The Bearded Reedling is a wetland songbird that’s enjoying a boom in both population and popularity. Barely larger than a chickadee, the male reedlings are often photographed with their feathers puffed out to near spherical proportions, earning them the nickname of “the roundest bird in the world”. Reedlings breed across much of Europe and central Asia. But in the United Kingdom — where they’re called Bearded Tits — the little birds were nearly wiped out in the 1940s. Thanks to decades of intensive reedbed restoration — and the bird’s capacity to rear several broods in a season — there are now more than 600 breeding pairs of Bearded Readlings in the UK today.

More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.

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