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We talk about the endangered Light-footed Ridgway's Rail this week with guest Aiyana Reissman. Aiyana is the Animal Care Manager at the Living Coast Discovery Center in San Diego, California. She oversees the care for 25+ species of rescued bird native to the area along with the propagation programs for the endangered Light Footed Ridgway’s Rails.

Living Coast Discovery Center is the only facility in the world where the Light-footed Ridgway's Rail can be viewed and have had great success with the release program to boost the populations in Southern California over the last few years.

Aiyana joined John Bates, Shannon Hackett, RJ Pole, and Amanda Marquart for another episode of Birds of a Feather Talk Together.

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This week is a little different as we aren't discussing a bird, but rather the cicada phenomenon happening in Illinois right now. Maureen Turcatel of the Field Museum joins us to talk about the two different broods of cicadas both happening at the same time (the 13 year cicada and the 17 year cicada). We talk about how this is impacting birds, the rare blue-eyed cicada, and also the fungus that is making cicadas hyper-sexual.

Maureen is an insect taxonomist and systematist, especially interested in the diversity and phylogeny of horse flies. Her research focuses on using museum specimens to perform revisionary work on horse flies. She is the collections manager of all insects at the Field Museum, so she was happy to jump on and answer all of our cicada questions, as well as talk about horseflies.

Maureen joined John Bates, Shannon Hackett, RJ Pole, and Amanda Marquart for another episode of Birds of a Feather Talk Together.

Please send us your questions for us to answer as well! You can send them to podcast.birdsofafeather@gmail.com

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Somehow it has taken us 45 episodes to get to our first hummingbird - but it's finally here! We have a ton of fun talking about the ruby-throated hummingbird today. John Bates, Shannon Hackett, RJ Pole, and Amanda Marquart are all here for our hummingbird discussion. Enjoy!

Please send us your questions for us to answer as well! You can send them to podcast.birdsofafeather@gmail.com

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