Indiana University has just debuted the film Ordinary Extraordinary Junco: Remarkable Biology From a Backyard Bird. The film, which traces the fascinating history of one of North America’s most common and abundant song birds, the Dark-eyed Junco, is the inspiration of Jonathan Atwell, a postdoctoral researcher working in the lab of Ellen Ketterson, Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology. Ketterson has used the junco as a research subject in evolutionary biology for over 40 years.
IU telecommunications graduate student and cinematographer Steve Burns recorded most of the video. With the help of a cast of fellow scientists, actors and birds, they tell the story of a simple, elegant songbird and its place in science, both past and present.
The 85-minute film, purposely designed in interconnected five- to 15-minute modules that can double as instructional units, traces the long history of the junco as a central subject in a wide range of scientific discoveries, highlighting past scientists and their groundbreaking research with the species, while providing accessible lessons in animal behavior and evolutionary biology.
The team also created a short trailer — and of course the project has a Facebook page. You can watch or download the entire movie at the Junco Project Web site (click on Videos on the menu at the top of the page).
From a historical perspective, the film stretches from William Rowan’s discovery in the 1920s that day length is a key environmental cue for avian migration, and Alden H. Miller’s taxonomic research in the same era that classified all the juncos, to research currently under way by Atwell, Ketterson and members of their group.
At the same time, Ordinary Extraordinary Junco captures the tiny bird with its dark hood, pale gray underbelly and flashing white tail feathers in domains from Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains to recently urbanized populations in San Diego, as well as several other exciting destinations including the highlands of Guatemala and Mexico and a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.
Unrecognized by most people, but familiar to birders, juncos are abundant across much of North America, and they are easy to find and observe because they forage and nest on the ground. That’s why Ketterson and her late husband, Val Nolan Jr., a professor of law and biology at IU, found the junco to be an ideal species for research. “The junco is a perfect study species,” as Ketterson says, that “reveals its biology to you in the field and in captivity.”
Evolutionary diversification is one of the key themes throughout the film, as juncos exhibit striking diversity and variation across their range. Such differences can emerge over thousands of years — or in just a few decades. “Evolution isn’t something that happened a long time ago, it’s some thing that happens every day,” said Phil Unitt, curator at the San Diego Natural History Museum and one of the participants in the film.
About 90 percent of all bird species are monogamous, including the junco, making them also interesting to study from an animal behavior perspective. “People are a lot like birds,” Ketterson said. “One of the reasons for studying birds and not studying mammals — most mammals — is that birds form pair bonds just as people form couples, and when birds take care of offspring, usually the male helps.”
The movie also reveals the important role testosterone plays not only in the aspects that humans most closely associate the hormone with — muscle mass, aggression and sexual behavior — but also in its modulation of parental care, the immune system, stress response and even survival.
Moviegoers also will see science in action, as the film captures scientists conducting mist-netting to capture juncos, searching for nests, recording songs, and collecting samples.