Cornell and safety in birding, steppe habitats of the world, birding Portugal, and "discovering" new species

Mollee Brown (0:00)

Welcome to Life List, A Birding Podcast.

George Armistead (0:06)

Hello, hello. Welcome, welcome, everyone. This is Life List, A Birding Podcast with Mollee Brown, Alvaro Jaramillo, and me, George Armistead.

Guys, how are you doing today?

Alvaro Jaramillo (0:20)

Hello.

Mollee Brown (0:23)

Hey, guys.

Doing pretty well today. It almost got down to freezing here last night. Just the first day of the year for that. Yeah, chilly night.

George Armistead (0:33)

Very chilly.

Mollee Brown (0:34)

Yeah.

Yep. Birds are still moving around home. It's great.

George Armistead (0:41)

Yep.

Alvaro Jaramillo (0:42)

I was just thinking, was it that old-time actor WC. Fields in his tombstone, he said, on the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. Was that it?

George Armistead (0:54)

That's right.

Alvaro Jaramillo (0:55)

Yeah.

Then I was thinking, is George's, this has been decades from George. I'm not trying to insinuate anything. But your tombstone is just going to say, hello, hello, hello, welcome, welcome, welcome. That's it.

George Armistead (1:11)

George Armistead, that's all you need.

Mollee Brown (1:13)

No, it's going to say, I've got to scoot.

Alvaro Jaramillo (1:16)

I've got to scoot.

Mollee Brown (1:17)

That's right.

Alvaro Jaramillo (1:18)

Just had to scoot. Sorry, folks.

Mollee Brown (1:21)

Yeah, that's a scoot.

Alvaro Jaramillo (1:23)

That could be on the back. Can you do back of tombstones these days?

George Armistead (1:29)

I might borrow the WC Fields and put, I'd rather be in Philadelphia on the front and time to scoot on the back.

Mollee Brown (1:35)

Time to scoot on the back.

Alvaro Jaramillo (1:37)

There you go.

Yeah. Sorry to make it silly right away, guys.

George Armistead (1:44)

But I forgot about WC Fields. He was a quotable, very quotable.

Alvaro Jaramillo (1:52)

Was he like in the 40s or 50s or what?

George Armistead (1:56)

I literally only know him from his quotes. I don't actually know anything about him otherwise. Me neither.

Alvaro Jaramillo (2:01)

Yeah. It's not something we would have ever seen. We just would have heard of this guy, and yeah, you know.

George Armistead (2:12)

Well, it's good to be back at doing a roundtable here. It's been a minute. We're going to look back, but let's look ahead a little bit too, Mollee. What do you have coming up?

Mollee Brown (2:25)

Well, coming up after this recording, and maybe after I edit and put this episode out, I'm packing up and heading to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks.

I have been traveling a lot, done a lot of tours this summer, and this is not my last tour of the year, my second to last tour of the year, but my last one before I get a little break, and I'm really looking forward to it.

After that, I had to Vietnam in November, but I'll be recording some between now and then. Right now, my next several tours are sold out, so that's kind of fun. I don't have anything to be advertising for tour spots right now. But yeah, yeah. But as I'm catching up on stuff, I am recording these travelogues for our bonus content. So I'm working on getting those out too. So what I have coming up hopefully is more Patreon content, and I'm having fun with that. So y'all can check out our Patreon.

George Armistead (3:32)

Nice. That'll be great.

Alvaro, what about you, man?

Alvaro Jaramillo (3:38)

Well, I'm here for a while, then go to the sub-Antarctic.

The first trips that I still have some spots left on in January, southern India, and then we're thinking, well, the Birds and Wine March, we have spots on that open, and thinking of actually popping in a Thailand tour hasn't been exactly. It's not on anything official. Just we're going to do it, just pop in a Thailand tour in August, I mean, on April. So that'll have all spots open. We'll see if we can try that out.

Mollee Brown (4:16)

Feeling cute, might pop in a Thailand tour.

Yeah, yeah. What parts of Thailand are you looking at for that? I don't know what April is like. I guess you're catching migration, yeah?

Alvaro Jaramillo (4:27)

Yeah. I mean, that's what I did it this year. It was in April.

It was Central Thailand and Northern Thailand. So Thailand. Basically going for the food and some birds. There's some birds there. Giant squirrels, always a hit. Actually a good squirrel country. Then there's those things that look like squirrels that aren't squirrels.

The elephant shrews, is that what they're called?

George Armistead (4:56)

Yeah.

Alvaro Jaramillo (4:56)

I'm trying to like, yeah, those are cool. So yeah, I take it squirrels and food of Thailand with some birds.