The American Birding Podcast
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.
Episodes
It's hard to overstate in influence of Cornell's Merlin on the growth of birding over the last few years. What began as a simple tool for helping people to identify bird photos has become so much more, reaching millions of nature enthusiasts and even some celebrities. Miyoko Chu. Senior Director of Science Communitcations at the Lab, and Alli Smith, Project Coordinator for Merlin, join us to talk about what it's like to be in...
Birding magazine editor and random birder Ted Floyd is back for another trip around the bird list. He and host Nate Swick take their list of birds and their random number generator and end up talking longspurs, vireos, and drama plovers in this edition of Random Birds.
Also, check out the ABA Store for all sorts of fun Bird of the Year and logo wear stuff!
It's not hard to get birders talking about some of the big questions in our hobby. And this time we go back in the archives of Birding magazine to collect some historic hot takes for another edition of Take It or Leave It, the discussion panel for the most opinionated birders. This time we welcome Tim Healy and Martha Harbison to talk about Trumpeter Swan introductions, the proper plural of binoculars, and whether the internet was ...
Have you ever had to describe birding to a friend or family member who just doesn't get it? What analogies do you use? Is birding like a religion? A sport? An obsession? In this encore episode from 2018, Guest host Greg Neise brings Birding editor Ted Floyd and young birder liaison Jennie Duberstein to bear on the issue in a rollicking discussion in an attempt to figure it out.
Also, it looks like Nate is going to be at the AB...
The last Thursday of September means that it's time for another This Month in Birding, featuring friends from around the birding world gathering to talk about interesting bird news and science from the last month or so. This time around we welcome Frank Izaguirre, Andres Jimenez, and Sarah Swanson to talk about Barred Owls, baby cowbirds, and our favorite bird conservation success stories.
Links to items discussed in this episode:
A Big Year is maybe the ultimate expression of birding obsession, with all the drama inherent to the effort. Brothers Quentin and Owen Reiser's attempt at a Big Year maybe most of all. It's the subject of their documentary, Listers, an attempt to throw themselves into the birding world through perhaps the most extreme expression of the hobby. It's profane, it's funny, it's honest, and it covers all aspects of the birding world, war...
For more than 40 year the National Geographic Field Guide has been an essential text in the library of US and Canadian birders. The venerable series is in its 8th edition now, published as East and West earlier this year and as as guide from coast to coast just recently. Ted Floyd, a regular on this podcast, is the author, but a field guide is only as good as its illustrations. Former Bird of the Year artist Andrew Gutte...
Gray-headed Chickadee is certainly one of the most enigmatic species of breeding birds in the ABA Area. Though it is found broadly across northern Eurasian it was, until very recently, also known from an isolated breeding population in northern Alaska and far northwestern Canada. Those bird, long a bucket list objective for ABA Area birders, might be gone, and the reasons for that are unclear. Alaska birder and conservationist Brad...
It's This Month in Birding for August 2025 and, as we do at the end of every month, we've got a great panel of birders to discuss the month's birding news and scientific publications. Jason Hall, Mikko Jimenez, and Jordan Rutter join host Nate Swick to talk about grackle behavior, museums, and our very favorite penguins.
Links to articles discussed in this episode:
The Rodrigues parakeet's last day: What one extinct bird tel...
Every once in a while, Birding editor Ted Floyd drops in for for another episode of Random Birds. The Birding Gods smile on Ted and Nate's random number generator for an eclectic bunch of birds from warblers to gulls, and one incredibly apropos selection.
Bird tourism is booming, and in many parts of the world we've seen countries invest in conservation and tourism infrastructure to take advantage of it. Certainly birders are drawn by unique species, but perhaps our choices for bird-watching destinations have as much to do with other factors as they do with the presence of really great birds. It's the subject of a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Peopl...
Writer Amy Tan is perhaps best known for her many novels including The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter's Daughter, exploring themes of identity, family, and the immigrant experience. Her newest book, however, explores something rather different. The Backyard Bird Chronicles is a collection of nature writing and sketching focuses on the many avian visitors to Amy's California backyard over a period of several years. The book was pu...
The end of the month means This Month in Birding, and for July 2025 we've got a great panel of fun birders to discuss the month's birding news and scientific publications. Birders know Rebecca Heisman, Nick Lund, and Dexter Patterson for their great work in the birding world, and they join host Nate Swick to talk about hummingbird bills, drinking birds, and the best bird tribute to Ozzy Osbourne.
Links to articles discussed i...
The ABA's 2025 Bird of the Year Common Loon is beloved across the United States and Canada, and though we at the ABA will only celebrate it for a short time, there are other organizations that have made protection and awareness of Common Loons their reason for being. The National Loon Center in Crosslake, Minnesota, is one such organization. They aim to restore and protect loon habitat, enhance responsible recreation, and promote r...
The search for the perfect mnemonic is the bane of any field guide author, from Roger Tory Peterson to your podcast host. It's the part of writing about birds and birding that requires the most creativity, ans Nova Scotia author and artist Becca Rowland, The Girl in White Glasses, has come up with an entire book devoted to the weird and wonderful sounds birds make, and the weirdest and cleverest ways to describe those sounds. It's ...
The state of Hawaii's birds is a topic that is frequently front of mind to those of us who care about bird conservation, and on every island there are bird researchers and conservationists on the ground putting any number of conservation efforts into practice. Dr Hannah Mounce is the program manager of the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, and she joins us to talk about some of the most pressing efforts on the island.
Also, ...
The story of the Florida Scrub-Jay is one that encompasses many modern conservation angles and concerns. Local government, bedrock federal legislation, development, climate change, eBird, and at the center of it, a remarkable and friendly endemic bird species. Recent challenges to conservation efforts in Florida have prompted the public interest group Earthjustice to intervene to help defend protections for the Florida Scrub Jay a...
It's our 350th episode! And to celebrate, we've brought you a super-sized This Month in Birding, and not only because the panel of Jody Allair, Jennie Duberstein, and Martha Harbison had so much to say about truck-riding gulls, prehistoric birds, and the state of same-sex bird science. We hope you enjoy this summer-solstice sized episode.
Links to articles mentioned in the episode:
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 rainbow are clues to bird taxonomy and evolution, which is the work of our guest Whitney Tsai Nakashima, a researcher at Occidental College's Moore Lab of Zoology.
Also, great news for one of south Texas's best b...
Break out your checklists and get ready for another summer of splits and lumps from the AOS North American Classification Committee. It's time for our annual look at the proposed changes to the bird lists, the longest running segment on this podcast. And for every single one of those episodes, we've turned to biologist and birder Dr Nick Block of Stonehill College in Massachusetts. It's an interesting set of proposals this year, wi...
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