E20. Less than 1% of what's in a museum is actually on display. So what's happening with the other 99%? Scott talks with Dr. Sushma Reddy, Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the Bell Museum and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, about the extraordinary scientific afterlife of a specimen in a drawer.

In this episode:

  • How birds collected 150 years ago are answering questions their collectors never imagined, from air pollution to insect decline
  • Why falcons turned out to be closer to parrots than hawks, and what other surprises fell out of the bird family tree
  • The case for making museum collections more open, especially to scientists from the places these specimens originally came from


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All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

  • Bald eagle sound contributed by Gerrit Vyn, ML 200943
  • Red-tailed hawk sound contributed by David McCartt, ML 229578
  • Gyrfalcon sound contributed by Lucas DeCicco, ML 516973
  • Kea sound contributed by William V. Ward, ML 8523
  • Small ground finch sound contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML 86711
  • Iiwi sound contributed by Doug Pratt, ML 5888
  • Sickle-billed vanga sound contributed by Anonymous, ML 100013


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