The American Birding Podcast

Central America is home to five great tropical forests, whose presence and protection are critical to the conservation of just about every one of our neotropical migrant birds. It is the subject of a recent study from...

The Birding Book Club is back again to do our annual Best Bird Books of the Year episode for 2025. There's no better time to give the gift of bird books to the birder in your life. And why not something for yourself...

Happy Thanksgiving! At the ABA, we're thankful for birders - their passion, their deep knowledge base, and the willingness of some to come on the American Birding Podcast to discuss recent bird science and news. This...

What do birding and board games have in common? More than you'd expect! Birder and game designer Elizabeth Hargrave has made it a mission to bring these two things together and her bird-themed game Wingspan does just...

Smithsonian researcher Roxie Laybourne may be the most influential ornithologist you've never heard of. Over the more than half a century she was a pioneering figure in the fields of forensics and aviation, all through...

Can the various mating rituals, displays, and behaviors of birds apply to the lives of humans in the 21 st Century, with our own uniue rituals, displays and behaviors? It's a question that birder and writer Bryony...

The last Thursday of the month means it's time for This Month in Birding, our round table discussion with birding friends about news in birding and ornithology. This week we welcome Jennie Duberstein, Nick Lund, and...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 8 th edition now, published as East and West earlier this...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...