The American Birding Podcast

By American Birding Association

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What's The American Birding Podcast about?

The American Birding Podcast brings together staff and friends of the American Birding Association as we talk about birds, birding, travel and conservation in North America and beyond. Join host Nate Swick every Thursday for news and happenings, recent rarities, guests from around the birding world, and features of interest to every birder.

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07-39: This Month in Birdin...

09.28.2023

It’s the end of the month which means its time for This Month in Birding, and we’ve got a panel of ABA friends and staff here to talk about the beautiful fall season, every birder’s favorite time of year. In ...

The American Birding Podcast episodes:

09.28.2023 07-39: This Month in Birding - September 2023 It’s the end of the month which means its time for This Month in Birding, and we’ve got a panel of ABA friends and staff here to talk about the beautiful fall season, every birder’s favorite time of year. In ...
09.21.2023 07-38: Birding for a Better World with Sydney Golden Anderson & Meghadeepa Maity The Feminist Bird Club has been one of the more interesting and inspiring movements in the birding world over the last few years. They champion inclusivity, social justice, and an approach that is comfortable for novices and other folks who ...
09.14.2023 07-37: Random Birds, Vol. 8, with Ted Floyd It's a random time for Random Birds, the American Birding Podcast segment with Birding editor Ted Floyd that involves host Nate Swick, a big bird list, and a random number generator. We never know exactly what we're going to get, ...
09.07.2023 07-36: Lifer Momos and Monals with Anuj Ghimire Moving to Nepal to North Dakota offers quite the ornithological whiplash, but birder and graduate student Anuj Ghimire takes it all in good stride. He joins guest host and Birding magazine editor Frank Izaguirre to talk Himalayan pheasants, North Dakota ...
08.31.2023 07-35: This Month in Birding - August 2023 It's This Month in Birding for August 2023, our monthly round table discussion featuring voices from around the birding world. This month, we welcome back our friends Jody Allair of Birds Canada, Jordan Rutter of the American Bird Conservancy, and ...
08.24.2023 07-34: Secrets of Summer Birding How would you describe summer birding? Hot? Humid? Buggy? Unbearable? For many birders it has always been the least exciting and most taxing season for getting in the field, but there’s a lot to be excited about for those who ...
08.17.2023 07-33: Birding Book Club - Books for Birders that Aren't About Birds Birders love books, and with so many options out there it’s nice to have some friends around to make suggestions, talk about what we like a lot, maybe what we don’t like quite as much, and celebrate the literary side ...
08.10.2023 07-32: Birding Rwanda with Winnie Kyamujara Nestled in the Central Africa’s Great Rift Valley, Rwanda, the Land of a Thousand Hills, is one of the most biodiverse nations on the continent, all the more impressive given its small size. With nearly 700 species of birds and ...
08.03.2023 07-31: Remembering Tom Johnson The birding community is collectively mourning the recent loss of Cape May birder Tom Johnson. Tom was a world-renowned birder and a prodigious contributor to the ABA's media, with insightful articles, phenomenal photography, and occasional appearances on the American Birding ...
07.27.2023 07-30: This Month in Birding - July 2023 Welcome to the end of the July, the turn of the year as we heard into the second half of 2023. It’s also time, once again, for This Month in Birding, our monthly panel discussion about bird news and birds ...
07.20.2023 07-29: Indigenous Reconnection through Birds with Alyssa Bardy Humans have loved birds for as long as there have been humans. And while many of us in the birding world stay a birder for similar reasons, every birder, bird-watcher or bird enthusiasts has their own path to this world, ...
07.13.2023 07-28: El Niño and Birds with Alvaro Jaramillo The connections between weather and birds seem both obvious and arcane to many birders. This is especially true in this time of global warming, when weather seems particularly wonky. This summer the globe is experiencing El Niño, a warm phase ...
07.06.2023 07-27: Hear Birds Again with Lang Elliott It is an inevitability that as a birder ages, they lose the ability to hear some birds, particularly those with high pitched songs and calls. It is a struggle that nature recordist Lang Elliot has dealt with for decades, but ...
06.29.2023 07-26: This Month in Birding - June 2023 It’s the end of June and that means it’s time for This Month in Birding, where we round up a panel of interesting and thoughtful birding friends to round up the latest birding news from around the ABA Area and ...
06.22.2023 07-25: Random Birds, Vol. 7, with Ted Floyd Birding magazine editor and all-around bird-knower Ted Floyd is back for another bout of Random Birds. He joins host Nate Swick, a big bird list, and a random number generator to create podcast magic. This session includes a smorgasbord of ...
06.15.2023 07-24: What an Owl Knows with Jennifer Ackerman Birders and bird enthusiasts are so fortunate that science writer Jennifer Ackerman so frequently turns her mind to birds. This year, she follows the critically acclaimed The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way with the new What an Owl ...
06.08.2023 07-23: 2023 Splits and Lumps with Nick Block It’s split and lump season again, and that means that we turn to our friend Nick Block, professor of Biology at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. He's the person we talk to when it comes to predicting the decisions of ...
06.01.2023 07-22: For the Love of Birds On May 19, 2023, the ABA and the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University hosted the For the Love of Birds panel as part of the Academy’s Cheryl Beth Silverman lecture series. If you weren’t able to join us ...
05.25.2023 07-21: This Month in Birding - May 2023 It’s the last Thursday of the month of May and that means it is time to bring on a panel of birding friends to talk about bird news and goings on on the American Birding Podcast. And it’s another excellent ...
05.18.2023 07-20: Halcyon Kingfisher Journeys with Marina Richie Despite being such a charismatic bird, there are very few books about our 2023 Bird of the Year Belted Kingfisher, but this week's guest Marina Richie has written one. Her 2022 title, Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher ...
05.11.2023 07-19: The Big Year that Flew By with Arjan Dwarshuis In 2016, Arjan Dwarshuis undertook a massive birding year that took him from his home in the Netherlands to 6 continents, 41 countries, and just over 6,800 species of birds. His global big year was a massive feat, breaking the ...
05.04.2023 07-18: The New Pyle Guide is Here with Peter Pyle! 2023 ABA Lifetime Achievement Awardee Peter Pyle has probably been one of the most influential American ornithologists of the last few decades. His Identification Guide to North American Birds, informally known as “the Pyle Guides”, are widely known as the ...
04.27.2023 07-17: This Month in Birding - April 2023 It is the most exciting time of year for birders in the ABA Area so it seems only fitting to celebrate it with an exciting group of panelists for April's This Month in Birding. Host Nate Swick is joined by ...
04.20.2023 07-16: Creating a Kingfisher Mascot with Spencer Wilken The sporting world is full of bird mascots. While there are countless eagles, hawks, and cardinals there are no, so far as we know, Belted Kingfishers. But that might change thanks to the efforts of students at the University of ...
04.13.2023 07-15: Antpittas and Adventure in Colombia There’s no place on Earth like Colombia. One of the world’s only “megadiverse” nations, Colombia boasts friendly people, stunning landscapes, and absolutely mind-blowing birds. In this encore episode, host Nate Swick and Colombian birders Diego Calderón (The Birders Show) and ...
04.06.2023 07-14: How to Identify Flycatchers with Cin-Ty Lee & Andrew Birch Birders have long considered the tyrant flycatchers, in particular the Empidonax species and Pewees to be one of the most difficult identification concerns in North America. Author Cin-Ty Lee and illustrator Andrew Birch seek to calm the fears of frustrated ...
03.30.2023 07-13: This Month in Birding - March 2023 Spring is in the air in March, at least theoretically across much of the ABA Area. And the last Thursday of the montg means This Month in Birding, our monthy panel discussion the covers all the important and not-so-important bits ...
03.23.2023 07-12: The Rise of Birding Culture in Colombia with Jose Martinez Birding is booming in Colombia helped, in part, by bird fairs and festivals held throughout the country for Colombian birders in addition to the increased interest shown by visiting birders from around the world. Last month, host Nate Swick got ...
03.16.2023 07-11: Flight Paths, and the Wonder of Migration, with Rebecca Heisman We are in a golden age of bird migration science, and birders can only wonder at the ways in which we learn about bird migration in the 21st Century. Rebecca Heisman's new book, "Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky ...
03.09.2023 07-10: Birding, Annotated, Yet Again with Ted Floyd Birding editor Ted Floyd returns to join host Nate Swick for "Birding, Annotated". In the doldrums of early March, both Ted and Nate each took a birding outing to a local spot and return chat about it. Hear their thoughts ...
03.02.2023 07-09: Wildest Vagrants of 2022 with Amy Davis & Tim Healy 2022 was an exceptional year for rare bird sightings in the ABA Area, with no fewer than three first ABA records and an absolute avian smorgasbord of interesting and unexpected records from all corners of the US and Canada. As ...
02.23.2023 07-08: This Month in Birding - February 2023 February might be the shortest month, but that doesn’t mean it gets the short shrift when it comes to This Month in Birding. We’ve got a great panel this month that absolutely adores as is appropriate for the season. Jody ...
02.16.2023 07-07: The Avian Rainbow with Whitney Tsai Nakashima You don’t have to be a birder for a long time to appreciate that birds are capable of producing an astonishing array of colors and patterns, even those beyond what our weak human eyes can discern. Hidden in that avian ...
02.09.2023 07-06: Mindful Birding Ethics with Holly Merker Young birders who have participated in the ABA’s Camp Avocet or Maine’s well known Hog Island Audubon Camp, are no doubt familiar with Holly Merker. But that only scratches the surface of her contributions to the birding world. A former ...
02.02.2023 07-05: A Whole World of Seabirds with Peter Harrison When it was first released in 1983, Peter Harrison’s Seabirds: An Identification Guide was immediately hailed as a classic of the birding literature, an accolade it not relinquished in 40 years. And so it was with much excitement that Peter ...
01.26.2023 07-04: This Month in Birding - January 2023 We have reached the end of the first month of 2023 and it is once again time for This Month in Birding on The American Birding Podcast. For this panel we welcome a fascinating group of birders to geek out ...
01.19.2023 07-03: Random Birds, Vol 6, with Ted Floyd Birding magazine editor and all-around bird-knower Ted Floyd is back for another bout of Random Birds. He joins host Nate Swick, a big bird list, and a random number generator to create podcast magic. This session includes a number of ...
01.12.2023 07-02: Winter Birding and More with Erik Bruhnke Much of North America is gripped in the depths of winter. It’s cold. It’s snowy. It’s frequently unpleasant. But for those that push through, the birding can be oh so rewarding. This is especially true in places where the winter ...
01.05.2023 07-01: 2023 Bird of the Year Artist Liz Clayton Fuller Happy New Year List! It's finally time to celebrate our 2023 Bird of the Year, the Belted Kingfisher! And to help jumpstart a year of kingfisher content, we're excited to welcome this year's artist, Liz Clayton Fuller. Host Nate Swick ...
12.22.2022 06-51: This Month in Birding - December 2022 Thanks to all our listeners and supporters for another exceptional year. To wrap up 2022, we welcome back some insightful and entertaining birder friends to the last This Month in Birding for the year. We're joined by Popular Science's Purbita ...
12.15.2022 06-50: Tales from the Southern Ocean with Katinka Domen & Ted Floyd ABA staffers Katinka Domen and Ted Floyd recently accompanied an ABA excursion to the land of penguins and albatrosses. They join host Nate Swick to talk about what it's like to visit the southernmost continent on Earth, and what ecotourism ...
12.08.2022 06-49: Birding Book Club - Best of 2022 It is time once more for the most anticipated Birding Book Club of the year, our annual Best Bird Books of the Year episode for 2022. With the holiday gift-giving season is right around the corner there's no better time ...
12.01.2022 06-48: Birding While Black with J. Drew Lanham One of the issues that the birding community has been reckoning with for the last several years is how we can encourage a broader coalition of nature enthusiasts to join us and to share the joy of birding. It’s an ...
11.24.2022 06-47: This Month in Birding - November 2022 Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating! How about a fun bird discussion to go along with our one and only bird-related holiday? Nate Swick is joined by Bird Sh*t's Mo Stych, aeroecologist Mikko Jimenez, and the ABA's own Greg Neise to ...
11.17.2022 06-46: Burrowing Owls of San Diego with Susanne Marczak & Colleen Wisinski The ABA is gearing up to announce its 2023 Bird of the Year but we’re not ready to say good-bye to the year of the Burrowing Owl just yet. With that in mind, we welcome Colleen Wisinski and Susanne Marczak ...
11.10.2022 06-45: Birds, Wildfires, and Smoke with Olivia Sanderfoot A warmer and drier world means, unfortunately, a world in which wildfire becomes a greater risk. We know, all too well, the risk these fires pose to wild places, but there is surprisingly little we know about the risk to ...
11.03.2022 06-44: A New Book about Bird Names with Susan Myers If the English language is an amalgamation of words from thousands of other languages and cultures, then English common bird names are that writ small. They're a hodgepodge of from every possible source and an endless supply of amazing bird ...
10.27.2022 06-43: This Month in Birding - October 2022 It's the end of October and time for our monthly This Month in Birding panel. This week features a fun crew with MD/DC Bird Atlas coordinator Gabriel Foley, Birding magazine editor Frank Izaguirre, and Sarah Swanson, author of the new ...
10.20.2022 06-42: Trouble for Red Knots at Delaware Bay with Tim Preso Every spring, thousands of Red Knots congregate on the Delaware Bay to take advantage of the horseshoe crab spawn. Fueled by crab eggs they finish a migration that spans from the southern tip of South America to the northern reaches ...
10.13.2022 06-41: A Guide to Baby Birds with Linda Tuttle-Adams Baby birds are arguably one of the great identification frontiers of birding. Try to identify a gangly, fluffy mess of a bird and you immediately recognize the need for a real resource to help you out. Artist and bird rehabilitator ...

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