The Muppet of Birds

SPEAKER_1 (0:08)

You're listening to Strange by Nature, your guide to the strange, weird, unbelievable and improbable wonders of the natural world.

Kirk Mona (0:23)

Hello, everyone, and thanks for being here today. I'm Kirk Mona, and joining me are Rachel Gimza and Victoria Thompson. We're all naturalists who together have scoured the world for weird and wonderful wonders, just to please your mammalian brain's desire for novelty. Isn't that nice? Let's do this.

Victoria Thompson (0:44)

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. Hey. Hi.

Hi. Good to see you guys, as always.

Rachel Gimza (0:50)

Good to see you too.

Victoria Thompson (0:51)

Yeah. Well, I'm starting things off this week, but before I get started, I wanted to remind our listeners that we are coming up on our 300th episode.

Rachel Gimza (1:01)

Yes, we are.

Victoria Thompson (1:02)

We are. And what we're asking you to do, dear listeners, is to send in a voice memo, saying what your favorite topic or thing you remember from the show is, your name and where you're from. We'd love to hear from you. We've got a few submissions already. We'd love some more so we can-

Rachel Gimza (1:20)

I'm so excited.

Victoria Thompson (1:21)

Yeah. Play that during our 300th episode.

So we'd love to hear from you, especially international listeners. I don't think we've gotten anything from our international listeners so far. So send those voice memos in to our email address, contact at strangebynaturepodcast.com.

Rachel Gimza (1:42)

We'd love to hear from you. Well, I mean, in general, but also for episode 300 Big deal.

Victoria Thompson (1:49)

Yay.

Rachel Gimza (1:50)

Yay. All right. What do you got for us, Victoria?

Victoria Thompson (1:53)

Well, today's subject might be just about the most memeable bird in the entire class of Aves.

Rachel Gimza (2:02)

Birds? Okay. Okay. I'm also paying attention.

I'm listing in my head, okay, which birds are memes?

Kirk Mona (2:14)

Right, right.

Rachel Gimza (2:15)

Going through my head, I'm like, is it the blue-footed booby?

Kirk Mona (2:19)

The dodo?

Victoria Thompson (2:21)

No. It's a living bird.

Rachel Gimza (2:24)

It is.

Kirk Mona (2:25)

That's a great shag.

Victoria Thompson (2:26)

Is it the great rag?

Rachel Gimza (2:28)

Well, that name is beautiful. Is it the great blue tit?

Victoria Thompson (2:34)

It is not. This bird gives such good face. It's really ridiculous.

Rachel Gimza (2:39)

Is it the really cute Japanese robin?

Victoria Thompson (2:43)

No. It looks like it was designed by Jim Henson.

SPEAKER_1 (2:46)

Oh.

Rachel Gimza (2:46)

What?

Victoria Thompson (2:47)

It has a silly sounding name. It can see with its eyes closed.

SPEAKER_1 (2:52)

Oh.

Rachel Gimza (2:53)

What? And it looks like it.

Kirk Mona (2:55)

All right.

Victoria Thompson (2:56)

It looks like a tree stump.

Kirk Mona (2:57)

Yep.

Rachel Gimza (2:59)

It looks like a tree stump?

Kirk Mona (3:02)

I know this one.

Rachel Gimza (3:03)

It can see with its eyes closed, and it looks like it was, it's a puppet.

SPEAKER_1 (3:08)

That's a good description.

Rachel Gimza (3:10)

A muppet.

Victoria Thompson (3:13)

Yes.

Rachel Gimza (3:13)

Okay. Kirk, I'm not surprised that you know about this. You're big on the birds.

Kirk Mona (3:21)

Yes.

Rachel Gimza (3:22)

What is this? I'm so intrigued.

Victoria Thompson (3:25)

I am talking today about the pootoo.

Kirk Mona (3:27)

Yeah.

Rachel Gimza (3:28)

Oh. Yeah.

Kirk Mona (3:32)

Pootoo's.

Rachel Gimza (3:33)

Yeah. I do know this bird.

Kirk Mona (3:35)

Yeah.

Victoria Thompson (3:36)

This is a group of seven species. They're all in the family Nictubidae.

Rachel Gimza (3:45)

Okay.

Victoria Thompson (3:46)

We'll go with that. They all live in tropical Central and South America. And they look pretty similar.

They do range in size from 21 to 58 centimeters, depending on the species. That's 8 to 22 inches. So some are bigger, some are smaller, but they all look kind of similar. There are two species, for example, the Common Pootoo and the Northern Pootoo, that were long thought to be the same species because they look identical. But they've been placed into separate species because they have different calls.

Kirk Mona (4:18)

Yeah, that happens.

Victoria Thompson (4:19)

Yeah. Yes. All right. So I've talked around their appearance, what do they actually look like? Well, the Handbook of Birds of the World called the Pootoo little more than a flying mouth and eyes, which is pretty accurate. They have a short body, long wings, long tail. They have a cryptic gray-brown coloration. We'll get more detail on that later. And their mouth is absolutely enormous.

It's got a very short, sharply curved bill and a very, very wide gape. So when they open their mouth, it's extremely large and wide. They look fairly similar to a night jar, if anybody or nighthawk.