Episode 1: The Guam Kingfisher with Scott Newland

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INTRO (00:00)

*Intro Music – you and me the adventure, me and you to the zoo*

EMILY BISHOP: Hello and welcome to the Sedgwick County ZooCast where we are inspiring respect and conservation of wildlife and wild places through caring, connecting and conserving.

I’m your host, Emily Bishop. And today on the ZooCast, we’ll be sitting down with the CEO and bird enthusiast Scott Newland to talk about the Guam kingfisher.

Keep listening to learn what a studbook is, what the Sedgwick County Zoo is doing to reintroduce an extinct bird back into the wild, and to test your knowledge on bird calls.

INTERVIEW WITH THE ZOO’S CEO, SCOTT NEWLAND // LEARN ABOUT THE GUAM KINGFISHER (00:45)

EMILY BISHOP: Thank you so much for coming on the ZooCast. So, can you just tell us about how you got started out in the zoo business?

SCOTT NEWLAND: Sure. So, my story is pretty much just Sedgwick County. I moved to Wichita when I was in between seventh and eighth grade. And when we got here, it was in the middle of summer. So, I didn’t really have a lot to do. And my family wanted to not have my brother and myself sit in the basement all summer long. So, we looked for volunteer opportunities.

We were always zoo people, we would go to zoos, no matter where we’re at. But I never really thought of zoos as a career or zoos as anything other than, you know, the entertainment and fun value that they were to us as a family. But when we came out to visit the zoo here, at that time, we found that they had a really robust volunteer program. And that’s how I got started out here.

So, I was a volunteer here at Sedgwick County Zoo, all through high school. I would come back after I left for college, and volunteered a couple summers. But then I got involved in different programs at the university I was at. And so had about a four-year period where I wasn’t here. And then as I graduated with my master’s program, I just had serendipitous door open for me, and started to work back here at the Zoo as a member of the bird department. And I’ve been here ever since.

BISHOP: That’s very cool. And now you’re- now you’re the CEO.

NEWLAND: Exactly

BISHOP: What all what does that look like? Like, what does your average day look like?

NEWLAND: A lot different from taking care of birds every day. But really, it’s- it’s primarily just problem solving. And I think one of the things that I do enjoy about my role currently, when you compare it to other roles I’ve had here at the Zoo, is I like trying to solve problems for us. And one of the things that whenever you take a step up kind of the ladder in a zoo, in a way you take a step away from the animals.

And a lot of us have to make that decision if we want to move up. And for me, I found as much as I loved the animal part of what I do. I really enjoy problem solving for people and problem solving for either our employees, problem solving for guests. And so, this opportunity really fits that bill, so I’m really enjoying it. Every day is different, even though I don’t have animals dictating my day like I used to. I never know what to expect when I come in the door in the morning. So, it keeps you on your feet.

BISHOP: Yeah, that’s very cool. But the real reason that we brought you on the ZooCast was to talk about a very special bird- the Guam kingfisher. So, for listeners at home who maybe aren’t as familiar with birds, what is the Guam kingfisher?

NEWLAND: So, Guam kingfisher is a small to medium sized kingfisher that is endemic, or was endemic, to the island of Guam. If you’re not geographically astute like I wasn’t, I had to look up where Guam was on a map when I first started hearing about this species. Guam is the southernmost island of the Marianas Archipelago. So, pretty far out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. A little bit south of Japan is where the Marianas are located.

And that region of the world was very important during World War II, not only to the US military, but to Japan and other entities that were all involved in World War II. So, it was a highly contested region. And because of that, unfortunately, the ecology, the biological diversity of Guam and all the Marianas Islands was put under a lot of pressure during World War II.

How the Guam Kingfisher kind of came to be part of the zoo world now is after the War was over, and the US military started to repopulate and resupply Guam, we inadvertently introduced a snake that’s native to Northern Australia or New Guinea. And we brought that snake accidentally to Guam, and it stowed away in cargo and in machinery. And you wouldn’t think that would be that big of a deal. But if you look at the natural history of Guam, there were no snakes ever on the island. There’s not any snake species throughout the whole archipelago. So, when you have any invasive species, it can make a big impact on the local animals that are there.

What really compounded the problem of Guam with brown tree snakes, they are a nocturnal, and a boreal snake, meaning they’re out at night, and they love to climb up into trees. They love to climb on things. So, when you mix that type of invasive predator, with native bird species that evolved with no pressures from predators, it was a recipe for decline of a lot of species. So, of the endemic bird species on Guam, which there are 13 that were only found on Guam, nine of them have been extirpated, so they’re all extinct now. And unfortunately, this all happened before we realized it. And as local Guamanians and local researchers started to notice the disappearance of bird numbers, research was done, they started looking into what the causes were, discovered the brown tree snake, figured out kind of what was going on.

And before they lost all of their species they acted. And so that action was essentially US Fish and Wildlife Service, in partnering with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, went out and caught the last remaining wild specimens of two species.

So- and those are the Guam rail, which are also known as ko’ko in native Chamorro. And then the Guam kingfisher, which is known as a sihek. So those two bird species came into human care in the early to mid-80s. Guam rail came first, between 83 and 84. The last remaining rails were caught up and split up between a facility on Guam and then a few zoos here in the mainland. And then by 1988, the last of the Kingfishers had been caught. And they all came over to AZA zoos.

So, for the last 40 years, AZA has been working hard to make sure that we have a population that’s both demographically robust and genetically robust, to hopefully reintroduce back to the island of Guam. And there’s a lot of steps that still have to occur for that to happen. But that’s kind of the story of, you know, why we’re talking today. I got involved with two programs on Guam in 2011, when I was bird curator here for Sedgwick County, and we have been active participants in both of these programs since then. We’re actually part of a third program called the MAC project, which is working on other bird species in the Northern Marianas Islands. But politically and operationally, they’re two separate programs. But I serve as the AZA studbook keeper, for both Guam rails and Guam kingfishers, and then I also do all of the population management for that with some other volunteers across AZA.

BISHOP: Can you elaborate a little on- you said- you are stud keeper for… what does that- what does that mean?

NEWLAND: Yes, so, a studbook is something that’s not unique to zoos. Studbooks are used in agricultural activities all the time. And essentially what a studbook is, is it’s kind of like a family tree for you and I. So, with my populations, it’s very easy, because our population started from very few individuals. So, we know every single bird that was brought from Guam and brought over to US zoos. So, what a studbook is, is every animal is entered into our records, entered into the studbook as an individual. And so, when you look at the Guam rail studbook or the Guam kingfisher studbook, the first founding birds all say that they were wild caught.

So, what we then know is, as we have bred these birds in human care, we can write down each individual offspring produced, who their parents were, and that’s how we kind of keep track of the lineages. With these two populations being so small, we’re going to have a genetic bottleneck, there’s no way around it. But we can still manipulate our pairs, in a sense that we try to maximize maybe a male that hasn’t had as many chicks as other males have, or maybe a female, whose mother was very prolific, but now none of her siblings exist in the population. So that’s the fine detail we’re looking at it. We know deep down that there’s some relatedness to all of these birds, just because they came from only 21 individuals. But we’re still trying to do our best to make sure that we’ve- we’ve got a good gene pool for the birds that are gonna go back in the wild someday.

BISHOP: So, how exactly is the Sedgwick County Zoo aiding the Guam Kingfisher conservation efforts?

NEWLAND: So currently, we have a really cool program that we are part of. In recent news, the US Fish and Wildlife Service released what is called a 10 J, which is just a special ruling. That was an announcement to everyone that we are going to make an experimental release of kingfishers on the Palmyra Atoll.

Palmyra is another island in the Pacific that once was used by US military that after the war was subsequently sold to the Nature Conservancy, and The Nature Conservancy operates Palmyra as a research station. Palmyra was chosen because there are no snake predators there. There’s really no other bird species that will compete with kingfishers. So, it gives us a really blank slate to test our release- release methods.

So, when the day comes that we’re ready to release kingfishers on Guam, we need to make sure that we know what we’re doing so that we’ll be successful in it. So, what this study is doing is we’re testing all those methods. Part of that methodology is we are- here at Sedgwick County Zoo, we are collecting eggs produced from all other parts of AZA. We are transferring those eggs here to Wichita, and we are hatching them in a quarantine facility. One of the things we don’t want to do with an experimental release is we don’t want to release any disease process on to Palmyra from- from our birds. So, we have to make sure that medically they’re clean. So that’s what this quarantine facility allows us to do. If we bring the bird as an egg, and we hatch it in this quarantine facility, and it’s never exposed to mosquitoes or avian influenza vectors, then we know after some testing, that that bird is free of those disease vectors. And we can send it over to Palmyra without any worry that we’re going to introduce those things there.

So that’s the role we are playing right now. So, we have a specialized container, that if you’re here at the Zoo, and you’re riding our train, you can see the container in our quarantine area. And we have volunteers that are staying here in Wichita, from other parts of AZA. We will have some volunteers from Guam that are coming over to help us and the idea is we will hand raise these chicks. And as soon as we have the birds ready to go to Palmyra, then they will transfer over to Palmyra. At the same time, we have a team of both maintenance and bird staff here from Sedgwick County Zoo that are leaving to go to Palmyra next week to construct our release aviaries on the Atoll. So, we’re really invested in this program. I’ve been working with the Guam Kingfisher group since 2016. And it’s been a long road to get to here- this point. But, it’s something we’re very proud of.

BISHOP: That’s really cool that like out of all the AZA institutions that Sedgwick County has such a prolific role in this work.

NEWLAND: It was kind of partly by design and partly by accident. The storage container was actually supposed to go to Honolulu. And just because of some red tape that we didn’t account for, we couldn’t get the container over to Honolulu in time for the season. So, the idea was, we might as well just keep it here. We’re centrally located. And a lot of the zoos that are producing kingfisher eggs for us are more Midwest to maybe, you know, the western side of east coast for us.

So, we’ve been able to get eggs fairly easily. It’s been a challenge. We try to bring eggs over the road as much as we can. We’ve had a wonderful private donation where a friend of the Zoo happened to be coming back from the East Coast in their airplane, and was able to stop in Cincinnati for us and pick up some eggs. We have sent keepers to St. Louis to pick up eggs. So, we’re kind of all over the place right now. But it’s- it’s a lot of fun. And we’re gaining a lot of experience in this process.

BISHOP: So, we have some Guam kingfishers here at the Zoo in the Tropics building.

NEWLAND: That’s correct. We actually have four kingfishers here at the Zoo. Two that the public sees on a daily basis. And then we have two that are in our breeding facility that’s off exhibit. And what’s really fun about it right now is for the first time, our bird staff has built a custom nest box that they have installed in the exhibit in the Tropics. And right now, our pairs are excavating their nest cavity.

The way kingfishers breed in the wild is they find trees that are dead. And they kind of inspect the trees kind of like a woodpecker does, where they- they can just by tapping on the tree, they know how dense the tree is. When they find a tree that’s of their liking, they start to burrow a hole and they make a cavity. And so, the nesting process is actually a really protracted process, it’ll take a pair a couple weeks to excavate a nest entirely. And that’s really good, because that helps bond that pair even better.

Laying eggs, raising chicks is a big investment in energy for any bird. And none of them waste energy, you know, just frivolously. So, that nest building serves two purposes. Not only are they creating the cavity for the eggs, but it helps reinforce that bond. So, the female knows the male is going to be there to help provision the chicks. And likewise, the male knows the female is going to be there to help provision the offspring too, so it’s a really cool bonding period for them. So yeah, right now our pairs are working on that nest. And it’s made out of cork, we try to replicate a dead tree as much as we can. And so, if you stop by the tropics, you may actually get to see them working on that hole that they’re starting to dig.

BISHOP: I didn’t know that the ones that we had put were breeding.

NEWLAND: Yeah, this is the first time that as the coordinator, I’ve given our pair the green light to reproduce. So, it’s not that they were of… They were younger when they came to us. And then also both of these birds were from lineages that were highly represented in the population. But as I mentioned earlier, that ratio of relatedness kind of changes all the time. So, this year, it was kind of their- they got called up to bat so to speak. So, we’re really excited to have our staff have an opportunity to produce chicks.

BISHOP: If everything goes correctly, and we do have some chicks here at the Zoo. Will they be part of that relocation plan? Or would they stay within the zoos? Or is it just, it could go either way, it all just depends.

NEWLAND: So, right now to be part of the of the release population, we have to have those eggs hatch in the quarantine facility. So, for our pair here at the Zoo, it’s more important that they gain some experience about being parents. So, for this season, we just want them to see how far they will take the breeding season. So, they won’t be part of the release, but in the future they could be. And that would be actually quite handy. I wouldn’t have to ship those eggs across country. It could just take them around the corner here at the zoo and get them into the quarantine facility. But it might take them a couple seasons of just learning and practicing as parents.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a kingfisher, or a penguin, or an ostrich, there is some learning curve for first time parents as birds. They’re very rarely successful their first time, they might build a great nest, but then not understand what the egg is once they lay it. Or they might understand what the egg is, hatch it, and then not be good at provisioning the chicks. So, there’s a lot of learning that goes into the breeding season with pairs. So, our goal this year is just to see how far our pair goes. And then hopefully next year, if there’s things that we can adjust to make them more successful, we can just start building on that.

BISHOP: Why is it so important that we work to aid the conservation efforts and to reintroduce the Guam Kingfisher into its natural habitat?

NEWLAND: Well, I think- I think there’s several reasons. And some of them are very obvious. But for me, there’s a couple other, maybe less obvious reasons.

Throughout human history, no matter whether- where you live on the planet, humans impact their environment. And as that impact has been accelerated, obviously, we’re causing extinctions quicker than natural processes would. So just on that level, we need to do this because we caused this problem. Now, I look at it a little differently as, as an American, this was directly caused by us. I mean, this, this re, or this accidental introduction of brown tree snakes to Guam, was solely our doing. We didn’t purposely do it, but our actions led to it.

So, I feel it’s really important that we clean this mess up, so to speak. And it is a mess that although it’s- it’s a challenge, I think it’s something we can fix. And unlike some challenges that we have out there, we can’t tackle ourselves, this one we can. So that’s one of the reasons I think it’s very important.

For me, now that I’ve worked in Guam for many years, and I’ve met local people, and experienced the local culture, these bird species, culturally, are very significant to native Chamorros. And I think that is even a greater reason to try to protect these birds and to get them back in their native habitat. Stories in Chamorro culture are passed down word of mouth. And when you hear people of older generations on Guam talk about when there used to be rails running through their yard, or they used to see sihek, you know, in the trees in their- in their parent’s farms, they don’t have those stories to pass on anymore, because the new generations can’t connect with what they’re talking about. So again, just from a sheer cultural aspect, I think it’s important.

I don’t think any of us here that live in the US would disagree that if we hadn’t tried to save bison, that a part of our history would have been lost. Bison were such a huge part of American history. And as- as this country expanded and developed, they played a huge role in that. Had we let them go extinct, it wouldn’t have they wouldn’t have the same meaning, I think to modern generations. And I think I look at the species on Guam in the same way. They’re very important culturally and almost I think that’s as important of a reason as just, it’s the right thing to do, you know, reason. But there’s- there’s been so much effort over the last 40 years put in to the species that any of us that are involved, just hate to give up now. There’s still a lot of challenges that we have to overcome to be successful. But I still think it’s worth doing.

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LEARN ABOUT ZOO MEMBERSHIP (24:07)

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TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF BIRD CALLS // TALK BIRDIE TO ME (24:45)

BISHOP: So, we will circle back around to talking more about the Guam kingfisher.

NEWLAND: Okay

BISHOP: But, we’re going to go short break to play a little game. And the game is called

*drumroll*

BISHOP: Talk Birdie To Me

*rim shot*

BISHOP: And the rules of the game are really simple. I’m going to play a bird call. And then you’re going to guess what bird is making that call.

And listeners at home are welcome to play along as well. And I have five bird calls. So as long as you get three of them right, you’re a winner.

NEWLAND: Do I get any clues? Are these Zoo birds or are these native birds?

BISHOP: These are all birds that can be found within the Sedgwick County Zoo or within the state of Kansas.

NEWLAND: Okay, okay, that helps a little bit.

BISHOP: So, get my bird sounds queued up.

All right, first bird

*bird call*

NEWLAND: That’s a flamingo

BISHOP: That is a flamingo.

NEWLAND: Yep.

BISHOP: Yeah, you got it. So, you’re one- 1-0. So, I didn’t even- I even wrote down multiple-choice options in case you were like, “I need a hint.” But you got that.

Okay, our second bird

*bird call*

NEWLAND: Can you play that one more time?

BISHOP: Yeah.

*bird call*

NEWLAND: So that’s a meadow lark. But do you want more specific than that?

BISHOP: If- if you can be more specific,

NEWLAND: So that’s a western meadowlark.

BISHOP: Yeah.

NEWLAND: So, those of- listeners that are in Kansas, we’re actually in a really cool zone where both eastern and western meadowlarks can be found. And they’re really hard to differentiate just by sight. But they do have a different song. So that was western.

BISHOP: Yeah, I’m very- I’m very impressed that you specifically got western meadowlark. I chose that because that’s our state bird.

Third bird. You’re- you’re getting all of these. I’m very… I mean, I figured you would. You’re the bird guy.

NEWLAND: Well, we’ll see how challenging they get.

BISHOP: All right, bird number three.

*bird call*

NEWLAND: So, that’s a laughing kookaburra.

BISHOP: Yep, yeah.

So, if you get the last two, then you’re just the champion of birds. You already won the game for getting three of them.

Onto bird number four.

*bird call*

NEWLAND: So, I’m gonna say crow. But I think I’m wrong. Because there’s lots of crows out there. So, if you’re if you’re looking for something specific… But I would say American crow on that one.

BISHOP: It’s not a crow. It’s a raven.

NEWLAND: Okay, well, at least I’m in the same family.

BISHOP: You’re in the same family though. They are very close.

Okay. And then our final bird.

*bird call*

NEWLAND: That’s too easy. Is that a Guam kingfisher?

BISHOP: It is a Guam kingfisher. So yeah, you win. You win the game. Thanks for playing along.

NEWLAND: No, that’s fun.

BISHOP: Yeah, I am super impressed that you got… you didn’t even need multiple choice options.

NEWLAND: Well, I- prior to working here at the Zoo, I worked for Fort Hays State University. And I worked on several projects in the field. And all of them required us to learn nearly all the native songs so that we could count them in censuses and things like that. So, there’s only a few species locally that I have trouble with. Get me outside of kind of the central flyway, and I do struggle, I don’t know any West Coast bird calls. But since they’re a Zoo birds in there that helps me too.

BISHOP: Yeah, you got- you’ve got the Zoo birds and the central birds.

NEWLAND: Yeah

BISHOP: That’s all that matters.

That was a joke. All birds are important.

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CLOSING THOUGHTS ON THE GUAM KINGFISHER (29:28)

BISHOP: So yeah, just wrapping things up, I was wondering what is your favorite thing about the Guam kingfisher?

NEWLAND: So, I think kind of, for me, it’s, they have a lot of different, really cool behaviors. But if you’ve had the opportunity to watch kingfishers, like I have, and I don’t know that a lot of the readers are aware of this but not only kingfishers, but a lot of birds like the kookaburra that you played earlier that are in this family. So, everyone I’m sure knows that birds don’t have teeth. So, but all of the kingfishers- kookaburras, birds of that group, they hunt some larger prey items. So, because they don’t have teeth and they don’t have any way to soften up their meals, one of the things that kingfishers do is they will take that prey item, and they will whack it on the tree stump or on the branch.

And so, whenever you see a kingfisher that catches live food, they kind of tenderize it by beating it up on the tree. And it’s a really cool behavior. If you’ve never seen it to watch for. Our birds here in the tropics, we’ll do it with the with the anoles that we feed them, they’ll even do it with crickets. And since we do feed live crickets out, if they catch a cricket that’s still alive, they’ll whack it till it’s not moving anymore. But it’s, it’s just an odd behavior. And if you hadn’t seen it before, you might question “What in the world is that bird doing?” But that’s, that’s what they’re doing.

And a story from my past- wasn’t a Guam kingfisher. But years ago, early in my career here at Sedgwick, we raised a different species of kingfisher called collared kingfishers. And we happened to be rearing some for another institution that was going to use them in a public aviary. So, the idea is they wanted the kingfishers to be comfortable with people, even to land on people if- if people wanted that. So, we hand reared a couple of kingfishers, and got them really used to feeding from us and being comfortable with us. But the thing we didn’t think about is if you give a kingfisher a mouse, and he’s comfortable sitting on your shoulder, you might get smacked in the face by that mouse.

And so that actually started happening, and it made us rethink were these animals going to be good ambassadors to kind of have in a contact aviary situation. So, what we tried to do is we tried to redirect that behavior, and instead of landing, and using you as a stump to tenderize their meal. Instead, we trained them to catch the stuff out of the air. And so that was, that was a fun behavior that we- we taught those kingfishers, and they did leave us and they went to another institution. And were fairly successful at the new aviary. We did hear reports that they still use the guests as, as stumps and would smack them with diet items. But that’s one of my favorite things about kingfishers to see that behavior.

BISHOP: Yeah, that’s super fun.

So those are all the questions I have. Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you’d like to speak on?

NEWLAND: Just want to say I encourage everybody to come out and take a look at these species here at the zoo. We have several species from the Marianas Island Chain, that we’re very proud that we’re part of these organizations, and working on these projects. And so, if you come out to see them, even though you might not be giving us a direct donation for kingfishers, just know that your visit is what allows us to support this type of work. We have been sending teams into the Marianas since 2011.

I, guesstimating, we’ve spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars on this project just from Sedgwick County Zoo. And we do that with multiple projects around the Zoo. So obviously, this is one of my favorites because I’m a bird guy, and we’re working with birds in the field. But we have a lot of other conservation projects that we’re very proud to be in. Snow leopards, African painted dogs, we’re working on a couple other we have… Sorry, black footed ferrets we are active in. We’re looking at other possibilities for some work in South America. So, there’s all kinds of stuff that we’re doing for conservation. And every time you come visit Sedgwick County Zoo, whether you realize it or not, you’re supporting those programs.

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OUTRO (34:25)

BISHOP: Thanks for listening to the Sedgwick County ZooCast.

We’d like to give a special thank you to Scott Newland, for sitting down and talking with us about the Guam kingfisher.

Thank you to Jennica King, our Director of Marketing and Communication, and Chelsey Schartz, our Digital Content Manager.

And a special thank you to our Zoo Members, whose support makes this podcast possible. If you’re interested in becoming a Zoo Member, visit scz.org/membership.

Thanks again for listening. Until next time, I’m Emily Bishop and this has been the Sedgwick County ZooCast.