Terrestrials: The Trio
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Imagine your skin turned to feathers. Long, dark brown feathers. And your arms stretch to over twice the size of your body and catch the wind. And you're higher than the airplanes. You're soaring through the clouds. You're feeling the cold air go through your feathers. Suddenly, you start dive-bombing down.

And you drag your wings along the water of the lake. Your feet curl and grow talons, and you catch a fish, which you then devour with your... Very sharp beak. On your very white head. You are a bald eagle now. In our language, we say wombly.

I think I might be in the wrong room here. You're not. You're not. You're not in the wrong room. What was that? Yeah. That was the first minute of an episode of Terrestrials. Okay. Which is Radiolab's family-friendly nature show. I've heard of it. Uh-huh. Also, we should say, I'm Latif Nasser. I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radiolab. Yeah. Keep going. Yeah. And I'm bringing you one of these today. We're going to play one today because...

I'm here to announce we are rebooting the Radiolab for Kids feed. But it is every two weeks there's going to be a new episode. We've got brand new Terrestrials episodes coming in about a month. But...

But whenever you go in there, you will get some family-friendly nature content. And we're going to keep this going all over the year. I'll be doing little intros. And we've kind of curated it to feel like a nature walk. So like whichever episode you pick, it's a trailhead and you go down this nature walk and you encounter something wild about the world. And yes, it is a family-friendly show. But we've also...

Think there's stuff in there for anyone. And so, you know, if you like nature, if you don't mind the occasional singing from me and our team...

Which we here in the main Radiolab feed, we work hard to protect you from, listener. Yeah. But if you want a glimpse of what it's all about, go check it out. Go see if it's for you. Might not be, but go check it out. And I'm really excited about it. I'm really excited about it. Right. Anyway, and then I chose this episode of all of them because it's about the bald eagle, because we are just kicking off the Summer Olympics. And if you look closely on those Team USA uniforms...

On some of them, you will see the bald eagle. No kidding. Our national mascot, our national symbol. Which uniforms? Okay, so this year, the men's gymnastics unitard for the finals event has some very shimmery eagle feathers. The men's skateboarders.

They are rocking the eagle on a few of their jerseys. No, they've got more t-shirts. They've got some tanks. The eagle appears in different forms. All right. So it's there. And I just thought as we, you know, go forth with these athletic chests competing in the world and blazing with the eagle, it might be nice to hear a story that lets us see another side of our national mascot. It's a story...

That takes you into the wild and shows you a kind of deeper scientific truth about the bald eagle than at least I ever realized. And it has a really neat...

kind of animal encounter of people witnessing something that scientists thought could not happen in nature. So, yeah. So that's the episode we're going to do. I can vouch. It's a great episode. Yeah. Anything else you want to say before we start? It is called The Trio over on the Terrestrial Speed, but I'll give you the insider knowledge that we wanted to call it The Treesome, which is a...

It's a pun that we opted not to make. You felt too racy? A little too racy. And our producer Ana Gonzalez came up with that. So in my heart, it's called the threesome. So let's call it the threesome. Okay, great. Today. All right. All right. So here we go. Picking back up.

with the moment I force on all unsuspecting guests. All right, now is the time when I make you sing the theme song with me. No, let's do it. Terrestrials, terrestrials, we are not the worst, we are the... Oh, the best. Terrestrials. Yeah, you got it. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on Earth and sometimes break out in the song. There's so much we discover...

Terrestrials, terrestrials. So reach out your wings and ride the sky. Terrestrials, terrestrials. Good voices not required. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined as always by my song bud, Tweet Tweet Alan. Hello! And today, we are talking about the bald eagle. Tweet Tweet

That's right, America's national symbol. You'll find it on quarters and dollar bills and presidential flags and military insignias. This glowering bird of prey with an intimidating brow bone, razor sharp beak and terrifying talons meant to convey to the world a ferocious fight to the death independence. But today we've got a story about a man who looked up into the trees and saw something that suggests...

We may have this big birdie kind of wrong. Yeah, well, glad to connect. This is our guy in question, Ed. Ed Britton. He's a wildlife biologist who works for the government helping to protect a stretch of forest alongside the Mississippi River in Illinois. And one chilly day in January of 2013, he was patrolling the banks near this part of the river where the water rushes over a huge dam. ♪

Almost like a waterfall. That water is busting over that dam. And so are fish, which means at the bottom of that waterfall... All the fish, they're either stunned or they're dead. And that attracts hundreds of bald eagles. There's so much food there, it's all you can eat. And that January day, Ed looks up into the trees above the dam and sees something...

It looks like there are three bald eagles sitting together near one nest. Yes. And to Ed's eye, it appears to be one female and... Two males. But he thought there was no way that could be, because everything he'd learned in his scientific training said that if you were to put two males nearby each other... There's going to be trouble. They were said to squawk and claw so viciously, it sometimes resulted in death.

That's how territorial they are. And this reputation for do-or-die aggression is one of the main reasons the Founding Fathers chose the bald eagle as America's national symbol back in 1782. I think maybe the first Europeans that came here seen the power of eagles.

That's Natani Means, a hip-hop artist who's indigenous. And he says that his ancestors from the Oglala Lakota and Diné tribes had admired the bald eagle long before the founding fathers showed up. The eagle, to us, is very sacred. Though, for slightly different reasons. It's the highest in the sky. It's the closest to creator.

It was seen as a messenger between worlds and a healer. We carry eagle feathers that can help in healing ceremonies. They take a lot of our illnesses away.

Now, the founding fathers weren't as focused on the potential healing in the feathers as they were in the potential fight in the talons. So they began carving images of the bird on swords and battleships to warn the world that they were not afraid to fight to the death to protect their newly claimed territory. ♪

So they were up in a tree about 100 feet high. So back to Ed, squinting up at what seemed to be two male bald eagles and a female cozying up together. He just couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. It's so difficult because that nest is so high up. And then the nesting season ends, the birds fly away, and he figures that's probably it. Except the next year, he swears he sees the trio again. And the next year? Again.

Now, people didn't always believe Ed when he told them what he was seeing. But then, in 2016, this trio of bald eagles happened to flutter down and begin nesting in a tree that was next to a webcam.

I just thought that cam was so unique. This is Nell, a webcam watcher from Jacksonville, Florida. You know, because eagles don't usually freeze company. And in an instant, there was no more doubt. The three ferocious birds of prey were living peacefully as a trio. I think people were just coming together over that fact.

that it was something different. Another cam watcher, Christine from New Hampshire. It was great to be able to look in on it and say, wow, what the heck's going on now, you know? It was quickly confirmed that it was indeed two males and a female. The female's bigger.

You know, she's several pounds bigger. I call her the boss. Webcam viewers named her? Pope. And they named the males? Valor One. And? Valor Two. Valor meaning, like, courage? Yes, uh-huh. How do you tell the males apart? You know, we don't like to body shame them, but they call Valor One skinny legs. Okay. Does Valor Two have any look? He has a dark spot in his eye, and it's very unique. Ooh.

Thousands of people started tuning in. I had them on my computer from the time I turned the computer on to the time I turned the computer off. Watching in crystal clear detail this thing that scientists and patriots thought could never happen. I mean, did you ever see it where all three of them were like snuggled into the nest together? Oh, yes. Absolutely. Yeah? Oh, yes. Wow.

By day, they took turns tidying the nest, bringing one another food. Mostly fish, but we also saw ducks. Whole ducks? Yep, we saw parts of deer. And after many cold winter nights, keeping each other warm in that nest, come February, three white eggs appeared. Would they hatch? Find out after this short break.

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Latif. Lulu. Ready back with the terrestrial story on bald eagles on Radiolab. Yes. Okay. So now it is early spring in Illinois and up about a hundred feet in a nest, three bald eagle parents have just welcomed on camera for all the world to see three baby eaglets. Tweet, tweet.

You know, they were so tiny. Oh my, and so adorable. Yes, indeed. And as biologist Ed watches these three parents caring for their babies, two of them standing guard while one goes off to hunt...

all six of the birds nuzzling down in the nest at night. They were the happiest family. He starts thinking about why this unusual trio actually makes sense. Because, see, Hope had been trying to make a family for years before she linked up with the two daddies. And this is a little sad, but she had a hard time. Her baby sometimes got cold or fell out of the nest when she was away hunting.

And they didn't always make it. Yeah, it was awfully sad. And those losses were huge. Because bald eagles had been endangered, almost extinct, so every birth mattered. Where I grew up in southern Illinois, we never saw bald eagles. That was back in the 40s and the 50s. I'm elderly. Humans had almost wiped out bald eagles from hunting them, cutting down their forests, using chemicals. But as Ed grew up,

He was a part of the group of people who tried everything they could think of to save bald eagles. They protected forests and banned hunting of bald eagles and stopped using chemicals that harmed them. But looking up at the trees, he realized

It was like this trio of eagles had come up with a brilliant technique all of their own. To be able to witness it, that's the miracle. You know, it doesn't have to be a traditional family for it to work. And by June, as the forest turned soft with green leaves, one by one, each of the three eaglets with newly lanky wings tested the air and leapt away.

And dad, and dad, I've had fun, but now I gotta run. I can fly, so I'm saying, you're the star of new life, full of wild excitement and danger.

Year after year, those three parents stay together, fledging more and more eaglets and in the process challenging scientists' notions about what a natural family looks like. Until one cold evening in March. Hope.

screams out. Eagles, when they alert, they have a certain call to one another. That's webcam watcher Nell again. I saw Hope looking up into the sky and you could see she was tracking.

And then she started doing her alert call to her partners to come, you know, to come see what's going on. And what's going on is that two stranger eagles were dive-bombing the nest, attacking Hope and her two newest babies. Our phone lines light up. With people saying... Oh my gosh, something terrible's just happened. You've got to get out there and do something. Ed flips on his live feed of the cam and sees... A very large bird, which we believed to be a female...

was on the back of Hope. Her talons were digging into Hope's shoulders. There's no dads on the nest. The dads are both down on the ground fighting off the other invading eagle. Two babies, they didn't look good. They looked scared of this huge eagle attacking their mom. I wanted to reach through the computer monitor and grab that other eagle is what I wanted to do. And they struggled for over an hour. The last thing I saw was...

Hope and her going off the nest. They just, they basically dragged one another off one side of the nest and went down to the ground. Ed and his team rush out into the forest to search around on the ground for Hope. But meanwhile, up in that nest, those babies are all alone. It looked like they hadn't been fed for a while. They were ragged. They were weak. And then suddenly...

I saw the dads taking over Valor 1 and Valor 2 like little troopers. The dads fly back up into the nest to defend their babies. It was such a relief that they were there. But right on their tails are the two invading eagles. They return and they keep attacking. They wanted to kill everything up there and take the nest over. The sun rises.

And the attackers keep at it for days, weeks. But those dads? They just defended that nest with their lives, not caring what happened to them, but caring for those little baby eagles. And the two dads, Valor I and Valor II, valiantly, very valiantly, fought off this pair of eagles. And after about three weeks, the attacks finally ended. Hope was never seen again.

Nobody's sure exactly what happened to her, but those two dads stayed with their babies. As the air grew warm, as yellow and purple flowers began poking their way up through the dirt and kids began fishing on the Mississippi River, the dads kept watch over their chicks, bringing them food and keeping them warm at night until finally, come June... The two chicks ended up growing and leaving the nest.

It was extremely happy, yes indeed. We gave him the greatest dad's award of the year. Ed says he was totally shocked by how things unfolded, by how caring and collaborative the two dads were together. And this is just one incredible survival story that I would have never fathomed in my career. There's a lot that people don't know about eagles.

This is Natani again. They're very compassionate. And what Ed learned from watching the trio, Natani learned from his family and culture. The first time I saw an eagle, he was huge, man, huge. I went home and I told my dad, you know, hey, I seen an eagle today. And then he sat me down and he said, when an eagle chooses a mate, they're together for life. They're always taking care of the family.

It was then that Natani first learned about the bald eagle's softer side, how the creature isn't only about fighting. It's also a symbol of love and relationship.

And that's why in the Lakota tradition, you can earn a bald eagle feather if you do something particularly caring. It could be a lot of things, you know, it could be, you know, being a social worker or a nurse that saves lives. Just anything, anything you do that's selfless, not for yourself, but for the people, so the people may live. Natani gets some eagle feathers out that he got from different ceremonies and begins brushing them over his face.

It feels good. It gives you chills. And he tells me about a really bad day a few years back when he just felt lonely, like no one cared about him. I was sitting right here in this spot. There was a bunch of eagle feathers hanging right here. I was like, I got eagle feathers protecting me. These eagle feathers protecting me.

Protecting them. A song started coming to him. So then I just started writing and it just came out. He said that when he thinks about how these creatures behave in myths and the wild. When I fan myself off, when I bring these over my face, you know, it's like I feel a connection to these birds. This might sound funny, it might sound

I feel a connection to my ancestors, I do. Like, I don't have to be lost because I feel love. When I tell him the story of how caring those dads in the trio were observed to be, he's not surprised. Oh no, science is catching up to indigenous philosophy for sure. Now, as for the end of our Eagle story...

When a trio loses one of its members, that's it for the trio, right? Oh, no, no. Because it turned out that the next fall, the two dads returned with a new female. And we were just going, how did you do that? Yeah.

So if I went right now, like, could I peek? You sure could. Yep. Pull up the live feed of the nest. So I'm looking at it right now. So I see this. It's winter, so it's a tree without leaves. And some four years later, that new trio is still together. As Ed and I talked, we could see them up there in the nest together. And I see the white head and the yellow beak of an eagle. She's just laying eggs. Wow. Wow.

All told, the two dads have lived together in a trio for about a decade, fledged about 20 eaglets, and been a part of the story that, along with some human help, brought the number of bald eagles back from near extinction and got them off the endangered species list. Yeah. I look at this as probably one of the greatest wildlife statistics stories that we've ever had in the United States.

And as for that trio being an outlier, is that the only trio of bald eagles there is? It is not.

That's Crystal Flesher. She works for the American Eagle Foundation. And in her spare time, she's an amateur birder. Do you have a pair of binoculars around your neck? I carry a pair of binoculars in my car. Well, one day, about four years ago, Crystal was out fishing with her husband. In Dandridge, Tennessee. On a lake.

I knew about a nest there prior to going fishing, and I've checked it out a couple times, and I never really saw anything abnormal. But the day that I was out there, I saw three eagles perched together. And they seemed calm, almost familiar with each other. And when she got a better look through her binocs, it looked to her like... Two males and one female. Another trio. ♪

And while Crystal says... They're not really famous. You know, they're certainly not a Valor 1, Valor 2... Level of celebrity. Right. She says they do have their own local fans who have photographed them and named the female Bandit. And she hopes one day they, too, can get a webcam. And so those two trios, that's it, though, right? Yeah.

that we know about? Oh, definitely not. There was some observed in Alaska in 1977, in Minnesota in 1983. There is a trio in New York. And then in California in 1992. There's one in Arkansas. Both Crystal and Ed, after first learning about their trios, started geeking out on research and found buried in the footnotes of science books and history books these occasional other sightings of bald eagle trios.

And they realized that maybe this quote-unquote cooperative nesting, as the scientists call it, was not nearly as uncommon as they thought. I think we'd probably be amazed if we really knew all of the unique things that happened with wildlife because we just don't know the secrets in their life.

Ed says this whole experience really flipped his understanding of bald eagles, helped him to see that in a certain way, he had been blinded by the eagle on the quarter, blinded by the story of the bird as a ferocious and independent being. Would you ever call what's happening between these birds love?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, you would? Oh, absolutely. You would? Yes, indeed. You don't shy away from that word? Not whatsoever. No, it's family bonding, and that happens. You know, love is family. I see nothing wrong with saying love and animals. All right. Thanks so much, Ed. Oh, no. Songbud's got a mohawk and an electric guitar. I want to hear the eagles. I want to hear the eagles.

I know it's not only meagles I'm sure you agree-gles Would be awesome to see-gles All of them up in a tree-gle Or in the sky flying free-gle So I'm down on my deagle I'm begging a glee-gle I wanna hear the eagles Not a honey-beagle Not a manatee-gle Yeah, I wanna hear the eagles

Alan

Guffinsky, everyone. Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios. It is produced by the very talented, like Talons, Talons, Ana Gonzalez, and Alan Guffinsky, and me. With help from Susie Lechtenberg, Sarah Sandbach, Natalia Ramirez, Miriam Bernard, Joe Plore, Diane Kelly, and Sarita Bott. Sound design and additional editorial guidance by Mira Bertwin-Tonick.

And that's it. You should stop listening. Why are you still listening? Who listens to... What's that? Excuse me. I have a question. Me too. Me three. Me four. The Badgers.

Listeners, with badgering questions for the expert. Are you ready? Hi, my name is Huxley, and I'm seven years old, and my question is, why don't bald eagles have butts? Well, they do have butts. I've seen many bald eagle butts. I'm not proud of that, but I have seen many bald eagle butts. Hi, my name is Sayang, and I'm 12. My question is, what is an average wingspan of an eagle? Eight feet. Woo!

That's like a person and a half. Yeah. My name is Lee, and I am six years old. Can I have a pet bald eagle? Only if it's a stuffed animal. Hi, it's Jamie Lee Curtis. What is the strangest thing you've ever seen on the webcam? We've got these little mice that run around.

And they just aggravate the heck out of the eagles. Wait, there's actual mice? There's mice in the nest, yes. But why don't the eagles eat them? They're too fast. Why would a mouse live up there of all places? That feels so dangerous. There's lots of food up there. It's kind of like a hide-and-seek game, I think, for the mice. Man. I think they enjoy it. You've buried the lead. Maybe the story here to tell is about those mice. Wow. Wow.

Gonna leave it there with the world's most brazen mice that choose to live inside a bald eagle nest and not tell you the super gross thing that because bald eagles don't have teeth, they slurp down the creatures they eat whole and then spit out their bones, hair, and scales in a lovely pellet. And some people even theorize they swallow rocks to use as gross rock teeth inside their gizzards to help them with the chewing. Not gonna tell you that.

Cause I'm nice. Reminding you, if you want to hear more terrestrials episodes or radio labs about nature, head on over to the radio lab for kids feed. We have a lot of stuff there and more stuff coming this fall. And finally, if there are any teachers out there, we have worked with educators and PBS learning media to make free.

free classroom handouts, activities, discussion prompts, really fun activities that all actually accord with national curriculum standards on science literacy. We have them for grades K through eight, totally free. You can find them on our website, radiolabforkids.org. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Calliopeia Foundation, and the Templeton Foundation. Thank you so much.

All right. Hi, I'm Rianne and I'm from Donegal in Ireland. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soreen Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dryn Keefe is our director of sound design.

Our staff includes: Our fact checkers are:

Hi, my name is Michael Smith. I'm calling from Pennington, New Jersey. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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