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.
If there’s one thing that 2020 taught birders, its how to appreciate your immediate surroundings. The cancellation of festivals, international trips, and even many local bird walks and meetings encouraged us to be more present and local. It’s something that Vermont naturalist Bridget Butler has been pushing for a long time as part of her “Slow Birding” initiative.
This Month in Birding is The American Birding Podcast’s monthly round table discussion on all things birds and birding. This month features Jennie Duberstein, Tim Healy, and Ryan Mandelbaum covering bird name changes, universal alarm calls, what makes a bird attractive to humans, and more...
Host Nate Swick is on the road, but that doesn't mean you won't get new content! Birding editor read more >>
One of the biggest taxonomic changes of this year was the long-anticipated lump of the species read more >>
This past summer, the ABA brought on our new Executive Director. Wayne Klockner comes to us read more >>
This Month in Birding is The American Birding Podcast’s monthly round table discussion on all things birds and birding. This month features Martha Harbison, Mikko Jimenez, and Dexter Patterson covering the USFWS’s recent extinction news, Takahe reintroductions, birding at night, and the panel’s spookiest birds.
Manakins are among the most unique and fascinating neotropical bird families with displays that run the read more >>
In 2014, Dorian Anderson pushed pause on his life, which at the time included a career in neuroscience research, a burgeoning relationship, and the ongoing struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, for an ABA Area Big Year.
Birds are one of the most commonly encountered elements of human culture across time and across peoples in all parts of the world. Perhaps nowhere is that quite as evident as Las Vegas, Nevada, where humanity of every possible description comes together in a city that exists on the edge of habitability.
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 this episode Jennie Duberstein, Nick Lund, and Greg Neise join host Nate Swick to talk lost flamingos, eagles, the incredible movement of North American vagrants to the British Isles, and more!
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 had perhaps not felt seen in birding before.
It's a random time for Random Birds, the American Birding Podcast segment with Birding editor Ted Floyd that read more >>
Moving from Nepal to North Dakota offers quite the ornithological whiplash, but birder and recent PhD graduate read more >>
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 Brodie Cass Talbott of Portland Audubon to talk about American Kestrels, Canada Jay siblings, 50 years of Project Puffin and more.
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 make the effort.
We're joined once again by regular Birding Book Club member Donna Schulman, reviewer for the website 10,000 Birds, and joining us for the 1st time, our ABA Birding magazine Book and Media Review editor, Rebecca Minardi.
Nestled in the Central Africa’s Great Rift Valley, Rwanda, the Land of a Thousand Hills, is read more >>
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 Podcast.
This Month in Birding, our monthly panel discussion is about bird news and birds in the news. We’re excited to welcome a panel of Stephanie Beilke, Tim Healy and Purbita Saha to talk rare birds at private residences, hummingbirds and alcohol, the most metal bird nests, and more!
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, to this interest, and it is one that frequently leads to a greater appreciation of love of the natural world more generally.
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 in the Pacific that causes all sorts of strange things. But what does that mean for birds?
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 he offers, with the help of modern technology, a solution of sorts called Hear Birds Again.
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 beyond.
Birding magazine editor and all-around bird-knower Ted Floyd is back for another bout of Random Birds. read more >>
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 Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds.
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 the American Ornithological Society’s North America Classification Committee.
On May 19, 2023, the ABA and the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University hosted read more >>
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 panel this month featuring Mollee Brown, Nicole Jackson, and Ryan Mandelbaum...
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 documents the seven years she spent watching a pair of kingfishers near her home...
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 record set, at the time, by Noah Strycker only a year earlier.
2023 ABA Lifetime Achievement Awardee Peter Pyle has probably been one of the most influential American read more >>
It is the most exciting time of year for birders in the ABA Area so it read more >>
The sporting world is full of bird mascots. While there are countless eagles, hawks, and cardinals read more >>
There’s no place on Earth like Colombia. One of the world’s only “megadiverse” nations, Colombia boasts read more >>
Birders have long considered the tyrant flycatchers, in particular the Empidonax species and Pewees to be read more >>
Spring is in the air in March, at least theoretically across much of the ABA Area. read more >>
Birding is booming in Colombia helped, in part, by bird fairs and festivals held throughout the read more >>
We are in a golden age of bird migration science, and birders can only wonder at read more >>
Birding editor Ted Floyd returns to join host Nate Swick for "Birding, Annotated". In the doldrums read more >>
2022 was an exceptional year for rare bird sightings in the ABA Area, with no fewer read more >>
February might be the shortest month, but that doesn’t mean it gets the short shrift when read more >>
You don’t have to be a birder for a long time to appreciate that birds are read more >>
Young birders who have participated in the ABA’s Camp Avocet Maine’s well known Hog Island Audubon read more >>
When it was first released in 1983, Peter Harrison’s Seabirds: An Identification Guide was immediately hailed as a read more >>
We have reached the end of the first month of 2023 and it is once again read more >>
Birding magazine editor and all-around bird-knower Ted Floyd is back for another bout of Random Birds. read more >>
Much of North America is gripped in the depths of winter. It’s cold. It’s snowy. It’s read more >>
Happy New Year List! It's finally time to celebrate our 2023 Bird of the Year, the read more >>
Thanks to all our listeners and supporters for another exceptional year. To wrap up 2022, we read more >>
ABA staffers Katinka Domen and Ted Floyd recently accompanied an ABA excursion to the land of read more >>
It is time once more for the most anticipated Birding Book Club of the year, our read more >>
One of the issues that the birding community has been reckoning with for the last several read more >>
Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating! How about a fun bird discussion to go along with our read more >>
The ABA is gearing up to announce its 2023 Bird of the Year but we’re not read more >>
A warmer and drier world means, unfortunately, a world in which wildfire becomes a greater risk. read more >>
If the English language is an amalgamation of words from thousands of other languages and cultures, read more >>
It's the end of October and time for our monthly This Month in Birding panel. This read more >>
Every spring, thousands of Red Knots congregate on the Delaware Bay to take advantage of the read more >>
Baby birds are arguably one of the great identification frontiers of birding. Try to identify a read more >>
We’re certainly in the golden age of bird science, with more birders, more researchers, and more read more >>
It's time for This Month in Birding with Jody Allair, Jennie Duberstein, and Sean Milnes. The read more >>
There is nothing like birding the American tropics, among iconic families like toucans, motmots, antbirds, tanagers, read more >>
Several years ago, birding dads Ted Floyd and Nate Swick recorded their first Birding Without Tears read more >>
ABA Birders overlook Mexican birding at their own peril. The nation just to the south of read more >>
The first week of September is the official start of fall, meteorologically at least, though ornithologically read more >>
At the end of every month, we host a roundup of recent bird news on the read more >>
One of the most iconic and beloved birds of the North American west is the Clark’s read more >>
Earlier this year the ABA was delighted to award our Lifetime Achievement Award to a pair read more >>
Close observers of the ABA might remember when we launched a new publication completely produced by read more >>
July is awfully hot across most of the ABA Area, and we’ve got a panel with read more >>
Back in May of this year, the American Birding Association announced the hiring of Nikki Belmonte read more >>
Birding magazine editor and all-around bird-knower Ted Floyd is back for another bout of Random Birds. read more >>
Birders love bird books, and we at the American Birding Podcast love to get together to read more >>
It's the last episode of the month and that means it's time for This Month in read more >>
Mention Panama to a bunch of birders and typically only one place comes to mind - read more >>
In early summer eager birders turn to bird taxonomy, and we at the podcast turn once read more >>
As part of its celebration of the third Black Birders Week, please enjoy highlights from the read more >>
Finding birds in places where you shouldn’t expect to find them if certainly one of the read more >>
It is the end of the month, and with it, comes the This Month in Birding read more >>
Julie Zickefoose scarcely needs an introduction. A prolific artist and an award-winning writer, much of her read more >>
Maybe more than anyone in North America in the last 20 years, Brian Sullivan has been read more >>
Friend of the ABA Nick Lund has had a busy spring! He not only published his read more >>
It’s the last Thursday of the month and that means it is time for the American read more >>
The incredible variety of bird song in a morning chorus on a spring or summer day read more >>
As interest in birding has grown in the last couple years, birders have turned up in read more >>
Birding editor Ted Floyd is back and ready to remember some birds! He joins host Nate Swick read more >>
It's time again for This Month in Birding! While March is arguably the slowest month of read more >>
Forrest Rowland advocates for ecotourism around the world as a tour leader for Rockjumper and for read more >>
In many many parts of the country, and the world, the most accessible greenspaces are cemeteries. read more >>
The birding world was shocked and more than a little saddened late last year when the read more >>
If a bird calls in a forest, or a swamp, or a grassland, and no birder read more >>
It’s the last week of the month and that means it’s time for This Month in read more >>
There is no question that climate change is having an impact on bird populations, but dig read more >>
We have seen, in recent years, an increased awareness of the need to make birding welcoming, read more >>
We might be well into 2022, but it’s not too late to look back at the read more >>
It’s the last week of the first month of 2022, and time again for This Month read more >>
Texas birder Tiffany Kersten did not start 2021 with an ambitious year of birding in mind. read more >>
Editor of the ABA's Birding magazine and frequent podcast guest Ted Floyd just returned a few weeks ago read more >>
Last month the ABA officially announced the 2022 ABA Bird of the Year, which is Burrowing read more >>
We’re at the end of the month and the end of 2021. So it's time for read more >>
It is one of the great dreams of many birders, to be part of the discovery read more >>
It is amazing how many people combine the two interests of birding and music, though few read more >>
Hawk-watchers are easily the most established sub-groups within the birding community, and the hawk-watching community in read more >>
The last Thursday of the month means it’s time for This Month in Birding, a very read more >>
It is time once more for the most anticipated Birding Book Club of the year, our annual read more >>
The annual Winter Finch Forecast is easily one of the highlights of the birding year for read more >>
Perhaps more than any bird in North America, Rock Pigeons suffer for their omnipresence and familiarity. But read more >>
The last Thursday of the month is This Month in Birding with a panel of Jennie Duberstein, read more >>
The second half of 2021 has been an exciting half-year for the ABA, not least of read more >>
There's no place on Earth like Colombia. One of the world's only "megadiverse" nations, Colombia boasts read more >>
When Jonathan Slaght’s Owls of the Eastern Ice came out last year, it was met with read more >>
It's the last episode of September 2021, and to add to this fall birding bounty comes read more >>
Birding editor Ted Floyd returns to join host Nate Swick in another round of "Random Birds", the read more >>
Few birders in North American have taken on the mantle of urban birding like Ohio native read more >>
What can we learn from one of the most familiar birds in North America? A bird read more >>
The time of year for messy birds is here. It’s molt season, and nearly every bird you read more >>
It’s the last week of August and that means it’s time for This Month in Birding featuring read more >>
How would you describe summer birding? Hot? Humid? Buggy? Unbearable? For many birders it has always read more >>
Parrots and parakeets are among the most spectacular and diverse birds on the planet, but also among read more >>
Kaua'i's forest birds are on the brink, says guest Dr. Lisa Crampton, but a new mosquito control effort offers a ray of hope for some of the most endangered birds in the world.
The last episode of the month means This Month in Birding, with a panel of Orietta read more >>
Birding editor Ted Floyd joins host Nate Swick to once again chat about recent birding experiences in read more >>
We at the ABA are big fans of the growing birding podcast scene and one of read more >>
In demand actor, 7 time winner of the Teen Choice Award, and avid birder? Ian Harding read more >>