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A narrative podcast from two bird lovers (and friends) exploring all things bird.
I'm Hannah, and I'm Cleo.
And you're listening to Birds on Birds.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to Birds on Birds, the Ornithological Odyssey podcast, where we bring you on our bird learning adventures.
Welcome back, welcome back.
Hello.
I am, as always, just completely stoked to share information about this bird today, but also stoked that I had many pages of information to pull from.
Yeah, you're switching it up.
You're not doing these obscure ones.
Well, I mean, it's still weird. But it's not.
It's a weirdo for sure.
I was expecting it to be less researched than it was.
And so I was pleasantly surprised, but also pleasantly overwhelmed by the amount of detail.
Like it got into so much detail in birds of the world that it started to tell me the different lengths of eggs in percentages, like the shape and how much they varied between nests.
And I was like, okay.
That's more than I need to know.
And I was reading it for some reason, but not ingesting it.
And so today, we'll be talking about the black skimmer.
The black skimmer. Kind of has like a pirate name.
Yeah, it really does, especially when we say it in the black schema.
But, um, It's a good boat name.
It does sound like a boat or a pirate or both.
Well, and let me tell you, it's nicknames as well, because I think these are also good boat names.
You've got scissor bill, cutwater, sheer water, floodgull, stormgull, razor bill, Corta Agua, or Cortagua in South America, and sea dog.
Cedo, sea dog, a, what's up, sea dog?
Dog over there?
I want to touch that doll.
Pet that dog.
Can I bet that dog?
And those are all the names.
So feel free to take that for your boats.
I personally love cutwater.
Yeah.
I think that's also like a liquor.
Yeah.
Well, maybe you can call your boat.
Cute water.
There you go.
You know?
It's not one of the nicknames, but it's close.
It should be.
We could start one.
Yeah, cute water.
Cute water.
Boy tears.
Just kidding.
So it's Scientific's name is Rinchops Niger.
And this comes from the ancient Greek word Runkos, meaning bill, and ops, meaning face, and the specific Niger is the Latin word for black.
Okay.
So that's the breakdown of the name.
No, it's.. Big face.
Big face.
Feast Black beak face.
Black beak face.
Yeah, which the more we talk about it, the more that will make sense.
Yeah.
It's a good description.
Yeah, they're honestly, they're really, really cool.
I kind of like immediately seized on this bird when I was watching Listers and I was like, this one, I'm doing it.
I am writing this down.
I want to talk about this bird.
So the size of the bird tip to tip is 15.8 to 19.7 inches. Pretty long.
It's pretty long. 40 to 50 centimeters.
The weight is 9.3 to 12.9 ounces or 265 to 365 grams.
The wingspan is 42.9.
Sorry, yeah, to yep, 42.9 to 45.3 inches.
So seabirds, you know?
Oh, yeah.
So 109 is catching the waves.
And these ones are catching the air waves for sure. 109 to 115 centimeters on bird, all about birds, it says larger than a laughing goal, but slightly smarter than a royal turn, but with longer wings.
Okay, okay.
I can picture that.
Yeah.
Yep, exactly.
Their lifespan is 5 to 15 years because a lot of seabirds, they just have like hard mortality rates because of the life at sea and also the babies die pretty quickly and easily.
So that's why they're such a range, but the oldest known was 23 and one month years old.
God damn.
Yeah, it was banded twice in the same, or I guess banded once and then banded again 23 years and one month later in the same place.
That's cool Yeah.
Like I said, I 1st saw this bird in Lister's and I was like, tell me everything I need to know.
I think they are so cool.
And also, if you haven't watched that documentary, please do.
You should.
I played it for my boyfriend the other night and he had a really fun time watching it and I think he was not expecting to like it because you think birding documentary and maybe you're like, meh, or maybe you're here and you're like, that sounds awesome.
But I think it's more.. Appeals to a large audience.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I agree.
PG-13.
Yeah, I probably PG-13 actually.
They might say like, fuck.
There are drugs in there.
Oh, there were drugs.
There was lots of weed.
Lots of weed.
Lots of weed.
So unless your 12 year old knows about weed, I recommend PG-13.
No cocaine, yeah.
Not 18 plus.
Diet Coke. Don't know.
I don't know about that.
Lots of Cracker Barrel, though.
Yeah that's true.
They are super striking.
So they are really pretty easily identifiable, but I'll kind of explain why later.
They are closely related to goals and turns, but they are in their own genus, and there are 2 other skimmers in that category.
These birds have very long wings, as we already mentioned, they're very pointy and they're primarily black and white with the black being like on the top of the birds.
So if you were going to be, if it was flying and the ground is the bottom and the sky is the top, towards the top of the bird is pretty much all black, including over the top head of the face, right under the eye area.
It's actually really difficult to see the eye because it blends in right in there. Really like not half and half exactly, but it's pretty pretty close.
And then white is all underneath the belly, the neck all down on the bottom.
They do have some white at the tips of their wings and on the edging from the top and also on the tail feathers in some like striping and barring.
But otherwise pretty starkly black and white.
Yeah, it looks like an Oreo that you took the bottom off.
Yes, perfect.
That's exactly what it looks like, actually. Like the white.
But then you held it with the cookie cup.
Yeah, yeah.
And then you have the other cookie in your mouth.
Yeah, exactly.
The bottom in your mouth as you do.
Eat ass.
Yeah.
Or whatever.
This podcast is not PG-13.
You would think it would be.
It somehow never is.
It's the E for explicit and excellent.
Yeah.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
I noticed too in the pictures, nothing talks about this.
I couldn't see why this happens, but there are some pictures that say breeding adult where they have feathers, like white feathers that create a ring around their neck.
Yeah, I see that.
Yeah, I, it never really explains if that's just like kind of individualists. On some it is, though.
So it gets like dappled.
Like it has that kind of dapply like goes between white and black.
But then there are some where it's like a full white ring around the neck.
But then there are some that don't have it at all.
I tried to see if maybe it was part of a subspecies thing.
I tried to see if maybe it was just like a different one that got lumped in by accident into the photo reel, but doesn't seem like it.
So I don't know.
My other guess would be that maybe they're younger breeding adults and as they get older, that ring gets removed more.
Okay.
But I'm not honestly sure.
So TBD on that.
TBD.
Their legs are orange red.
They're quite short.
Nothing really to write home about you.
Very orange red.
Very bright.
Like a traffic cone.
Yes, the same color as their legs.
Yes, exactly.
And their bills are like a red also.
Maybe kind of darker red than the legs.
Oh, maybe.
Just a hair and then the they're split in half between the red towards the face and then black towards the end of the tip.
And they are a long, long jaw.
And this is actually one of the things that gets their name, the skimmer, because the lower mandible is significantly longer than the upper mandible.
They have an underbite.
They literally have an underbite.
And when I say significantly, I mean 2 to 3 centimeters beyond the upper.
So it's about an inch, um, and it's like a third. Looks like their beak is broken.
If you don't know what type of bird they are, yeah.
It looks like a beak that was broken and that healed wrong.
Yes.
No, exactly.
I've seen pictures of birds with broken beaks where the top is broken and it looks like this.
And I think that's why I was so drawn to it.
Also, when their mouths are open sometimes.
It looks like they, their bottom jaw has almost like a hook out, kind of like literally like scissors have when you go to cut.
It's got a little like kind of like ditch that like hangs down that makes it look like 2 scissor things that are just like kind of coming together.
It's really really interesting.
And another fascinating thing about their bills is not only are they kind of offset like that, but when you look at them dead on, like face to face, the bill is super, super thin and is described as laterally compressed, but it is like very thin. Like much thinner than you would expect it to be.
I looked at a picture of it like face to face.
And it was surprising, I would say, how.. Almost all the photos, it's from the side. From the side.
Well, because it's so much more recognizable from the side, but they really are like a scissor.
It's like a knife.
They're very thin.
It's really cool. Fascinating.
I know.
Isn't it thin?
Like way thinner than you'd expect it to be looking at it.
Cause it, it's so long too.
So when we talk about like, it's like a knife.
No, it's genuinely like a knife.
Yeah, it's very, very thin and it's long.
I think the whole bill itself is probably about 6 centimeters long.
So that's pretty significant, I would say. Very significant.
And then you've got the 2 centimeters, 2 to 3 centimeters back is like the top mandible, but then if you look at them dead on, It's just like thin.
It's just a knife. Literally looks like a knife from the front. Is really cool.
It's adaptive to how they fish and hunt, hence the name skimmers and why they're in their own genus.
There are 2 others, and they also have this trait, but I'll talk a little bit more about the hunting in the food section.
Okay.
Another really cool adaptation is their eyes.
So black skimmers have large pupils that can narrow to vertical slits like cat pupils.
What?
And this adaptation compensates for glare off the water's surface, and they believe that it helps enhance their vision, as it hunts in dim light or at night, which is pretty common for them.
Yeah.
Isn't that cool?
So cool.
I know.
I know.
I was reading it and I was like, this is so fun.
I feel like we'd never hear about.
I haven't heard.
So apparently it's more common and I have this a little bit later, more in like fun facts, but apparently it's more common for birds to be able to do this when they are like specific predator birds.
Like go after like specific prey.
Okay.
Well, like, yeah, because they think of an owl.
Yes.
Like, that's probably some of the most distinct eyes.
Yes.
It's really an, I, we're going to have to like look more into it or talk to someone who does like bird eye science or something.
Ornithology, ophthalmologist.
Ooh, that's gotta be someone's job.
Bird eyes.
I'm trying to combine the 2 or not ophthalmology.
Or an ophthalmology.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Another fun fact about these birds that I'm adding in is that historic naturalists fucking love this bird in every single thing that I found.
These 2 quotes are part of it.
The 1st one is from R.C.
Murphy, who described black skimmers as unworldly.
Aerial beagles hot on the scent of aerial rabbits.
The skimmers themselves are unreal and unworldly birds with their impractical looking forward ends and peculiar lightness of their lilting flight that calls the sound like dogs baying in a dream.
Jesus.
Like, okay, RC Murphy, just marry one if you love it.
Yeah.
If you get it so much, why don't you marry it?
And then Charles Darwin, who you've never heard of.
Never.
In observing skimmers, foraging on a lake in Uruguay, described their flight as dexterously managed while they plowed up small fish with their projecting lower mandibles and secured them with the upper half of their scither like bills.
Wow.
They're hella described.
It's kind of fun.
Ariel beagles is fun.
It's not what I would have picked, but I like it.
I can see it.
If somebody came up to me and said that whole sentence about them.
We were looking at them together.
I'd be like, fuck yeah, RC.
100%.
You're on something and I want some, but...
Yeah exactly.
The juveniles, they're so fucking cute.
They are born precocial, which we think we've talked about before, but basically means that they're hatched in an advanced state, pretty common with seabirds or birds that are waterfowl.
Yes.
And that makes...
They look kind of like penguins.
They look a little bit like penguins.
They kind of look like woodcocks too.
Like they're just a little bit like their upper parts are like a buffy brown, lots of barring.
They have like broad brown edging instead of white edging.
They're a little more gray tipped.
Their beak is actually equal length when they're born.
But within 4 weeks of fledgling, they are already at one centimeter over where the upper jaw is.
So the bottom jaw within 4 weeks is already one centimeter longer than the upper jaw.
And their bill is more of like a pink color as well as the legs are more of like a desky pink color as well.
It looks like a lot of like younger birds where it's like very brown, speckly, dappled with like a gray or a white, so on and so forth.
So the sound description is typically they're quiet outside of their breeding quality.
Typically, they're quiet outside of their breeding colonies, but the beagle description and sea dog thing doesn't come from nowhere.
They don't come from nowhere.
The bayon.
They're baying.
The howling.
They're howling.
No, they're not.
The typical call is described as a nasal barking or dull yaps and barks like a ca- ah, or no, sorry, it's more of a ca- ah.
No.
Well, sure.
I'll play those are super different.
Yep. And Q. So I'm going to be honest.
I listened to it and I was like, hmm, I don't know that I would have called it barking.
I'm going to be honest with you, but then I saw a video, which I did link in our sources of the juveniles making sounds and it does sound like puppies.
Like exactly like puppies being like, yep, yep, yep, yep.
It actually was really, really cute.
But I, maybe you just need to hear it in person in the colonies to really get the barking dog vibe.
But I didn't get it.
Okay Except for the babies.
So I'll play that sound here and you can tell me what you think.
You can let me know if you think that they sound like dogs are not.
I think if anything, they sound like puppies, like puppies who are trying to find their voice.
But I was expecting like a, you know, and that's not what happened.
No.
No.
They do look more the size of the bark that they're giving, but yeah, I hear you.
Yeah, I hear that too.
Location wise, they are in North America.
And if you were to look at the map.
It's literally like if you were to draw a line where you were tracing the outline of North America from the tip of California.
And by tip, I mean like where Oregon meets California, all the way down around all the way to the other side and up to Maine, only on the coast.
But only on the coast.
So literally just outline.
And then you would find them.
They favor coastal waters protected from open surf, such as lagoons, estuaries, inlets, and sheltered bays.
In South America, there's an entirely different population there, and they are a year-round population that hangs out in a lot of different places because there's so many water banks and riverways in South America.
So they actually don't migrate there.
They just hang out on like kind of the coast.
Or sorry, not the coast, but like the sides of rivers when the water levels go down.
Okay.
So a completely different situation.
The North American population, as I mentioned, but I'll say again, does migrate, but very, very short distances.
They're not going super far, and the South American population is a year-round population.
As far as mating habits go, the North American population seem to pair each breeding season, but only for one breeding season as far as we know.
So same as the last episode we talked about, where like they get together for a season, possibly they stay together for multiple seasons, but it's not super documented.
Exactly.
They're typically in large swaths of these birds will land at the same time in their breeding range.
Huge numbers.
They're very social.
And then after a week, pairs seem to like kind of slowly stand closer together.
So like who you're going to pair with gets closer and closer.
And then after that, they will break off.
The pairs will then break off 10 to 14 days after they kind of start sitting next to each other.
And but they will break off in colonies of like 3 to 100 pairs.
So they'll all land in one huge group.
They'll breed and they'll like pair off and then the pairs will go off in a completely separate group into different territories.
And then they'll go around and they'll like mark their territories where they want to go.
So they nest in colonies, but they're really territorial about their nests.
So like they're not fucking with other birds coming into their zone, but they're social in the sense that they're in colonies.
Okay.
The South American breeding is actually linked to the annual precipitation in the flood cycle.
So this has a lot to do with the falling waters on the sandbars and river beds, whether or not they'll be in breeding season.
So it follows kind of whatever the local paths of that are.
Okay.
Typically they are on beaches, sandbars, along riverbeds, marshes, and so on.
As far as NESCO, mates take turns scraping.
So once they find a territory in this big like pair colony that they're in, they'll kind of go around and they'll like scrape and they do this really exaggerated sand kicking posture where like the neck, the head, the bill and the tail are all like elevated and then they like keep and they alternate foot strokes.
Yeah, that kind of throw it back.
They also rotate in there and will like scrape to create kind of a saucer shape depression.
With their chest, like the way they...
No, I...
I'm not totally sure.
It just says rotate.
So I didn't see anything about how they do this, but I'm guessing it's like they spin or they like move it around.
It only takes a few minutes to create, apparently, but they do several scrapes, so kind of like how the hawks, I think it was the Peregrine Falcons did this, where they created several, but then they only use one.
Okay.
So, you know, it just like depends basically, but they require 5 to 7 days between nest building and laying eggs.
And males seem to do more scraping and making larger scrapes than females do, but they both do it.
Okay.
That's generally kind of what's happening.
Eggs are primarily, quote unquote, nearly white.
I said, okay.
But rarely can be slightly greenish or pinkish, and they are all splotchy, but interestingly, the marked eggs, so the splotchy ones are typically the 1st laid in the clutch, and the last eggs are almost barely marked at all.
So it's almost like how cats are born.
Have you heard that before?
How like when cats are born, it's like the 1st that's born seems to have the most color and then as they like slowly come out, it's like less and less.
I think a printer a real phenomena.
Yeah, I think this is like a real thing.
I might have made that up, chat, if I heard about this on TikTok and someone lied to me.
I'm sorry.
But that's what it made me think of.
But this is what's happening in here.
Like, they don't the ones that are laid last don't have markings.
Like, or they have barely any markings.
Interesting.
Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
They typically lay 4 eggs and this is done over a 4 to 6 day period.
So they have about one to .5 eggs a day, depending.
Both sex is incubate and are only left open.
Like the Nesser only left open when they're switching between the 2 mates because they nest often in like super open areas like on beaches.
And the sun, not only like dogs that are off leash that are on like beaches or all the different things that you could imagine, anything that, yeah, can come onto a beach and kill a baby bird, but also the sun can be really detrimental to the baby and because they're so out in the open.
They have to be on top of this egg, like at all times.
Okay.
They do switch about 2 every 2 to 4 hours, which is pretty crazy.
Both parents also bring fish to the young.
And at 3 days old, they young will actually start to run to the parent as they see them land.
So the 1st few days, they'll bring it to the nest and they'll just kind of like crouch and beg for food like a normal baby bird.
But then after about 3 days, if they see their parent land with a fish, the babies will run out of the nest to meet them, which I thought was quite cute. So cute.
And quite precocious, if you will.
Yes.
Parental care seems to persist at least several weeks after young are capable of flight, but after that, they kind of stick around in different colonies and then they figure out their own path.
Like I said, even though they nest in colonies, they're super territorial of their nests and people have documented seeing skimmers take and fly away with or even swallow intruding skimmer, turn, or goal chicks.
Whoa.
So they're like, you're someone else's baby.
I eat you.
Whoa.
I'll literally eat you.
Not the egg, the chicks.
The chicks.
The hatch chicks.
That's wild There was also some crazy thing that I just could not puzzle out.
I'm going to tell you about it, but like, someone's going to have to go read this themselves where it was like, there's been documented cases of laughing goals, dropping chicks, and then skimmers, catching them midair, and then dropping them.
The chicks lived.
It's like a 3 sentence thing.
And I was like, I don't understand.
Yeah, okay.
I'm trying to picture a laughing goal that drops its own baby and then the black skimmer gets it, but then drops in and the chicks live.
And the chicks live.
Midair.
It catches it midair.
Don't know why. Was not able to figure out what they were talking about.
So I left it out.
But I'm telling you because I'm, I've got a huge question mark over my head.
And I want to know what they're talking about.
Why did the laughing goal drop their child?
Why did this get to the other side?
Why did it then drop it?
Yeah.
But it also lived.
So like, did it just break its fall?
Does it drop it from a much lower place?
It literally doesn't say.
It doesn't say.
So are laughing goals killing their children often?
It doesn't seem like it's able to fly.
Laughing.
Ha ha.
I right?
LOL.
So you never.
So I guess one day we'll do laughing goals and maybe we'll close the loop on that, but for now, it will remain a mystery.
Can't wait.
Diet and behavior.
They are often seen hunting, so they can be seen hunting during the day and they're typically carpuscles, so like in the morning, twilight. So dawn and dusk.
Okay.
But they actually most commonly feed at night.
They're nocturnal feeders.
So this is really where the bill comes into play.
And by the way, I Googled whether Beacon Bill are the same thing because I was kind of like, are we using these words interchangeably or there's like one for like certain types of bills and beaks?
It's not.
They're synonyms.
You can use them.
However, colloquially, typically Bill is for like wide flat things.
So think like ducks.
And then beak is typically used for like sharp, pointy thin, so think hawk or birds of prey.
So that's that's not scientific, though.
It's more just like how kind of like colloquially we all talk about it, but you can use Baker Bill interchangeably.
I needed to look that up so I thought I'd tell you all what the answer was.
Okay, so how they feed.
They literally, and I mean literally, glide across the top of the water with their lower mandible in the water.
So they just like move along, literally skim, and their wings will like, when they're getting to the water, they flap between getting there, but then they literally just like hold them up and they glide over it.
Their beak is in the water.
It looks like ice skating.
It's so crazy.
There are times even when their bodies are physically touching the water, they're so close to the water that, but they're not going in and they have so much control.
It's really cool.
I mean, it's it's definitely, you can tell that the people who are like writing all those like glorious things about them or watching them because it is truly like really, really something to behold to see them glide over the water.
What they do with their beak, though, is that they skim and they have this thing that's called tactile feedings.
So basically they're not actually hunting for prey specifically.
They find places that they prefer, and they put their bacon the water in these places, typically shallow, because the fish are more likely to be closer to the surface at those times.
And when the beak touches something, it will immediately like their top jaw will just shut over it.
So that's called tactile feeding, which is really cool, and I have never heard of that.
Interestingly, though, even though they are believed to be tactile feeders, they have the eyes of birds that feed by precision pecking.
Meaning they find something specific and go after it.
The thing, though, is that scientists are beefing about this.
Basically, some think that this is probably more for accurate positioning while skimming across the water, so making sure that they're able to accurately put themselves at a place where they can skim the water without going in, you know, or that once they actually catch something that they've already caught, they're able to identify it easier and faster.
There's really no real.
I don't know that there's a study being done on that right now, but there's definitely like different schools of thought.
It seems between scientists on what's happening there. Interesting.
I link some videos.
I highly recommend checking them out.
It is really, really cool.
But even if you look this bird up, a lot of the pictures will show them skimming over the water.
But when you see those pictures, just remember they fly like that.
They're not swooping down.
You know, that's not like an action shot of them catching something.
That's just like what they do.
They've been doing that for a minute.
That's how they hunt really, really, really cool.
Terns have actually been known to steal from them, which is known as aerial piracy.
So pirates have made a comeback here.
Yeah.
But Eagles do that too.
They don't steal.
There's not a ton of documented cases of them stealing from other birds, but turns.
They share a lot of space with turns.
And so they're often in the same areas and they have been known to steal from them.
Interesting Yeah.
Their conservation status is least concern.
Thankfully, the biggest concerns are disruption to breeding site or habitat, since they're so out in the open.
Anything that is like close to the beaches and the shorelines is just like really, really important for us to be like protecting and paying attention to, especially with your dogs, Or oil spills or raccoons.
I mean, anything that can hurt baby turtles can hurt baby black skimmers.
It's basically the story there.
A couple extra things here is that in the 1800s, these birds were killed for feathers and egging, which included commercial egging, and they were eaten in South America, but they have since made a comeback.
So they were definitely like on the verge of extinct extinction, just like a lot of other birds we talk about, but then since have made a comeback.
They are in kind of a watch list because as ocean levels rise, climate changes, all this different stuff.
People are keeping an eye on it because populations do seem to be declining, but so far they're not in the concern era yet.
And since I didn't have any other fun facts, I wanted to mention the priorities for future research, which are the nocturnal studies of feeding behavior, individual and social behavior at breeding sites, population genetics, lifetime reproductive success, and taxonomic descriptions of subspecies for any of you who are in school and looking for a research project that you want to bring out.
And that is the super cool, super weird black skimmer. Love it.
I love them.
I had such a fun time researching this bird.
They're really cute They're really cute.
They're really striking, and I think probably one of, I don't want to say the more unique birds, but I think they're really easy to spot a skimmer because of that beak.
Like it's so you would know if you saw one.
Yeah.
And they've been spotted in Florida.
And I'm like, I kind of want to, I wasn't aware that I could spot one in Florida.
Yeah, it looks like they're definitely a bird you would be able to see anywhere on the golf.
Yes.
Yep.
And then I think on the other side of Florida, too.
Or in South America.
Yeah.
South America anytime in South America.
But yeah, if you're in the continental United States or North America, specifically, you can definitely go see these.
So I am definitely interested in hearing what you think for pop culture.
I have 2 that I will offer, but I don't think are great.
Okay.
What was your, like, thought process?
There's a lot to go with here.
I was trying to go more scissor, but I do feel like there's a couple pictures of them where they look like, who me?
Like, I don't know, their wings look a little like cutesy?
So it was hard for me, I think, because I was trying to go based on either like their name or their key characteristics versus like what I think they actually look like.
So what I came up with was Uma Thurman and Kill Bill because she has a sword.
And she's really precise with it.
I like that.
I thought it was fun.
And then obviously there's Edward Scissorhands, but I'm not feeling married to that.
I don't love it.
So I want to know what you think.
You had an idea before we started and you told me you did, so I'm really excited.
Well, because I was like, okay, if we were to like anthropomorphize, this guy has an underbite or at least like a prominent...
An underbite, I think, is a good.
I mean, whatever.
I'm not going to sign scientifically describe under byte, but it gets the point across.
Right.
So I tried to look up, like, celebrities who famously have, oh, my God.
I don't do I know any?
Well, it came up with Kieran Knightley, which I don't know that I agree with.
She does weird stuff with her mouth, but I don't think that is because of an underbite.
She does have a sharp front profile, though.
She's very, like, sharp face.
I wasn't getting Chiara from the black skin.
Okay.
All right.
I did see Jay Leno and that kind of made me laugh.
Okay.
But then I don't know how it happened, but, oh, I know.
Um, because they are called sea dogs.
And I do think there's like a dogness about them.
Okay.
So I was like, what are celebrities that look like dogs?
Oh, oh, Jennifer Aniston.
She looks just like an Afghan hound.
And John Travolta came up.
And I actually think that John Travolta, Loki, looks like a black skimmer.
I think you have to go with like not current John Travolta, though.
I don't know, because like he did this, like, look for his director's debut at one of the film festivals.
Like, that looks kind of like a black scammer.
There's something about the structure of his face, even when he's young.
He does love a little hat.
I think when he's young, I feel it more than I do when he's older when he's older.
I have a hard time picturing it.
Well, because he also is bald and I think has like hair trans hats.
He's so into the beret.
This man loves a beret.
She really likes it.
I don't think his hair is real anymore.
But the hair he has, the hair he has in Greece definitely is a black skimmer vibe.
I would say, I would say Grease, John Travolta.
Yes.
Now John Travolta?
Not so much.
No.
Although I do love him in this silly little hat.
It is giving a little who me?
Like, who, me?
What are you talking about?
Well, they, like, they kind of look like they, if they took a beret and they pulled it down to their eyes.
And I will raise you, John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, when he has a ponytail, you got to look that up because the black goes down farther.
And he's wearing like a suit and he's wearing a time.
A black and like with a white shirt.
There we go.
John Travolta.
I agree.
I do think Kira Knightley's not a bad female counterpart for this, though.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
Because she's just very sharp faced, and I think that that is kind of the vibe of the whole thing.
I do think, like, Kira has bird characteristics that we might find a better match for, but I think if we're going to do a female, counterpart.
There are just some pictures of the black skimmer where they look a little bit silly goofy.
Yes.
And then there are some where they look striking gorgeous.
And I do think, I think John Travolta is a good one.
I think that's pretty good.
And then there's the famous dance scene, and what is his move?
He's like...
Oh, with the scissors across the eyes.
Oh, it's open together.
Yeah, well...
And to be fair, you already called out Uma and Uma has black bob in that.
That's true.
So maybe it's.. Maybe.. In Pulp Fiction.
Uma.
Yeah, because the males and females are the same.
I don't think I said that, but I feel like if we don't talk about it, then you should just assume that the males and the females are the same.
Wow.
Is that just okay?
Like 2 black skimmers.
The dance scene, Pulp Fiction, 1994.
John Travolta, Uma Thurman.
Don't know their character names in that movie.
No.
That's the only Skinner.
We don't even have a vote on this one.
No, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Because I think Uma in this movie fits the vibe better than Kira.
I agree, and I also think Edward Scissorhands was the obvious choice, but it just doesn't feel right.
It doesn't, because, like, I don't, it just doesn't feel right.
Johnny Depp will figure you out, but it's not.
Yeah, it's not you.
It's not this.
Although we could go pirate, but I don't think there are probably other seabirds that are more pirate.
Well, and they're not being a pirate.
They're getting pirated.
That's true by the turns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a turn does sound more like a pirate anyway.
Yeah.
A Terran.
Return of the turn.
Return of the turn.
I'd watch that Return of the turn.
Nice.
So anyway, stop tomb scrolling and maybe find your way on a boat.
Yeah.
Watch it, watch your skimmer skim.
And maybe watch Pulp Fiction.
If you haven't seen it, definitely watch Pulp Fiction.
Definitely.
Or maybe you hate, um, Quentin Tarantino.
Thank you.
I couldn't remember.
I totally spaced on his name.
Maybe you hate him and you don't want to watch that. And that's okay too.
You don't have to.
You can watch Grease.
Yeah, and that could be fun.
And that's not a Quentin Tarantino film.
No, not even close, but it's a classic.
It is a classic.
And with that, stay cool, bird boy.