The American Birding Podcast

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 dealer or visit ZEISS.com/nature to find a dealer near you. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it!

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 HD binoculars. Visit your local optics dealer or visit ZEISS.com/nature to find a dealer near you. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it!

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 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.

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 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.

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 find a dealer near you.  

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 binoculars. Visit your local optics dealer or visit ZEISS.com/nature to find a dealer near you.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 visit ZEISS.com/nature to find a dealer near you.