Death And Birding (with Nick Lund)

[00:00:01] The number one birding spot in Portland, Maine is Evergreen Cemetery. Birders go to cemeteries more than any other person save the grieving. You freaks. What are you doing in there? Death and birding.

[00:00:26] Hi, everyone. I'm Victor M. Sweeney, licensed funeral director and extremely amateur bird watcher with you. Our podcast today, we have on a delightful guest, Nick Lund. And he's a bird enthusiast, watcher, or anthologist sort of guy from Maine. I got to tell you, in the interview, it's so fun because every time I bring up a bird that has impacted my own life, he's right on it. He knows what we're talking about. He's got a little story behind the bird.

[00:00:56] And not just the name of the thing, but the meaning behind it. It's just so fun. It's just so fun. Before we jump into the interview, I want to just talk to you, dear listeners. I want you to think about birding in your own lives. Have you looked out the windows lately and seen what's coming into your backyard, your street, your park, whatever that is? It's amazing.

[00:01:25] We're in spring right now where I live. The birds are all coming back. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's noisy. But that's okay, too. In addition to looking out your own window, I know that some of you have called for me. You've left messages on the deathandpodcast.com website. And so, as always, I want to answer some of these pressing questions that have come in over the phone.

[00:01:54] Here's an incoming question from Jeff. Hi, Victor. I really enjoy your episodes. My name is Jeff. My question is, has working around death changed what you fear most about life? Keep the stuff coming. Beautiful. Well, Jeff, I will keep the stuff coming.

[00:02:20] Honestly, I think, I don't want to say I fear it, but the thing I concern myself with is I want to use my days well. I'm not saying I don't waste time. I waste a tremendous amount of time in my life on social media and stupid things and ruminating about things I cannot change. Okay? I waste time just like everybody else. But I really want to try to value my time.

[00:02:46] I want to first do a very good job parenting to my children and being a husband to my wife. And actually, being a husband to my wife has to come before that. So that's number one. Then my children. Then I really want to do my primary job well. If I don't go to funerals, arrange funerals, prepare bodies, meet with families, help the grieving, bury the dead.

[00:03:08] If I don't do those primary things, then the secondary things of having a podcast, talking about my book, right? Answering questions around the web like yours, Jeff. All those things suffer. So really, if I have a fear or a concern, I really just want to make sure that I keep primary things, primary, keep first things first. And spend my time well on those first things.

[00:03:38] So Jeff, thank you for the question. That is what death has done for me. It has crystallized in me the importance of knowing that I have a limited amount of time and I need to put those first things first. Okay. We had a lovely call come in and I had to answer it today because this is the birding episode. Here is a call from our friend, Raven. So my question is, have you ever dealt with a body who has been mummified?

[00:04:08] Whether it is by heat, by weather, by whatever. Good question. Okay. So mummification. Desiccation. So not the ancient art of Egyptian embalming, which is admittedly very cool. What Raven is talking about here might more commonly be called desiccation, right? The extreme drying out of a body, typically due to exterior elements.

[00:04:34] I can think of one in particular back, I worked at a different funeral all the time, but I had a gal die. I don't think she was unattended. I think it was in a hospital, but she had some flesh eating bacteria and some other arterial problems, circulation problems. And when she got here, so her legs were black from this bacteria. So that had to be treated separately.

[00:05:00] So that was in some ways very much like mummification, except way smellier, I think. But her fingertips were hard to the touch. They clicked. Okay. They were so dried out. Like her nails stuck out a mile. The fingertips looked like raisins, except they were hard, right? Like it was unreal. And this lady had just died, right? This wasn't a long post-mortem interval, as we'd call it.

[00:05:25] So I had to figure out, I was like, well, we have to do something about these fingertips because the face and the hands are going to be really the primary concerns when viewing a body. So I went onto the internet and I found a back article of an old forensics magazine. And in this forensics magazine, they were talking about getting fingerprints from bodies that have been left out in the elements for a long time.

[00:05:52] And one of the ways that they did this, they said, well, we would get a shallow basin and we'd fill it with equal parts restorative, metaflow, and rectifiant. So these two chemicals actually I had on hand. Restorative is what we call a humectant. So it helps, it adds fluid and helps tissues retain fluid. Metaflow is what we call an arterial conditioner.

[00:06:18] So in this case, it helps vasculature absorb fluid. So not only does it bring fluid in, but it just basically softens it up, promotes distribution, we might say. And then rectifiant is simply a water corrective. It's a stand-in for water. So it's very, very neutral. So what we did is just that. I made a mix of this little concoction in a dish. We put this lady's hand in the dish.

[00:06:46] And a day later, we took it out and her fingertips were plumped up enough so they looked normal and not like dried up hard little raisins. So that was a little tip I got from a forensics magazine. But that would be, honestly, a really good example of mummification, at least as it exists in the mortuary world today. Raven, thanks so much for the question. Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful questions.

[00:07:14] I know it's tricky to call in and leave a message and hear your voice on the podcast. But I think especially, you know, when we're talking about birding and we're talking about birds' song and how they communicate with each other, really important for us to communicate with each other by voice as well. Don't you think? So thank you. Thank you, everyone, for the lovely questions.

[00:07:39] If you want to send a question yourself, you can go, like these good folks, to deathandpodcast.com. You can leave a voice memo or just a written note. Or you can go to deathand at gmail.com and send an email with your question. I get a lot of questions. I actually get a lot of thank yous, which is nice.

[00:07:58] I never thought doing this seemingly silly thing on the web would result in so many people seeing what I do and what I talk about and changing their own lives. Just yesterday, I answered three emails. One from a gal in New Zealand who's now entering funeral services. Another from a gentleman in the UK who's now recently studying to be an embalmer.

[00:08:23] And another gentleman from Kenya who is actually fully licensed as an embalmer now where he lives. And all because of, I mean, let's face it, some silly viral video some years ago and the fruit of it, which is this podcast and my book Now Departing. Without further ado, let's jump in and speak with Nick and just sit back. Enjoy the sound of our voices. Here we go.

[00:08:51] We'll see you next time.

[00:09:32] Hello and a very warm welcome to the show to Nick Lund. Nick is a writer, birder, a conservationist from Maine. His work appears on Slate and National Geographic. And his books include the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of Maine. And one of the briefer title children's book, World Without Birds. Nick, welcome to the show. I'm so glad to have you. Thank you, Victor. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:10:02] So this is just yet again one of these delightful occurrences where I get a guest who I, at least two appearances, has nothing to do with death. And that is honestly where I have the most fun because then you can let us into your world a little bit. And we can just see where our two worlds, the bird world and the death world collide. So thank you for taking the risk. Yeah.

[00:10:31] I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I think there's a lot more to talk about than it may appear on the surface. Well, let me jump off with this then. Honestly, the thing that has been most on my mind, we're bird watchers at my house. We feed the birds. We watch the birds. My wife has this lovely app, the Merlin app. Do you know this one? Oh, sure. Fantastic. And you can – I wish I could say we were sponsored by Merlin. Maybe we should pursue that. One day. They don't need any help, man.

[00:11:00] They got universal adoption. You can record bird sound in your backyard and then it helps you narrow down what species it is. But just yesterday, we saw the return of the turkey vultures in my area. And these are just big, old, beautiful creatures and they soar. Gosh, do they soar at sunset especially. And you see the light go through their – the big feathers down at the very end of their wings, which I'm sure has a name that I don't know.

[00:11:29] But what's really, I think, delightful is I watch how beautiful they are and then I think, you know, that is actually the thing that morticians and funeral directors and undertakers get called the most is a vulture. And yet I can stand in my backyard and just admire how lovely these birds are. Do you have vultures where you are? Nick? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have turkey vultures and the occasional black vulture here in Maine.

[00:11:59] You know, vultures are a worldwide family. And, you know, because there's a lot of death. There's a lot of dead things out there. And their niche is eating dead things. And it's a good business for them. It's in some ways a very fitting metaphor when someone says you're a vulture. Because at least – I mean, if I'm being optimistic, I'm like, well, I am very useful. And I'm doing something nobody else wants to do. Usually it's a pejorative. But –

[00:12:29] Do you get – do people say mean things to you often? That feels really rude. I mean – Not in real life. On the internet they do. On the internet they say a lot of mean things. Yeah. Yeah. But, no, I was just honestly thinking about the beauty of the vulture and how, yeah, they do a necessary thing. And they get, you know – Yeah. Well, the vulture gets like – their physical aspect is changed. Absolutely. Because they have to get neck deep in a body. And I only have to go elbows deep.

[00:12:57] Thankfully, I've never been neck deep in a corpse. The day that happens is going to be a really, really bad day. But the fact is, yeah, something about you I think changes when you deal with this all the time. And yet – Sure. There's also a distinct beauty of watching a flock of vultures. What do you call a group of vultures, Nick? Do you know? I say a flock of vultures. A lot of people, when you see them – so vultures, like a lot of raptors, ride thermals, right?

[00:13:26] And so you'll see a group of raptors sort of circling up together. That's called a kettle. And so that's not vulture specific but often say there's a kettle of vultures or other raptors over there. So kettle. I like that. I'm not sure where that term comes from. But, you know, I appreciate you taking that tack toward vultures. A lot of people's initial reaction to vultures is revulsion for various reasons. One may be because they're associated with death.

[00:13:53] The other is because they are, you know, fairly gross. Their whole deal is getting in, you know, sticking their heads into carcasses to eat the flesh inside. And, you know, I think as you allude to, like with all birds or all wild things, their choice, you know, their choice of how they eat has determined over time their body shape.

[00:14:18] They have no feathers on their head because they stick their heads into corpses to get the food. And if, you know, they had a bunch of feathers or ornamentation on their head, it would get stuck inside a body or gross or otherwise make it more difficult to get what they're after. And so I appreciate, you know, a lot of people, you know, think that it's gross. But it is the most important thing they could do, you know, with the mortuary services and with vultures.

[00:14:45] Like you can't have a bunch of dead folks just laying around. Well, and that's what I tell people. That's what I tell people. It's like, what would you prefer? We just leave grandma in your house? Yeah. I mean, someone's got to do something. That's the other option. The thing that I think is really funny. So the vultures are just coming back. I don't know where they go. I never see them. They show up this time of year, then they disappear again.

[00:15:09] But do you know what, at least for me, the primary birds that I see eating carrion on the side of the road are? Well, it could be eagles, could be crows. It's bald eagles, man. Our national bird is just eaten deer by the side of the road, like roadkill all the time. I mean, I think it's a very – I also think that is a metaphor too, which people probably have some thoughts on.

[00:15:37] But I'm just waiting for all the feathers to fall off the bald eagle's head. I'm just like we should take a very long-term thousands-of-year wager and just see if it happens. Totally. That's what I see him eating. One of the great things about being a birder is that there are – in the United States, there are 700 species of birds, give or take. And each of those has its own stories and own quirks and own histories and evolutionary histories. And the bald eagle is one that once you start learning about it more and more, it's pretty wild.

[00:16:06] For example, and I think it's especially interesting to compare it against the American bird, big puffed-out thing. They only catch about 60% of their own food, for example. The majority of the time or the rest of the time, they are eating carrion or stealing fish from – like fish from ospreys, for example.

[00:16:31] Ospreys, big fish-eating hawks, raptors in their own family, catch like 99% of their own food. They are the really sort of hardworking birds out there. But bald eagles are opportunistic. For the longest time, the best place to see a bald eagle was at the dump because they'd be there either eating trash or trying to get seagulls that are eating trash. And so I always thought that there was some sort of – there was a metaphor in that too where go to the dump to see these majestic eagles.

[00:17:00] But every bird has a story like that. So maybe Ben Franklin was right with the turkey. Yes or no? Turkeys have their own quirks too. Turkeys are also weird and goofy, which may be more apt for an American bird. But I think he certainly at least put some thought into it and didn't do the knee-jerk like, well, they're the toughest, so let's do them. I like that.

[00:17:23] So I saw you recently had an article about how the eponymically named birds, the birds that are being named after people. Tell me – it's changing. Sure. Give me the scoop because I read a little bit of the article before the paywall. And I want you to fill in the rest for me. Sure. So there are, like I said, around the world there are 10,000 different species of birds plus.

[00:17:51] And there is a sort of non-science among the people who discovered and had the ability to name these birds, give them common names, to name them. And there was no convention. A lot of this was happening, you know, between 100 and 200 years ago when a lot of new birds were coming into Western science especially.

[00:18:16] And people, these either scientists or amateur naturalists or folks who worked at museums had the opportunity to ascribe names to these birds. And there was no sort of conventions on how they did that. It could be – they could call it a brown-headed yellow bird or they could call it, you know, Victor's rifle bird or something. And that happened a lot. So people had patrons or people wanted to honor the person who found the bird. And there would be a lot of birds named after people.

[00:18:46] That's becoming problematic for a bunch of reasons. One is because, you know, if you call a bird Victor's rifle bird, it doesn't help anybody identify it, right? So at least if it's a yellow-headed brown bird, then someone, you know, who's learning about birds can sort of look at the bird and that makes sense. The other problem is that a lot of times the people that were getting birds named after them were not good people.

[00:19:09] And a lot of the ways – a lot of the early naturalists, for example, sweeping across the United States and the Western United States who were seeing a lot of Western birds for the first time and then shipping skins back to museums in the East were bad people. And were robbing graves and were big-time racists and other sort of unsavory characteristics. And so honoring those people today and calling a bird – naming a bird after them has become problematic.

[00:19:37] And so there has been a movement in the bird, you know, community at large to reconsider those names. You know, the names are just something that humans have placed on top of these birds. They're not an actual, you know, thing. It's completely within our decision-making realm to what we call them. And so there's a movement – It's ontological. It's about naming. Yeah. Thank you.

[00:19:58] And so there is a movement to really drop all eponyms to change the common name of every bird named after a person, which is controversial because it's – you know, people think it's a pain in the butt or – Oh, yeah. Or what about like Audubon's birds? Sure. Like I'm sure there are a ton of birds named after that guy. He has at least in the United States, I would say five or so different species named after him, which is its own problem too. How many birds do you want to name after this one dude?

[00:20:26] You know, there are other people to – even if you wanted to name after people, there are other people. Anyway, Audubon, you know, was a slave owner and was a staunch supporter of slavery in his lifetime. And so folks are reconsidering, you know, things named after him as well. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, it's one of those things that I think – it probably depends in some ways about how much you know about the person.

[00:20:54] So in my industry, for instance, I can think of two offhand. There's called the Stroop Leg Positioner, which is honestly just like a weird little thing you put under someone really tall to bend their knees up enough so they fit in like a closer to normal size casket. But sometimes it helps promote distribution of embalming fluid to the feet.

[00:21:16] Then there's also what's called a Ziegler case, which is a type of sealed casket or coffin for maybe someone who has a very contagious disease or needs to be transported overseas, right? It's airtight. The Ziegler case. But I couldn't tell you the first thing about who Ziegler is. And so I'm like, I'm just happy to call it that. Likewise, you know, whoever Mr. or Mrs. Stroop is, I thank them for their service. Sure.

[00:21:43] But maybe that's different when you're just naming a creature after yourself rather than something that is born of your own imagination or resourcefulness. Well, I guess a question I have for you is do you ever consider the character of people that you are working with? Oh, yeah. All the time. And so does that – how does that come into play? You're like, this guy is a jerk. You're not going to like do a bad job. Do a really bad job in Balming? No, yeah.

[00:22:13] I mean the thing about it is typically – and I've had people on the internet not be too crazy about me using this word. But typically like – I have a guy actually I'm thinking of in my head who I have embalmed in the last year or three, let's say. Sure. I was like, this guy is a huge jerk. I do not like him whatsoever. But then when you see him exposed and naked on the table, my mind just immediately goes to pity. Sure.

[00:22:41] And not necessarily in a condescending way. But you're like, oh, yeah, this guy is a creature and he is way different than me right now. He is obviously dead. And so it's funny because the picture that you have in your head of the guy or the experience of the guy, while it might really stink, when he's dead in front of you, you're like, oh, yeah. This is like a baby. This would be like being mad at a baby.

[00:23:08] Like totally helpless creature here. Is there any line that you or others in your profession have with the character of a person? Like what if a serial killer came to you? Well, I have prepared more. Okay. I've prepared that I know of a number of child predators. Wow. Wow. One rapist that I know of. Wow.

[00:23:36] Any number of people who have committed other crimes, embezzlers. I mean, so the thing is, though, it just it all falls away. Like once once you see like the simplicity and the beauty of how the body works and you you see them as something actually very vulnerable, then it changes your perspective. And you're like, actually, that can who that person was, at least for the moment, doesn't matter.

[00:24:02] So I wonder, I wonder, you know, if you took, I don't know, like Johnson's sparrowhawk and you're like, that is actually a beautiful bird. Like, look at it fly. Look at it perch. Like, look at just the strange little Johnson's sparrowhawk things it does. Like maybe Johnson's name doesn't matter as much once you see the thing in flight. There's probably an argument to be made both ways, I would say. Sure. It's it's more it's an it's administrative.

[00:24:32] Headache. Yeah. And people do think that why should this bird, which evolved independently and millions of years before Johnson? That's true. This jerk just came along and pointed at it. Why does he why does this bird have to be saddled with this guy's name forever? Let's give it a little more dignity and respect it on its own terms by giving it a name called the beautiful flying hawk or whatever. That actually would be really cool.

[00:25:01] So then how how are they going to go about doing this? Because, I mean, is it a is it a committee decision and then who's in the committee? Like, do they do they take a poll of like everybody who lives in its native habitat? Like, what should we call this guy? No, it's hard. It's hard. And it's actually been slow going in part due to sort of political factors larger than whatever.

[00:25:23] But yeah, there there are there is a committee at the American Ornithological Society, I believe, that is in charge of naming. So naming conventions and it comes up not infrequently. There are scientists are constantly understanding what is a species and what is not a species. And sometimes one group of birds that we thought was one species is actually scientifically determined to be two. And so in that case, you have to come up with a new name for the other one. Right. You split you called it's called splitting birds.

[00:25:53] And so in that case, the naming committee would come together and figure out a new name. And so it's it's a version of that body that is taking on the the the other sort of naming convention. Well, and it'd be interesting, you know, if it was like a strictly kind of like binary system or like that's Johnson's that's Johnson's Sparrowhawk. And this is not Johnson's Sparrowhawk. I would make it a lot easier. Well, it would be tougher in the field probably, but easier on paper for sure.

[00:26:21] No, because I mean, like you've heard it was somewhere on the West Coast. Right. They had a new a new like passenger ferry and they named it Boaty McBoatface because they took a poll. Yeah. So, yeah, there's there's got to be probably a reasonable way to do that. I know it's it's super fascinating. I mean, we so we we sit out and we watch our birds. I was talking to my my wife and my four year old on my way to the studio this morning. And I was like, I'm talking to a guy about birds. And my four year old is like, I like the yellow and black ones, which is American Goldfinch.

[00:26:51] Yeah. Yeah. And so like we know some of these things. Sure. But not I mean, not all of them. Like there are so many that come through the yard where I, you know, you get a glimpse of them and they leave. Yeah. What is what is your favorite bird? Oh, my goodness. You have a favorite. Yeah, sure. You know, I get asked this question a lot and I and I think it is. And for the longest time, I'd be like, no, it's whatever, whichever one I haven't seen yet. Because not only do I love birds, I love finding birds. Yeah.

[00:27:20] You know, I love really I love the Earth. I love I feel very lucky to live on Earth. Any other planet, I would have been just dead immediately. Right. So but I get to live on Earth in 2026. And there's tons of awesome things to look at. Birds are sort of the most convenient because they're big enough to see and they're in our backyards, but they're also in every other habitat. And so birds are sort of a gateway to loving all aspects of the natural world.

[00:27:48] And part of what I love about birds is going all those places to find them. Right. Because I love birds, I have to go. You know, I don't just go to my backyard, but I go to the tops of mountains in the middle of the ocean and deserts and stuff. And so that searching for birds is such a big part of the joy of it for me and for lots of people. And so I always used to say, like, oh, it's whatever the one I haven't seen yet is. But I sort of evolved on that. That is kind of pretentious.

[00:28:18] I know. Well, you dive into the bird world deep enough and you'll get pretentious. I have changed my tune on that. There is a species that lives in my backyard in the summer that should be coming any time now called a gray catbird, which is a fairly nondescript, very common species that is just extremely endearing. They are a sort of a curious species where they do a lot of, you know, a lot of this. They peer out from the bushes.

[00:28:48] They're called catbirds because they meow. They make a meow sound, which is cute. They're not the flashiest bird, which I kind of like. They're not covered in colors. They're sort of, you know, a slate gray with a darker cap. And then if you look under their tail, they have a lovely little sort of maroon patch down there. Oh, yeah. Pop of color. I like that. Pop of color. So I love them.

[00:29:13] And because they're so because they are in my backyard a lot and because they're sort of funny, they have character to them. I really just I love it when they show up and I enjoy them all spring. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the black eyed junco. There you go. I like them. Cool. They're just weird. We actually before we knew what they were called, we called them fatty lumpkins. Yeah. After Tom Bombadil's horse from The Hobbit. We called them fatty lumpkins. I'm not going to put you on the naming committee of the group.

[00:29:41] Oh, I mean, if you saw it, though, you'd be like, that is actually a fatty lumpkin. Sure. Yeah. I don't care about the color of its eye. Oh, that's awesome. We like those. And the cowbirds are starting to come back. Love cowbirds. Yeah. They make, we should insert some bird song in here. Sure. But the cowbird makes the most beautiful water drop noise. And I just heard it this morning as I was leaving and I got to knowing I was going to speak to you. I just stood there and listened to it for a little bit longer than I might have otherwise.

[00:30:10] Cowbirds are great. You know, again, with a story about them, they are a controversial species. Cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. They are parasitic. Um, and, uh, and so that's a successful strategy for species around the world. Uh, other cowbirds and cuckoos, for example, um, they leave their babies to be raised by, uh, other birds.

[00:30:36] And so sometimes that, that, you know, sometimes you'll see like a tiny little warbler feeding some massive baby cowbird. Um, that has some implications. One is just people don't like that. Generally people, you know, humans see that and we're like, you're abandoning your babies. Yeah. We're kind of, we're kind of anthropomorphizing them a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah. It also has some conservation implications occasionally because they'll often parasitize the nests of species who, uh, are low in numbers.

[00:31:03] And, uh, you know, who we want, we want more babies though. So Kirtland's warbler, warbler is a, is a famous example. Kirtland's warbler is one of the most range restricted species in America. Lives only, breeds only in really central Michigan of all places. Um, and cowbirds parasitize their nests. And so a lot of conservation groups or, or, you know, um, state agencies will remove cowbird eggs from those nests and, and manage them. Wow.

[00:31:30] So how do you, how do you go about, gosh, how do you go about fixing a problem like that? The cowbird imperialism. That's a great question. The, the, the end result is that you give Kirtland's warblers more habitat to live. Um, you know, humans, you know, in this book, I just published world without birds. I talk a lot about the different ways that humans have impacted bird populations around the world. There are a lot.

[00:31:57] And one of them is that we have just greatly reduced the amount of habitat that species have to breed. When you do that, when, when Kirtland's warblers only have, you know, growing jack pine habitat in central Michigan to now live in, that means that other pressures are, are great on them. So whatever, whatever normal pressures would, would afflict them like cowbirds, uh, parasizing some of their nests now become much more dangerous.

[00:32:24] And so, um, the way you fix it is you have continued management until you can get more habitat for them where they can absorb some, uh, parasitism without having sort of a population level impact. Now, now here's, here's an idea for you. So I was talking about web criticism. Okay. Uh, I also see a lot of criticism, uh, across my internet stuff. It'll be like cemeteries, huge waste of space.

[00:32:51] Oh, so what if in that range in Michigan, you just planted a ton of jack pines and all these cemeteries that people think are waste of space. What about that? You know, one of the best ideas I've ever heard. And, and honestly, birders go to cemeteries more than any other person save the, save the grieving. You freaks. What are you doing in there? The number one, I live in near Portland, Maine. The number one birding, uh, spot in Portland, Maine is Evergreen Cemetery.

[00:33:21] Uh, down, uh, in Deering Oaks. Deering. You're serious? Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, in a lot of areas, a lot of cities and a lot of places, um, you know, birds want green space. And cemeteries are some of them only green space in, in urban areas. Um, and, uh, Evergreen Cemetery, for example, uh, you know, is a massive cemetery, but also has some protected woods down towards the backside with some ponds.

[00:33:51] That, you know, if you're a bird flying overhead and you're migrating and you're looking for a place to stop and refuel, that's a big place to go. Um, and so cemeteries are, I was just in Texas and there's a book called Birding in the Cemetery, um, all about different cemeteries in Texas that people bird in. Cemeteries are, um, really great habitat, uh, and a really undervalued and underappreciated habitat, uh, around the country. So it's not wasted space. Not at all. Not at all.

[00:34:19] I mean, it's, you know, maybe, it may not be perfect, you know, um. Well, I mean, any, anywhere we humans live is not very perfect. Yeah. So that's, that's, um, yeah. Is there, I would love to know more about cemetery controversies. Um. Oh, goodness. Because it's hard to find the space, huh? Yeah. I mean, that's what people say. I, so this was told to me and I, I, I did the math on it once.

[00:34:46] I should have saved it, but I figured out, I was like, how much space? So a dead body, uh, generally takes up, uh, either four by eight or three by six. If we wanted to be like a little stingy, we could say three by six, uh, three feet by six feet of dirt. Um, and then I figured out like how much area is that multiplied by how many people die in a year? And the thing is, I think it was something like if you took everybody that died in the United

[00:35:11] States in a year and you buried them, you could take half, it would only take, it'd take less, I think a quarter of the arable land space in my little County in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota to plug every dead body, you know, without any space in between, like in an ideal sort of industrial situation. Um, so I was like, you know, we could do like a hunger games level, like roulette, you know, it'd be like Marshall County, Minnesota, everyone in the United States being buried here, uh, for the year.

[00:35:40] And the thing is like people worry about space and maybe I think in urban areas, it's definitely an issue. Obviously transportation would not work in my made up scenario. You know, if I wrote a science fiction novel, I could have it happen like that. Planets of the dead. It would be called. That's a good place to start. Planets of the dead. That's a sweet band too that I, yeah, there you go. Well, we'll, we'll, we'll see who goes first, who writes the science fiction novel or starts a band. But, uh, no, it's, um, so I, yeah, I bet the thing is like the, the amount of space

[00:36:07] is not as controversial as you think unless you are in like the metropolitan, but go drive an hour out of the metropolitan. There's more land than you could ever use. Yeah. And that could be bird habitat. It could. Instead of monoculture corn or something. I will say, I've been thinking about, you know, it's really interesting to think about birds and death together and, and, and, uh, the entire natural world is much closer to

[00:36:37] death, uh, on a day to day, minute to minute level than, than we are. Um, it's interesting to think about how the, the, not the fear necessarily, but the avoidance of death is, uh, a constant, is an absolutely ever present constant sensation for almost all life on earth besides only a few. You know, you, you talk about like, oh, it's survival. Okay. And what is that?

[00:37:03] But just clinging on to life, uh, by the thinnest of margins. Totally. But, and, and even, you know, for example, robins, you know, American robins are in everybody's yard right now. You know, if you watch a robin feeding in your yard, um, it is constantly on the lookout for danger. You know, it'll, um, you know, the, uh, the ground is a dangerous place for a bird. They have fewer places to sort of escape. The whole thing about being a bird is you can fly away. And so being on the ground is sort of a counter to that.

[00:37:34] When you're getting a worm, they have to put their head down. So they're, they're not looking around. And so a robin is constantly lifting its head up and looking around. All birds do this. They're constantly looking. They're on the edge of death at all times. And a sort of, um, a, a, a, a fear, you know, the ones that survive are the ones that can, um, anticipate and avoid death in a, you know, in a moment's notice. Um, but it also is interesting too, because they, because they are so constantly fearful of death, they never have a chance to reflect on it.

[00:38:03] Um, it's only species like humans really. And maybe, you know, a couple others that aren't at constant threat of death that gives us the time to be able to sort of consider what death is and think about what death is. I think about that during deer season up here and we see them, you know, deer and they're just running all over the place. But I think, I think, and a bird is the same way.

[00:38:30] I think about a deer and I'm like, that poor thing can't even make a shelter. No, it just wanders around and hopes for the best. Right. And, and I feel, I mean, obviously birds have nests and they migrate to, you know, mitigate some of that danger, I guess, of the weather. But like, we're at an extreme advantage. And then the question is like, what do we, what do we do with it? Uh, because we don't, I, I, I think sometimes we don't think enough about how lucky we are

[00:38:58] to be alive or to have sustenance or to shelter or all these things that we can actually manufacture for ourselves or have manufactured for us. Um, and instead do we just kind of float on by where like a bird does not do that at all. You're telling me. At all. They, they don't have the time. Um, and you know, if you look back at human evolutionary history, I mean, it really was the sort of small technological advancements and physical advancements that allowed us

[00:39:25] to start to get technology and then use that technology to give ourselves more free time. The more free time and the more food we ate, uh, the, the, the better, the bigger our brains could get. And the more we could actually, you know, spend time not thinking about how we're going to survive to the next minute. Yeah. Do you, here's a question for you. I was thinking about, okay, back to Robbins. Sure. So the other day I drove by there, there's a, an empty lot kind of almost in the middle of my town.

[00:39:52] And, uh, there were probably 30 Robbins just going to town in the grass. Do they stand watch for each other or is it just every bird for himself? Sure. Um, there are, it's hard to say whether it's stand watch for each other, but there are, there certainly, uh, they all have an interest in surviving. And, um, groups of birds, even across species have alarm calls that are, that are understood

[00:40:19] across not, not even just other bird species, but often other mammals and other things. And so, um, as there's a group of birds moving, they all, um, it's not like a delineated system necessarily of, of, uh, assignments. Um, but they are, um, if there is one bird gives an alarm, see something and gives an alarm, all the other birds start to give the alarm and will, will look for themselves and see what it is. And so there's a collective, um, uh, uh, system to help each other out.

[00:40:48] Um, it's actually something that humans and birders can exploit, uh, because what, you know, one of the things about seeing birds is they're hard to be seen. They don't like to be seen. They like to stay in the bushes and things. Um, humans do birders do a thing called pishing P I S H, which is you mimic the sound of a bird alarm call in order to get the birds to come up and try to see what the danger is. Ooh, that's, is that controversial? Um, not really.

[00:41:16] Um, there are other, it's, uh, you're just having, you're just talking, you're just talking with them. You know what I mean? And you're not hurting anybody. It's like knocking on my door. Exactly. Um, and let me tell you when you're out in the, you know, if you're on a trail and this has happened to me, some of my proudest moments of my life, I've been, um, like a little, it'd be like, uh, uh, like a father and a daughter and I'll be like, Hey, check this out. And I'll start pishing. It sounds like this, which is sort of a, it's an alarm call of a tit mouse generally. Okay.

[00:41:46] And birds start flying. You know, you're looking at the woods. There's nothing in it. Birds are just flying in and they don't know. They, they, they don't really recognize humans as making the sound as they're looking for whatever is going on and they'll like come close. And I've done that in front of kids and the kids have been like, Oh, like, like this is a moment that is changing their lives. Um, that's amazing. It also doesn't work at all. That's awesome. Sometimes most of the time it doesn't work and you just look like a complete weirdo sitting at the edge of some bush making a mouth noise.

[00:42:15] Um, and that just comes with the territory, but when it does work, it is so cool. Um, and that's what you're doing. You're sort of triggering that social, um, uh, safety response in these birds. That's amazing. I, I do love, um, the chickadee, you know, when it goes, yeah, that's, that's one of my, one of my more, and my, my little four-year-old is, is an excellent whistler and he'll go out and walk around in the yard. So first, first thing he does when he gets up in the morning is he runs outside to scare the blackbirds away. Yep. Good.

[00:42:44] And then, and then we'll hear him walking around in his pajamas making the chickadee whistle, which is really. Well, let me say about that too. Like, um, so that whistle that you did is the song of the chickadee. So that is, that's the noise that they give in the spring, um, beginning of the spring to attract mates and to establish their territories. The call. So chickadees are very social birds. They fly in, they are in flocks all the time with, you know, mixed ages and also sometimes different species. Um, their call is chickadee.

[00:43:15] So that's where they get their name. Chickadee, dee, dee, chickadee, dee. And because it's, you know, social creatures generally have more, a wider range of vocalizations than solo species. Because chickadees are so social, they, um, have language where the number of dees in the chickadee call correlates to the, uh, severity of the threat. So if, if you are walking, if you're walking out in your yard and there's a flock of chickadees,

[00:43:44] they may look at you and they go chickadee, chickadee, which just means like, everybody, there's a guy over there. Not a big deal. We've seen that guy before. He's not going to hurt us. Not a big deal. But if you were a, a sharp shinned hawk, for example, or if you were a, uh, a pygmy owl, they would go chickadee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, and be like, and, and be on you because you're actually something dangerous. And so the number of dees in the chickadee call is, uh, you know, it's part of their language for the severity of the threat.

[00:44:13] That's, that's actually really endearing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to start listening to that. And I'll tell my wife too, when she fills the bird feeder, cause I always kind of, I, I, I feel, I feel like I have very ungrateful children when I go and I'm like, I'm going to go feed the bird, fill the bird feeder again for the hundredth time this week. And they all take off like you sons of guns. Just wait. Just perch on my shoulders as I fill this up. It would make me happy. We've done this a number of times and it's nothing bad has happened. Yeah.

[00:44:43] It is fascinating, I guess, cause I, I don't, you know, outside of feeding the birds, I don't really think about having a relationship with them. But do you, do you find that particular species or particular, um, like, I guess just general types of birds kind of speak to you more? Like you have a relationship, a kind of parasocial relationship with them? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:07] I, I would say more that learning about birds and learning about the natural world breaks down a lot of the barriers that many people have between what you would call a sort of civilized world and a natural world. Um, you know, growing, uh, growing up, you would say, I'm going to go out into nature now. And you drive to a park and walk around or drive to the woods or something. That's really not real.

[00:45:34] Um, any, anything outside is nature. Um, the middle of a city is nature. Our backyards is nature. Um, and you start to really understand how humans are a part of the natural world and how everything we do is operating within the system that has existed long before we sort of put shoes on. Um, and so, um, that I think, um, helps me understand more of a personal relationship because everything

[00:46:04] that humans do to the landscape either benefits or harms a particular species, uh, or, uh, you know, it provides, uh, advantages to, to one species who wants something and takes away advantages for another species. Um, and so, and so that's it. I think, I think it just, uh, my, I have a different understanding or a newer understanding since I started burning of, of how we fit in to nature, not, um, how we sort of, how nature is separate from what we do.

[00:46:33] And it's interesting. Uh, so in, in my, in my world that I inhabit, right, we're, we're memorializing lives, right? And, and I, I suppose in the rest of nature, life comes and goes and ebbs and flows and it's, you know, so life is just so numerous as almost to be uncountable. Yeah. Um, and yet in my little world, you know, we, we honor like each life that comes through our door in a special way.

[00:47:01] And that's, that's part of what makes us human. Um, and then you get people who say like, oh, it's unnatural, right? We're just animals. And yet like we are so markedly different from our animal brothers and sisters from the rest of creation. And, um, and like, maybe that's, that is part of our mark is to be a little weird and to be different and wonderful. And, you know, sometimes grandiose, sometimes a little self aggrandizing, sometimes, um, you

[00:47:30] know, some, sometimes destructive, but that's like, that is maybe where we fit in and, you know, just wrestling with that, learning to be okay with that is, is maybe part of the journey. But Nick, I, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for just being willing to come on. It's, it's, it's a delight to walk into your world because I, I only, you know, I see it through my window when I watch the bird feeder and I, I take such joy in it.

[00:47:55] It's got to really be a privilege too, to be deep, deep into the, uh, ornithological world. I love it. I, I'm, I would have it no other way. Um, and so it was a real treat to join you. Thanks for all the work that you do and, uh, have a great one. Okay. Thanks, Nick. Well, I hope you liked our discussion with Nick as much as I did. Uh, it was fun to hear about the birds that live in my area and to think, uh, philosophically

[00:48:26] about birds, about eagles and the imperialism of the cowbird. I thought that was, that was particularly interesting. But, um, one thing he said that I just keep coming back to, he says this, he says, the birds existed in the natural world before we put shoes on. They existed before we put shoes on, not just us as little babies going from bare feet to

[00:48:55] shoes, but before the first man was shod, birds took to the air. And, uh, my, my favorite writer, GK Chesterton, he says this, he says, tradition is the democracy of the dead, right? That so many people have come and gone before you and they cling onto these things and pass them onto you.

[00:49:19] And that is tradition because there are a order of magnitude, more people that have held this belief, whatever it is, the love of nature, let's say, and died before you came along. And it's a democracy and there are more of them than there are of you. So it'd be wise to love nature as well. And birds, I think are, are especially important in, in this, this schema because they have,

[00:49:48] they've existed here for ages, ages before we, we thought of, of taking to the air or building wind turbines or, or, or helping manage, well, first destroy, then manage their habitat. But they existed here long before us, long before we made them our national symbol or just appreciated them floating on the kettles and the skies above our homes. I think we can be grateful. Can we not?

[00:50:18] So the little bits of nature that, that remind us that we are men and women, we are creatures of spirit. Yes, but a flesh and that we're all part of this great cycle together. We look after the birds and maybe if we're unlucky in today's world, the vultures feed on us, I don't know, something, something to think on, but I'm grateful. I'm grateful to have to, to have had Nick as a guest.

[00:50:48] I'm grateful as always to have you as a listener. Keep ruminating on these things as you watch the birds flit to and fro in the trees in your yard. I'm grateful to you. This has been another episode of Death And. I am your host, and I'll see you next time. Victor M. Sweeney.