Tony doesn’t take it easy on vacation. In December he flew to Australia to bird, herp, and explore. Of course he checked out some urban wildlife while he was down there, and in this episode we listen to his interviews with a Torresian imperial pigeon researcher with PIPwatch in Cairns (lead researcher Dr. Julia Hazel), Dr. John Martin in Sydney (who researchers basically all their urban wildlife) at the Royal Botanic Garden, and with Tony’s herping buddies on an evening excursion on the outskirts of Sydney.

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[This is a re-post of our World Sparrow Day episode in honor of… World Sparrow Day 2017!!!]

We celebrate World Sparrow Day (March 20th) with a look at Passer domesticus, a bird North American birders love to hate but that is in a mysterious decline in its native Eurasian range.

We hear from Mohammed Dilawar, founder of India’s Nature Forever Society and of World Sparrow Day, about the state of the sparrow in India and the victory of getting it declared the state bird of Delhi.

Tony talks to urban researcher Jessica Burnett about her house sparrow research and how the Unholy Trio might not be so… unholy.

Robin Irrizary, Philadelphia Watershed Coordinator for the TTF Watershed Partnership and avid urban naturalist joins Tony and Billy to talk about sparrows and about how someday his children will be able to carry out all the citizen science projects he never had time to do.

So plug us in, step outside your front door, and raise your binoculars to celebrate the house sparrow.

And here’s that anti-sparrow piece from 1917 that we mentioned.

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European wall lizards are spreading, and we’re gonna talk and sing about it. Dr. Russell Burke from Hofstra University tells us about the wall lizards of New York, and Dr. Kenneth Petren of the University of Cincinnati talks about his city’s “Lazarus lizards.” And what wall lizard discussion would be complete without a song? Dig the release of Tony and Matthew Halley’s latest hit, “Wonder Wall Lizard.”

(and if you see a Cincinnati wall lizard, report it here: http://www.uc.edu/lizards/)

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