What Arsonist Birds Teach Us about Different Sources

GOING DEEPER

What Arsonist Birds Teach Us about Different Sources

The National Post says that when those mischievous birds drop embers on parched grasslands, the territory becomes “a feeding frenzy” sending “small birds, lizards, insects, everything fleeing the front of the fire.” This description comes from Robert Gosford, one of the authors of the research study linked to in the article. However, the words in quotation marks appear nowhere in the research article (we checked). Instead, as the National Post reporter wrote, Gosford provided the description to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Using the types of sources we laid out above, this is an example of the reporting source, the National Post, quoting the original reporting source, Australia’s national broadcasting service. At the same time, it’s clear that the National Post journalist did his homework and went back to the research source, the Journal of Ethnobiology where these findings first appeared. That research, a collaboration between field rangers in Australia’s semiarid Northern Territory and professors from Penn State and the University of Arizona, documented birds picking up “smoldering sticks” and transporting them “ahead of a fire front, successfully helping the blaze spread up a small valley.” The Journal of Ethnobiology study provides a scientific basis to the “reality of avian fire spreading,” a phenomenon already known to Aboriginal peoples, who long understood the capabilities of these flying arsonists. By itself, the National Post article gives you enough information and active links to feel confident forwarding it to friends and family. But if these flying arsonists inspire you to dig deeper, you’ll want to go back to the original research article and read the evidence for yourself.