American Birding Podcast

Birding editor Ted Floyd joins us for another random number inspired trip down birding memory lane with Random Birds. This time around Ted and host Nate Swick discuss the least of these, flycatchers and sandpiper, along with bitterns, warblers, and whatever else pops up. Thanks to our friends at FeatherSnap for sponsoring this episode. Feathersnap is a smart bird feeder with AI bird identification capabilities that send photos of the birds visiting your yard. Capture every moment with FeatherSnap. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders!

It's the end of the month and time for This Month in Birding, our monthly panel with birding friends discussing the month's birding and ornithology news. For August 2024, we have a panel of Jody Allair, Tim Healy, and Sarah Swanson talking vultures, bustards, and the winners of the birding Olympic games. Links to articles discussed in this episode: How do birds communicate? Network science models are opening up new possibilities for experts The COVID19 confinement revealed negative anthropogenic effects of unsustainable tourism on endangered birds Loss of India’s vultures may have led to deaths of half a million people Who Wins gold in the Bird Olympics? Thanks to our friends at FeatherSnap for sponsoring this episode. Feathersnap is a smart bird feeder with AI bird identification capabilities that send photos of the birds visiting your yard. Capture every moment with FeatherSnap. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review i

The flamingo phenomenon last summer was one of the more exciting birding events in recent memory, but American Flamingo has long been an intriguing species in the ABA Area. Amy Davis and José Ramirez-Garafalo are the authors of an article in the most recent issue of the ABA's North American Birds that looks at the past, present, and future of these incredible pink birds in the ABA Area.  Also, some new insights into Dodos from old sources.  Thanks to our friends at FeatherSnap for sponsoring this episode. Feathersnap is a smart bird feeder with AI bird identification capabilities that send photos of the birds visiting your yard. Capture every moment with FeatherSnap. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders!

Break out the oven mitts because it's time to welcome a panel of birders to tackle the hottest birding takes we can find in Take It or Leave It. This time around we welcome ABA colleagues Michael Retter, editor of Birding special editions and North American Birds, and Jennie Duberstein, wildlife biologist and ABA Young Birder liaison to offer opinions on the scope of bird banding, eBird's tightrope between bird science and listing repository, and whether or not having multiple bird taxonomies is a good thing. Also, a major bird mortality event leads to real changes on Chicago's lakefront.  Thanks to our friends at FeatherSnap for sponsoring this episode. Feathersnap is a smart bird feeder with AI bird identification capabilities that send photos of the birds visiting your yard. Capture every moment with FeatherSnap. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the

Birders and books are inseparable. And so from time to time we like to welcome some auspicious bird book enthusiasts for we call the Birding Book Club. This time around a panel consisting of Birding magazine editor Frank Izaguirre and 10,000 Birds book reviewer Donna Schulman tackle the most bird rich continent, which ironically seems to the most bird book depauperate continent, at least until realtively recently. We cover guides to South America and all the tagential discussions that they inspire.  You can find a list of all the books we discussed at the American Birding Podcast website.  Thanks to our friends at FeatherSnap for sponsoring this episode. Feathersnap is a smart bird feeder with AI bird identification capabilities that send photos of the birds visiting your yard. Capture every moment with FeatherSnap. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join th

Dr. Kaeli Swift knows crows. And she’s watched them do some pretty extraordinary things. In fact all corvids-the family that includes crows, jays, magpies, and others-have a well deserved reputation for intelligence and fascinating social behaviors. Dr. Swift’s research has provided insights into how crows interact with us, with their dead, and with each other. She joined host Nate Swick from Denali National Park where she is working with Canada Jays to talk about corvid culture and cognition. Also, some spectacular, if slightly wrong, bird art in Corpus Christi, Texas.  Thanks to our friends the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival for sponsoring this episode. Register today! Chicago's Urban Birding Festival is a great way to enjoy the unique birding in unique landscapes Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many thin

It's This Month in Birding for July 2024 with Stephanie Beilke, Martha Harbison, and Mikko Jimenez the aeroecologist! The panel discusses recent bird news including AOS splits and lumps, bird intelligence, and bird regalia, but that's hardly all. Join us for another great conversation about birds, science, and, for some reason, the Insane Clown Posse.  Links to articles discussed in this episode: AOS Checklist Redux 2024 Birds barcode food to map stashes These crows have counting skills previously only seen in people Do Magnetic murmurs guide birds? A directional statistical investigation for influence of Earth’s Magnetic field on bird navigation  'As I Stood There, a Bird Watcher in Full Regalia Paused Next to Me’ Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends a

The incredibly diverse and unbelievably photogenic landscape of British Columbia is on display in photographer and birder Melissa Hafting's new book, Dare to Bird, and with it, the birds that make this part of the continent so special and inspire Hafting’s effort to spread the joy of birding and photography around the province, across Canada, and beyond. She joins host Nate Swick to talk about it, along with rare bird recordkeeping, young birders, and more.  Also, new hope for Hawaiian birds in the form of mosquito air drops.  Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episode. For a limited time you can get $200 of all ZEISS Conquest HD binoculars. Visit your local optics dealer or visit ZEISS.com/nature to find a dealer near you. S

Birding with Benefits, a new book by author Sarah T Dubb, is a unique new addition to the birding canon. While we shouldn’t be too surprised that all the new attention paid to birding has seen it turn up in surprising places, but the pages of a romance novel certainly seemed like a stretch. To help discuss birding's introduction into the romance genre, host Nate Swick turns to his own birding adjacent relationship and beach read enthusiast to talk about this unlikely intersection.  Also, SpaceX turns out to be a bad neighbor to birds in South Texas, according to The New York Times.  Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episode. For a limited time you can get $200 of all ZEISS Conquest HD binoculars. Visit your local optics de

Birders around North America look forward to midsummer every year for the publication of the AOS North American Classification Committee’s Taxonomic Supplement, the splits and lumps that affect our life lists. And for this conversation we turn, as we have since the very beginning of this podcast, to our own taxonomy guru Dr Nick Block of Stonehill College to talk shearwater splits, gull confusion, redpoll DNA, and everything else in the 2024 list of proposals.  Don’t forget to donate to the ABA’s Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs. And check out our upcoming community weekends! Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episode. For a limited time you can get $200 of all ZEISS Conquest

The summer solstice marks another turn of the seasons to nesting and post-breeding dispersal, and, in some cases southward migration once again. And the end of the month means turn to This Month in Birding, our roundtable discussion with some birding friends. We welcome back Nick Lund, Jordan Rutter, and Brodie Cass Talbott for a wide-ranging discussion that includes polyamorous shorebirds, Giga-geese, and birder "would you rathers".  Links to articles discussed in this episode: Tiny New Zealand bird delivers a lesson in birdsong evolution Polyandrous birds evolve faster than monogamous ones, new study finds New fossils show what Australia's giant prehistoric 'thunder birds' looked like Don’t forget to donate to the ABA’s Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs. And check out our upcoming community weekends! Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate

When birders talk about the importance of a bird-friendly yard, they often mean insects even if they don't mention them explicitely. And so people that want to attract birds need to get comfortable with bugs. Colorado birder David Leatherman is a fan of bug-bird interactions and in his piece The Importance of Native Plants and Insects Amid the Reality of Modern Bird Habitats, in the April 2024 issue of Birding magazine, he encourages birders to familiarize themselves with living bird food. He joins host Nate Swick to discuss it.  Also, it's 2024 Young Birder of the Year Season! Meet our new awardees and learn more about this exceptional program.  Don’t forget to donate to the ABA’s Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do

What better way to spend a random Thursday in June than with a random number generator and a random list of birds? As he does from time to time, the ABA's Birding magazine editor Ted Floyd joins host Nate Swick for another round of Random Birds. This time the list has a strongly cosmopolitan bent, and Nate and Ted discuss birds that can be enjoyed, for the most part, not just around the continent, but in some cases around the world.  Don’t forget to donate to the ABA’s Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episode. For a limited time you can get $200 of all ZEISS Conquest HD binoculars. Visit your local optics dealer or visit ZEISS.com/nature to f

Last week saw the fourth year of Black Birders Week, which continues to be a wonderful opportunity to celebrate diversity in the birding and nature communities. To help mark the occassion, we hand over the podcast to the host of Your Bird Story, Georgia Silvera Seamans, who brings our 2024 ABA Bird of the Year artist Natasza Fontaine, a working biologist in addition to being a science illustrator, to talk about her experiences with birds, botany, and whatever other natural "B's" she loves to encounter.  Don’t forget to donate to the ABA’s Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episode. For a limited time you can get $200 of all ZEISS Conquest HD b

Spring turns to summer in much of the ABA Area this week, and we celebrate spring 2024 with a birding podcast crossover event for this month's This Month in Birding. We welcome Mollee Brown, one of the hosts of the Life List podcast and Jason Hall and Dexter Patterson, hosts of the brand new, and very fun, Bird Joy podcast to talk about the mathematics of bird flocks, how birding makes you happy, and our favorite moments of spring 2024, among other things.  Links to articles discussed in this episode: The federal government plans to kill half a million West Coast owls How do birds flock? Researchers do the math to reveal previously unknown aerodynamic phenomenon Why birdwatchers are happier than the rest of us Bald eagles are back, but great blue herons paid the price Don’t forget to donate to the ABA’s Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a re

Newfoundland lies on the eastern extremes of the North American continent, and every spring it hosts an always fascinating and ocasionally extraordinary array of European vagrant birds. The phenomenon that brings European Golden-Plovers and Whooper Swans and Garganeys to North America is fairly well known now, and Newfoundland birders increasingly welcome bird enthusiasts from all over the continent to enjoy it. Guest host Jody Allair of Birds Canada hosts Newfoundlander Jared Clarke from Bird the Rock Tours to talk about why it happens and what it means to be on the leading edge of continental vagrancy.  Don’t forget to donate to the ABA’s Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs.  Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our frie

A couple weeks ago the ABA staff convened in Chicago, Illinois, for our first in-person staff retreat in more than a decade. We discussed a lot of organizational issues and, of course, we went birding at two of Chicago’s most famous lakeshore birding hotspots, Montrose Point and Jarvis Bird Sanctuary. Usually host Nate Swick and Birding magazine editor Ted Floyd discuss separate checklists, but this time they get to discuss a checklist that they both contributed to, along with a dozen or so ABA colleagues. Also, we get some movement on the AOS English Bird Name Project.  Don't forget to donate to the ABA's Nesting Season Appeal, which raises money for our excellent young birder programs.  Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this e

The ambitions, egos, and adventure surrounding 18th and 19th century American ornithology affect birding and bird study to this day. We welcome author, artist, and naturalist Kenn Kaufman, who has tackled this fascinating period in a new book The Birds that Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness, looking at John James Audubon, Alexander Wilson, and their peers through the lens of the common and widespread birds they did not find and describe, rather than the many many that they did.  Are we in a golden age of bird-watching? Maybe, but maybe not.  Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episode. For a limited time you can get $200 of all ZEISS Conquest HD binoculars. Visit your local optics dealer or visi

Friend of the Podcast and Birds Canada stalwart Jody Allair steps into the hosts chair for a discussion on nature study beyond birding with the ABA's Frank Izaguirre. The two talk about their own favorite non-bird nature experiences, the value of looking at everything else, and follow up with a discussion on Canadian nature writers.  Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episode. For a limited time you can get $200 of all ZEISS Conquest HD binoculars. Visit your local optics dealer or visit ZEISS.com/nature to find a dealer near you.

It's the April edition of This Month in Birding, with a panel as bold and timeless as the new eBird font. We welcome Frank Izaguirre, Ryan Mandelbaum, and Jordan Rutter to talk Birds Aren't Real, seabird spies, dream birds, and much more! Links to articles discussed in this episode: A Fake Conspiracy Theorist’s Second Act Wild bird gestures “after you” - Japanese tit uses wing movements for gestural communication Use of bird-borne radar to examine shearwater interactions with legal and illegal fisheries Tropical field stations yield high conservation return on investment Do Birds Dream? What new research on the avian brain and REM sleep in birds might reveal about our own dream lives. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it! And don’t forget to join the ABA to support this podcast and the many things we do for birds and birders! Thanks to our friends at Zeiss for sponsoring this episo