they’re one is really a tough problem for raptors right now because the raptors are attracted to the mammals that are eating those rodenticides and then they are poisoned as well and die.

I think you can get involved with lots of nonprofits or the Raptor Research Center. By donating or becoming members, you can write to your state legislatures or your governor and even just say continue to support raptor research would be great.

I just encourage people to continue to be in awe and observe raptors in their environment. They are all around us. Unlike other species, you don’t have to always go away from your neighborhood to see them, especially something like red-tailed hawks or American kestrels or we also have great Swainson’s hawks in the Treasure Valley that come. They spend the winter in Argentina and migrate all the way back here to spend the spring and summer with us. When you see a Swainson’s hawk, you can think, hey, that bird just flew across hemispheres to be here and continue to be inspired by that.

Callie Zamzow: Is there a place where people can look up like if they see something look up and see like what did I just see? Thank you.

Dr. Julie Heath: Yeah, there are actually a couple of apps on the phone, probably Merlin would probably be the one that’s most used. And I can send links to that or something if you want to post it on your website.

Callie Zamzow: Yeah, we’ll do that, that for sure. Oh, that’s cool. I like that. We have a book that we flipped through, but that can be clunky. Right.Thank you so much for being here. Dr. Julie Heath. Talking about Raptors today. This has been amazing. I really, really appreciate this. I hope you’ll come back. I think there’s a whole bunch more that we could talk about what you’re doing. Yeah, this is awesome work. Thanks everybody for listening to the Zamzows show. We’ll catch you next week.