The American Birding Podcast

It's the end of the month, and that means it's time for another This Month in Birding episode, featuring a panel of birders gathering to talk aout recent bird news and science. This month we welcome Jason Hall, Tim Healy, and Sarah Swanson to talk grassland birds, ravens and wolves, and the "unseen 95%" of birding. 

Links to articles discussed in this episode:

The joys of reporting on 3 teenagers chasing glory in the World Se...

Alabama Audubon has invited your own podcast host, Nate Swick, to be the keynote speaker at the 2026 Black Belt Birding Festival. The festival highlights the birds, the ecology, and the civil rights heritage of the region. To get excited for this summer's event, we welcome Andrew Lydeard, Alabama Audubon's Program Coordinator, and Chris Joe, third generation farmer whose family's 200 acre cattle farm in Newbern, Alabama, is an impo...

The easternmost province in mainland Canada, Labrador doesn't get the attention afford to its island provincial partner Newfoundland. Its position on the continent, however, affords its birders the opportunity for some unique avian opportunities from unlikely rarities to birding by snowmobile. Labrador birder Vernon Buckle joins guest host Frank Izaguirre for a conversation about birds and birding in one of the continent's most uni...

There are bird species that are extant and those that are extinct, but between those two seemingly immutable categories, lies one hundred odd species of birds that are considered "Lost". This means that they hasn't been documented in many years but have not yet been determined to be extinct by authorities for any number of reasons. It is the search for those birds that is the work of John Mittermeier, Director of the Search for Los...

It's the end of May, the season for bald cardinals, baby birds, and buggy birding. But most importantly, it's the last Thursday of the month and that means it's time for This Month in Birding, our monthly panel discussion of bird news and science and we have rounded up another great group of birding friends to have that discussion. Host Nate Swick is joined by Mikko Jimenez, Jordan Rutter, and Brodie Cass Talbott, to talk vagrant b...

The ABA hosted a membership drive livestream earlier this week, and part of the four hours of birdy entertainment was a LIVE version of the American Birding Podcast favorite segment, Take it or Leave it. Panelists Nick Lund and Martha Harbison joined host Nate Swick to hash out some very hot birding takes on topics like four-letter codes, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and ugly birds. You can find the livestream on the ABA's YouTub...

Birds and humanity have interacted for as long as there has been humanity, and various bird species have proven to be constants, influencing mythologies, religions, art, economics, and even warfare. Natural history, as it turns out, is human history, and that is the idea behind the book 10 Birds that Changed the World. Stephen Moss is the author, he is one of Britain's most influential nature writers and broadcasters. You can find ...

The concept of the "spark bird", the transformative moment with a particular species that turns you from a normal person into a real-deal birder, is one that many birders are familiar with. These personal testimonies frequently tell you as much about the birder as they do about the spark bird itself. The human element of a natural experience is what excites Dr Jenn Lodi-Smith, a professor of psychology at Canisius University and sc...

It's the end of April and that means it's time again for another This Month in Birding panel with a great group of birding friends joining host Nate Swick to talk about recent birding news and science. Jody Allair, Gabriel Foley, and Jennie Duberstein discuss birding and your brain, guano and civilization, and our favorite birding April Fools. 

Links to items discussed in this podcast:

Backyard...

Pishing, mob tapes, and playback are all tools that birders frequently use to supplement their birding experience, be it to show other birders a great bird or to bring birds close for photographs. They have typically been seen in the community as benign but the ease of their use certainly raises questions about how they affect the birds we enjoy. Marty Freeland is a Stanford student who has not only been thinking about these questi...

Scott Weidensaul is the author of nearly 30 books about birds, birding, and natural history. His latest is The Return of the Oystercatcher: Saving Birds to Save the Planet, a globe-trotting look at look at bird conservation successes from re-wilding efforts in England to vultures in Romania, to the puffins and plovers of North America. It is a soothing balm in this time of great anxiety about bird populations and a critical look at...

The wide open spaces of the North American west are frequently spotted with signs of human industrial energy production. Oil and gas wells, massive wind turbines, and the like are impossible to miss and impact, occasionally significantly, the birds that live in these vast prairie ecosystems. Dr Janet Ng studies the effects of this industrial incursion into these wild places in the southern Canadian plains, and works with various pa...

Host Nate Swick leans once again on Birding magazine editor Ted Floyd for another Random Birds discussion. The Random Number Generator has a certain late winter/early spring bias with warblers and gulls and warblers and gulls on the agenda. 

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