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 birding sites. 

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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, with Warbling Vireo splits, titmouse lumps, and lots of genetic mayhem. 

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An interesting study discussed on the monthly This Month in Birding segment led us to Miranda Zammarelli, a PhD student at Dartmouth who has taken 50 years of hand drawn paper maps of bird territories at a New Hampshire forest, collected over many years by Dartmouth students, and brought those maps into the modern era to learn about how bird territories ebb and flow over the seasons. It's a great story of how the path of discovery winds its way from one researcher to the next. Miranda joins us to talk about her work. If you'd like to see what the maps look like,  check out this write-up about her project.  Also, the Breeding Bird Survey and the Bird Banding Lab are set to be eliminated if a budget bill passes the US Senate, greatly threatening bird research not only in the US, but across the hemisphere. Learn more about it and what you can do. 

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The end of May means, for many of us, the end of spring. But before this magical month is over we bring a great panel of birdy friends together to talk about some of the interesting bird news that has come across our vitual desks. Welcome Stephanie Beilke, Tim Healy, and Brodie Cass Talbott to talk birding without tech, warbler foraging strategies and the birds and bees, literally. 

Links to items discussed in this episode:

The Wonders of Bird-Watching without Tech

Crows understand shapes and use geometry in everyday life

Foraging on the wing: How can ecologically similar birds live together?

Where the wild bees are: Birds improve indicators of bee richness

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The 2025 Biggest Week in American Birding is in the books and the American Birding Podcast was there to host a fun little game with a few friends. Test your luck with our birdy quiz featuring a quartet of Biggest Week birders and guides along with special guests Wendell Troutner and Tyler Ficker! We've got modified anagrams, Star Wars crossovers, and more!

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Nate is in Ohio for the Biggest Week, but hew had time to grab Birding editor Ted Floyd for another Random Birds before he headed off. Ted and Nate trust the random number generator to turn up some exciting birds for discussion including jaegers, pelicans, and shorebirds. 

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When a person gets into birding they are not only confronted with a wide variety of wonderful and weird organisms but an equally wide variety of wonderful and weird terminology and jargon. It’s enough to confuse even the most enthusiastic novice, but hankfully, bird cartoonist Rosemary Mosco of Bird and Moon is on the case with a new book called The Birding Dictionary. This very funny addition to the birding lexicon features definitions for everything from adorbler to zygodactyl illustrated with Rosemary’s wonderful illustrations and she joins us to chat about the language of birders. 

Plus, let us know if you'll be at Biggest Week and want to participate in the American Birding Podcast bird quiz!

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It’s time for another This Month in Birding, this time for April, despite the fact that this episode technically comes out in May. That's bonus for May rather than a loss for April. Which is all the more appropriate because this is the time of year that we’ve all been waiting for. This tim around, we welcome Gabriel Foley, Frank Izaguirre, and Purbita Saha to talk bird study bias, hummingbird hives, and whether or not birds "sit". 

Links to articles discussed in this episode:

Six-decade research bias towards fancy and familiar bird species

Hummingbirds Living in a Hive Found for the First Time

Angler perceptions of pelican entanglement reveal opportunities for seabird conservation on fishing piers in Tampa Bay

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Regular listeners to this podcast certainly know science writer Ryan Mandelbaum from their regular appearances on This Month in Birding. Those listeners who enjoy Ryan's wit and passion for wildlife will no doubt be exited to learn that Ryan has a new book, Wild NYC, a guidebook to nature observation in the United State’s largest city. While birds are this podcast's focus, the city's nature bona fides cannot be denied, and Ryan chats about the incredible geology, botany, and subway ferns that can be found in The Big Apple. 

Also, the ABA is heading to the Biggest Week! We hope to see you there. 

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A warmer and drier world means, unfortunately, a world in which wildfire becomes a greater risk. We know, all too well, the risk these fires pose to wild places, but there is surprisingly little we know about the risk to wildlife. That is the work of Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, a researcher at UCLA looking at the impacts of wildfire smoke on wild birds and trying to answer a few of those increasingly relevant questions.

Also, Nate is out of town and hoping to see Mississippi Kites. 

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A deeply felt love of birds is something that can wind its way into all aspects of our lives. It is a journey that writer and pastor Courtney Ellis weaves into her most recent book, Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief, published last year and now available in audiobook. She is also the host of The Thing with Feathers podcast, available in a lot of the same places you can find this one.

Also, the recent news about the "de-extinction" of an extinct wolf poses lots of questions for conservation. 

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