You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
What's that mango?
So there are all sorts of weird things I didn't know about bald eagles before this week. Apparently our national bird can swim. Did you know this?
I did not know this.
Yeah. I found this video on YouTube where the bird just lands in the water and then kind of does like a butterfly stroke. It's amazing to watch, and apparently they can swim for pretty long distances. Also, I didn't realize that bald eagles have a third eyelid. It's like a clear membrane that almost acts like safety goggles, so it can see underwater when it's catching fish or when
flying through debris. But the weirdest thing I learned about the bald eagle is that when it squawks, it kind of actually let me just play this club.
Wait, so that's what an eagle sounds like?
Yeah, that is the sound of an eagle roaring.
I don't know mega that sounds more like a seagull if you ask me, I know.
I was so stunned. So I looked into it a little more. And here's a quote from a site I like called bird Note. Watch Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Report, and you'll see a bald eagle streak across the screen, screaming, talents outstretched, ferocious, majestic. But in the spirit of truthiness, we must declare that the bird you hear is not a bald eagle, but a red tailed hawk.
So nice.
Apparently, editors since the early days of Hollywood decided to switch out the eagles cry because it was a little too pip squeaky and the sound wasn't medacing or patriotic enough, so they regularly switch it out for the red tailed hawk. Isn't that nuts?
That's wild? But actually, now that you say that, I feel like I remember it and I will never forget that whole intro to that show as many years as it's been since it's been on. It was so good.
Well, that is just the first of a whole bunch of eagle facts we've got today, So let's dive in.
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I've got my good friend Mango here and sitting on the other side of that big booth, that's Dylan now I'm trying to figure out what he's doing back there. He appears to be lining up a bunch of Are those two pays? Mango?
So apparently when Dylan heard we were doing an episode on bald eagles, he realized what a coincidence it is, because he's actually got an Etsy shop that sells two pays for bald eagles.
Wow, that is so cool.
And I guess he told me the hair pieces boost that bird's confidence, So he's got to do the Lord's work here.
He's so enterprising that Dylan. Now, obviously this week is July the fourth, and it feels fitting that, of course we're doing this show on bald eagles.
So I'm curious, have you ever seen bald eagles in the wild.
Well, as you know, Mango, I have relatives that live in rural Virginia, just about an hour or so south of Charlotte's Full there, and it's one of my favorite places to go in the country and just be out
in the middle of nowhere. And we would sit at my aunt Barbara's house, and we would always look across this farm out over into these mountains, and they would always point out these couple of eagles nests there, these bald eagle nests, and I always loved watching them, so yes, I have actually, so how about you?
That is really cool. I you know, when Lizzie and I were first dating, we went to the Pacific Northwest and we drove up from Portland to the San Juan Islands and this guy at this inn we stayed that would gin up this bald eagle show at night for you, And it was just spectacular. I was really charmed by like the wildlife and landscape and just the birds I thought were so beautiful.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And obviously the eagle is one of our national symbols as a mayor Americans. But one of the things we should address right at the top of this episode is the one person who had zero respect for the bald eagle, and interestingly, that's our founding father, Benjamin Franklin.
Yeah, there's the whole thing, how he wanted a turkey as a national bird, right.
Well, you know, it's an interesting story because I've heard that fact a lot, so I decided to look into this a little bit more. And it's definitely true that
Franklin didn't have much respect for the bald eagle. And I've read a few different accounts of this, but this is from Ken Zersky's unremembered blog, and in it he talks about how back in seventeen seventy five, as the founding fathers were trying to figure out what symbol had the quote temper and Conduct of America, which is a big task to try to figure this out, Ben Franklin was dismissive of the eagle. In this letter he wrote to his daughter, he says the bald eagle is a
bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly, referring to how the bird is a scavenger and also how it sometimes steals food from other birds midair. So I guess I kind of see the first. Yeah, but that takes a lot of skill. He's like a you know, a skilled thief. Yeah, I guess that's true. But I don't know if we wanted a skilled thief,
as you know, as our national symbol. And Franklin considered the eagle and his words quote a rank coward like, I don't know if you noticed by these words he is not a fan of the eagle. So instead he suggested an animal that quote never begins an attack, nor once engaged ever surrenders. She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. So that's what we're looking for. It's a lot of pressure. And I'm certain you won't guess what animal he wanted to be America's national symbol.
It's actually the rattlesnake.
That is so crazy. He thought the bald eagle had no character, but he wanted a snake to represent the US.
Isn't that weird? And it kind of makes me think of the whole like, don't treat on me flag, I guess.
Yeah. So, so where'd the whole Turkey thing come from?
Well, this is from a mix of the Wall Street
Journal and the Unremembered site that I mentioned before. But the Turkey story comes from Ben Franklin being irritated by this Society of the Cincinnati which this was the organization or fraternity that honored revolutionary War heroes and officers, and so the club seal had an eagle on it, and Franklin was apparently annoyed that he hadn't been offered membership, so he wrote a little diatribe about the bald eagle, which he thought looked like a Turkey and the seal's drawing,
and then he joked that even though the turkey is quote vain and silly, it will be a better and more respectable mascot for America. But the most interesting part is that this is from a letter to his daughter that he never actually sent but kept for his archives. So likely he thought the lines were funny enough to be preserved, and I guess they have been over the years.
Well, speaking of historic figures, we should definitely talk about America's best known bird watcher, John J. Audubon, who, like Franklin, had total contempt for the bald eagle.
Really I knew so I'd known this about Franklin, but but did not know this about Ottoman. Why did he not like eagles?
So it's kind of for the same reason Franklin didn't. This comes from the historian Jack Davis's book The Bald Eagle Improbable Journey of America's Bird, which is terrific, But apparently Audubon once wrote, suffered me kind reader to say how much I grieved that the bald eagles should have been selected as the emblem of my country. Audubon saw the creatures as cowards and tyrants. And he actually enjoyed shooting and killing the birds with his fowling gun.
Wow, so he actually did enjoy killing them.
Yeah.
In fact, the Atlantic is even blunter about it. They wrote Audubon wrote loathingly of eagles and did not miss an opportunity to murder them. But also Audubon didn't actually stop there. After shooting the eagles, often around their nests, he would then take the baby eaglitz and eat them. He called baby bald eagles good eating and wrote the flesh resembles veal in taste and tenderness veal. I mean, that's from America's most famous birdwatcher and bird taster, John Jay Ottobon.
I mean, it's not entirely surprising that Ottobon shot the birds. I do remember, for mental flaws that he shot most of the birds that he drew because he had them tax at ermie and mounted on branches before he would illustrate them. That would allow him to draw them more accurately. I guess, yeah. I mean, I don't know that he ate all those other birds that he shot. But what's interesting,
and this is another fact I didn't know. But in his book, Davis points out that while Americans worshiped the bald eagle as this national icon, they didn't really respect the creature in the real world. So early settlers killed the birds to feed their hogs. Also, eagles competed with
hunters for small game. They were a nuisance to livestock, so until the middle of the twentieth century when they started going extinct, they were really treated like pests, not unlike rats, foxes, or wolves, and Americans used to kill them as such. In fact, Davis found that there used to be cash bounties for eagle talons. I guess people
thought the claws were valuable. But when he looked at newspaper databases for bald eagle shootings between eighteen fifty and nineteen twenty, he got over one hundred and eighty thousand instances of killed birds. Oh wow, Actually this makes me rethink Dylan's two pay thing, Like, maybe they're not so much about making these bald eagles more confident, but maybe about disguising them as.
Other birds protection.
Yeah, we should look into this a little bit more. There may be more to it, but I do want to talk about the conservation efforts and how bald eagles got to be protected. But before that, let's hit just one more point about how the bald eagle became our national mascot. So eagles, as Davis pointed out in his book, have this rich history of being seen as majestic birds. You think way back to mythology. Zeus had one as a companion. Eagles served as a messenger to Jupiter, and
were used as an emblem of the Roman legion. You've got Charlemagne, Napoleon, Saladin all used eagles and coats of arms, and as Davis points out, the Founding Fathers were no strangers to lift ideas from the Greeks and Romans and other civilizations. But the question is why did they go with the bald eagle, Because the Founding Fathers could have gone with the golden eagle. Unlike the bald eagle, the golden eagle isn't a thief. It catches its own prey.
It's super strong, it's powerful enough to attack larger animals like deer or antelope on rare occasions. But it's precisely because the golden eagle exists in other countries and continents and had already been used as a symbol of so many other armies. And emperors. They decided they wanted a variation that was truly American, and that's where we came up with the bald eagle.
Oh, I guess I hadn't thought of that. The bald eagle does feel uniquely American, even if it's a bit of a scoundrel.
But right.
One thing I found interesting is that there's at least one real live bald eagle who got some respect before they became a protected species, and that's a bird named old Abe so Abe, I guess was adopted by Ajibwa Indian chief in the eighteen hundreds. This is after the tribe had cut down a tree and the eagle had been roosting in it, so the chief took it in and then traded the bird to a Wisconsin tavern owner.
And when the Civil War started, a company of Union soldiers adopted him as their mascot and they trained him, which I didn't actually realize you could do. But among Abe's tricks, he could sign autographs, he could dance to a fiddle, he could shake hands with the talon, and also kill a chicken on command. So very useful.
God, as you wonder how many times they put him up to that trick.
They're shaking hands. I'm sure he did all the time, right. He also went into battle with the company, and apparently the Confederate soldiers saw Abe as a prize, so according to the Atlantic, they vowed to take the eagle dead or alive. He was even shot twice in battle but survived, and even General Grant and General Sherman respected Abe so much that they would tip their hats to him when they saw him.
Wow, I like that. Finally a bald eagle getting some real respect. Here. Here's a myth I think we need to dispel. It's that bald eagles are baby snatchers, because this could not be further from the truth. So people think bald eagles go after babies. Yeah, Actually the baby snatching thing is part of why people shot bald eagles.
Apparently this is from the Wall Street Journal. Americans believed birds would regularly steal lambs, pigs, and calves, and there were stories about them swooping down to steal babies for snacks, which is a little bit bit weird, you know, snack on a baby, And it was already something that people gossiped about, but the myth got further perpetuated by this early silent movie from nineteen oh eight called Rescued from
an Eagle's Nest. I had never heard of this before, and it has this incredible image of an eagle taking off with a baby twice its size, and then the parents basically hunting the bird and getting their baby back. Actually, here I'll show you this still from the movie. Isn't this crazy? This is not It's amazing.
It's so funny how fake it looks now, But like obviously it com people at the time. That baby is huge.
It's a gigantic baby. It steals giant babies, not just babies. But it was look I guess good eating here. But here's the thing is Davis points out in his book bald eagles max out at about fourteen pounds and they can't really lift more than five pound weights, which is interesting. I would have thought they could have lifted much more. I get them in the gym, yes, exactly, so maybe they can take off with like a tiny cat or something like that. But they are not stealing babies or
lambs or calves. Their diet is fish and for good reason, and that's part of the reason they scavenge. They're these big beautiful creatures, but they aren't going to fly off with your toddler, So you can check that concern off the list.
Well, I know we've got plenty more facts, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're discussing all things bald eagle. So, Mango, where do you want to go next?
Well, before we get into more real facts about bald eagles, one thing I was thinking about was you know that character Sam the Eagle from the Muppets. Of course, yeah, so this is a total aside, but when we introduced Henry to the Muppets when he was a kid, he was completely obsessed, like totally obsessed with Sam the Eagle of all the characters. And then he'd be like, that guy is the best.
He's so funny, and we were like that, are you sure that's the one you're choosing, And obviously, like kids love like Chaos Muppets, right, like Gonzo Deeker and Swedish Chef.
But like you'd be like, Nope, that's the funny one.
I like that one.
And of course, you know, when you grew up, Henry thinks all rules are ridiculous and laughable, So I guess it kind of makes sense. But I was looking up Sam the Eagle just because I loved be fun and he's a character that Frank Oz played, But I found some funny bits about his lord or when is that? In a serious XM interview he did. Sam admitted that he has two kids in college, but to his disgust,
both have been total disappointments. His son measured in taxidermy and his daughter is dating an owl, so I thought that was silly.
But that's pretty great.
But I also hadn't picked up on this, like he's so serious and official that I didn't realize they'd written the character as kind of a buffoon. And I read that in an early episode of The Muppet Show that great ballet dancer Nuria Rudolph Nuriev was on and Sam praises him as his favorite opera singer, and when Doria corrects him and tells him he's a dancer of Sam kind of shrugs and says, culture is culture. I love that.
I feel like I feel like every time I say something stupid about art, now I'm just gonna be like, culture is culture, man.
Culture's culture. Yeah, that's that's the way it is, all right? So what fact are you going to end on here, Mango?
Well, I kind of want to give bald eagles a bit of their due, you know, And there are so many wonderful facts about bald eagles. They build giant nests. According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, they can build nests that are eight feet wide, twelve feet high and weigh more than two tons, which is massive. Bald eagles can fly up to ninety nine miles per hour, and their eyesight is obviously remarkable. They can spot a rabbit from
about three miles away. But the thing I like most about bald eagles is that they are total love birds. They are monogamous and mate for life, and according to the Ottoman Society quote, their spectacular courtship rituals are a site to see, with the birds locking talons, then flipping, spinning and twirling through the air in a maneuver called
the cartwheel display. They break apart seemingly at the last moment just before hitting the ground, which you know, somehow makes it seem like they're truly madly in love.
Oh wow, I guess that's one thing Ben Franklin cannot fault them.
For being in love. So what's your last fact.
Well, I mentioned I wanted to talk a little bit about how we brought the bald eagle population from the brink of extinction. So this is actually straight from a house stuff Works article. But back in seventeen eighty two, when the bald eagle was put on the National Seal, there were about one hundred thousand nesting pairs living in the United States and northern Mexico. But by nineteen sixty three there were only about four hundred and seventeen nesting pairs.
Wow or forty eight states. Yeah, so huge decline there. And the truth is that this is after some of the conservation efforts had already begun, so they were definitely very much at risk. And the Bald Eagle Protection Act was passed in nineteen forty. It really played into people's patriotism,
making it a crime to kill or sell eagles. Then, when the pesticide DDT was used in the nineteen forties to the sixties, that also affected the eagles because it seeped into the water, it affected the fish, and when the eagles ate the fish, it created these thinner eggshells. So basically the one to three eaglets that a couple
hatches every year. They were no longer getting born because the eggs would crack, and DDT gets banned, and the government both protected more of the eagle habitats and started breeding the birds in captivity. Then they would release them into the wild, and this really changed things for eagles,
and it's it's actually pretty amazing the recovery there. Today there are about three hundred thousand bald eagles in the US and about seventy thousand nesting pairs, so well on their way to a great return.
That's pretty remarkable, both like the what they were at to dip to like what like four hundred and fifteen or something you said, and then like coming all the way back up to three hundred thousand.
That's nuts. Yeah, it's definitely impressive. And in fact, even though there hadn't been bald eagles in New York City for almost a century, there are actually four bald eagles now in the city and they've hatched nearly a dozen eaglets.
Oh, that's incredible. I hadn't even heard about that.
Yeah. Apparently the first pair, who were named Veto and Linda, built a nest in Staten Island in twenty fifteen. Veto and Linda love the names, and since then they have grown their family.
That is so fun, but you know, it just causes one problem. What do you want to do about today's trophy? Because I had some great facts, you had some great facts. Veto and Linda were in the mix. What do you think?
You know? I kind of want to throw a curveball here. It's our July fourth episode, and I feel like we should award the trophy to a true American, you know, an entrepreneur who single handedly is trying to make bald eagles feel better by putting them in two pays. So I'm going to vote to give this week's award to Dylan. What do you think?
I am for it, but only this once.
That's right, That's right. Well, congratulations Dylan. That's it for this week's episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you like Part Time Genius, don't forget to rate the show, write his review, tell a friend, or if you really want to get to us, write our mom's a note at Ptgenius Moms at gmail dot com.
Oh, and we actually have a giveaway. We're gonna pick ten random fans from everyone who writes in this week and next, and I'm gonna send you a special gift to show our appreciation. So let us know what you think about the show, what topics want us to cover, and we'll put something in the mail for you From Will, Dylan, Mary and me. Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongas Chatikler
and researched by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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