Welcome, ABA Podcast listeners!

• View our episode trailer here.  Spring marks the return of many migrant songbirds to their North American breeding grounds. While many of these are brightly colored and unmistakable, the two species of waterthrushes offer a true identification challenge. In our latest ID-focused episode from OutBirding with Field Guides, Tom Johnson and Doug Gochfeld discuss Louisiana and Northern waterthrushes and share their perspectives on a hierarchical approach to ID.

• View our episode trailer here. 

  On March 30th, 2021, a wonderful new natural history book from Knopf began hitting bookstores everywhere - Jonathan Meiburg’s A Most REMARKABLE Creature, the Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey.  It’s everything caracaras, and so much more, as Jonathan and Bret Whitney take us on a journey through 65 million years and tens of thousands of miles of South American landscapes.  We learn a great deal about this odd group of New World raptors, most closely related to falcons, as we accompany Jonathan from the remote outer islands of the Falklands group, where he studied Striated Caracaras, through the Andean altiplano and Amazonia to the ancient Guianan Shield.  Many colorful personalities populate his pages, from such early caracara contemplators as Charles Darwin and William Henry Hudson through to Red-throated Caracara expert Sean McCann (Sean's blog contains a wealth of information).  Along the way we come to appreciate just how remarkable the caracaras truly are.  The episode plays out with a caracara’s-eye view of some of the diverse habitats of South America, with Jonathan’s highly acclaimed band, Shearwater, providing the soundtrack.  Video of a Shearwater performance recorded live on 25 March 2016 in the studio of KEXP-FM public radio in Seattle is here.

• View our episode trailer here.  It’s spring in the desert, and Micah Riegner is spending time surveying for thrashers in some wild places in Arizona. In this week’s episode, Micah combines his scientific pursuit of thrashers with his artistic passion, and he takes us along for the ride. Join in as Micah uses his field experience to inform his sketching process and the brushstrokes that eventually shape his beautiful watercolor painting.

• View our episode trailer here.  This identification episode deals with separating three puzzling pairs of birds from Cape May, New Jersey. Through comparison video of Bonaparte’s and Black-headed gulls, Savannah Sparrow subspecies, and Lesser and Greater scaup, Tom Johnson shares some of his favorite ways to approach field ID. Even if you live across the country or on the other side of the world, you can to apply these comparative techniques to sort out your local early spring birds.

• View our episode trailer here.  During the depths of winter, birds across North America employ a variety of strategies that help them deal with cold, snow, and ice. In this episode of OutBirding, Doug Gochfeld takes us on a snowy tour of the northeastern USA to share some of the secrets of birds living through winter "on the edge". Stay tuned for a few vagrant cameos in the form of Redwing, Sage Thrasher, and "Common" (Mew) Gull.

• View our episode trailer here. At the 40th annual ABA Convention, April 2009 in Corpus Christi, Texas, John Rowlett received the coveted Roger Tory Peterson Award in recognition of his lifetime of achievements in promoting the cause of birding. John’s remarks on “The Birding Life” were poignant that day, and his message continues to resonate with birders today. John and Rose Ann Rowlett, undoubtedly the most enduring and beloved brother-sister birding team of all time, share with us their experience of coming upon an injured Buff-breasted Sandpiper on their very first trip to the Central Texas Coast, when they were respectively but 14 and 12 years old. Peppershrike and Grebe recount how Dr. Peterson was delighted to be able to use the Buff-breast they had presented to him to illustrate the underwing pattern that this elegant shorebird flashes in courtship display on the high arctic tundra. And for this week’s Bonus Birds video, we head to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean to visit with wintering Purple Sandpipers. Tom Johnson takes us to the rock jetties of Cape May, New Jersey, where we learn some natural history and watch these hardy shorebirds as they deftly explore the intertidal zone.

• View our episode trailer here. Many members of the Field Guides team (and extended family) participated in the National Audubon Society’s 2020-21 Christmas Bird Count in December and January. On this special episode of OutBirding with Field Guides, host John Coons takes us across the country to visit with teams of CBC birders from Arizona to Texas to New York. We get to see a wonderful selection of winter birds from across the country, and we also hear some fun stories from these treasured days in the field.

• View our episode trailer here.  This week's OutBirding adventure takes us away from the winter chill to the warmth of the Florida Keys, where Tom Johnson and Doug Gochfeld searched for some very rare Caribbean visitors in December 2020. Learn a little bit about the status and identification of Cuban Pewee, Black-faced Grassquit, and Red-legged Thrush, and stay tuned for a bonus mega rarity that popped up mid-trip!

• View our episode trailer here.  Get ready for a deep dive into some field ornithology for birders! Chris Benesh sits down with Richard Webster in Portal, Arizona to discuss the biogeography of Curve-billed Thrashers in the United States desert southwest. Richard has spent many hours audio recording thrashers where the eastern and western subspecies groups meet, and he shares some of the things he’s discovered with this concerted birding effort.

• View our episode trailer here. How would you like to make a quick, adventurous trip into a remote place in the central Amazon basin? That’s exactly what OutBirding has in store for this week, as Micah Riegner takes us to the beautiful Rio Aripuanã in search of one of the most range-restricted primates on the planet — the tiny Dwarf Marmoset (Callibella humilis). This highly distinctive little beast, described to science only in 1998, is extremely poorly known in the wild. During the quest, Micah introduces us to a remarkable variety of other wildlife, from stingrays and electric eels to several seldom-seen birds of the Amazonian forest understory.

• View our episode trailer here.  This week, OutBirding takes you "wet-on-wet" with renowned bird artist and Field Guides tour guide Dan Lane. From an amorphous background right through to his masterpiece, Dan shares with us his techniques for drawing birds and putting pigment to paper in his transparent watercolor and gouache painting of a Rufous-browed Peppershrike, which is featured in the current (2021) Field Guides calendar. It’s a fascinating process that Dan makes accessible to all.

• View our episode trailer here.  In America’s biggest cities, wild birds eke out a living on any scrap of wild space available to them. Doug Gochfeld spent much of the summer of 2020 documenting the dramas of beach-nesting birds on the sand of Breezy Point in Queens, New York City. Join Doug as he guides us through a nesting season in the lives of Common Terns, Least Terns, Black Skimmers, Piping Plovers, and American Oystercatchers in this urban wilderness.

• View our episode trailer here.  Join OutBirding team Bret Whitney and Micah Riegner on a quest for the Endangered Thick-billed Parrot in the magnificent coniferous forests and canyons of the Sierra Madre in northwestern Mexico. In the field with researchers from the Mexican NGO OVIS – Organización Vida Silvestre -- we’ll visit the largest breeding colony of the Thick-billed Parrot and share the researchers' most recent insights, some as yet unpublished, on the population trend of this now highly Endangered species. We’ll also learn of the most critical threats to the Thick-billed Parrot throughout its annual cycle, and its prospects for the future.

• View our episode trailer here.  This episode of OutBirding with Field Guides showcases two different Mexican treats from the Camp Kitchen: Rajas con crema and guacamole. Dave Stejskal and John Coons share their tips and tricks so that you can have success with these easy and delicious recipes in your own camp kitchen. Dave and John also take us birding around Flagstaff, Arizona: if you thought you’d never salivate and think about gull identification at the same time, you might be surprised. Get your grocery list ready - you’re going to want to make a few batches of rajas and guacamole after you watch this!

• View our episode trailer here.  After growing up in Ecuador and working several jobs before becoming involved with Spectacled Bear conservation and birding, Willy Pérez joined Field Guides as a tour leader in 2011. In this wide-ranging conversation, Jesse Fagan talks with Willy about growing up in Ecuador, birds, bears, conservation, and Willy’s current life at home with his family in England. Willy’s life story is a great study in the transformative powers of conservation and ecotourism.

• View our episode trailer here. Even though they’re relatively large and widespread, raptors can be challenging to identify on the wing. Tom Johnson shares his favorite ways for simplifying raptor identification in the migration hotspot of Cape May, New Jersey. With the benefits of 1/8 speed slow-motion video, this episode focuses on the flight identification of 16 species of raptors that occur regularly in Cape May. While this Mid-Atlantic species set may vary a bit from your own backyard hawkwatching spots, there’s sure to be overlap as well as some tips and principles that can help you out wherever you are.

• View our episode trailer here. In this episode, we switch passions slightly and focus on herping! Micah Riegner and friends set out to track down an impressive diversity of rattlesnakes (and other reptiles) in the varied habitats of central Arizona. In addition to seeing these beautiful and exciting animals up-close, we learn a lot about their biology and natural history along the way. Watch out - some remarkable camouflage awaits you!

• View our episode trailer here.  Terry Stevenson has been wonderfully productive this year, working from home and completing the second edition of Birds of East Africa, the field guide which he co-authored with John Fanshawe. In this episode, Terry shows us around his bird-rich backyard in Kenya and also takes us behind the scenes of producing a field guide.

• View our episode trailer here.  The Thick-billed Parrot is a globally Endangered species inhabiting the Sierra Madre Occidental of northwestern Mexico. The northernmost nesting population is only a few hours’ drive south of the US border, and the parrots used to occur regularly in some of the “sky island” mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. To gain historical perspective on the first ecological studies of Thick-billed Parrots in the Sierra Madre and also the saga of the US population, Bret Whitney, Micah Riegner, and Rose Ann Rowlett invited some of the early researchers to give their first-hand accounts of these little-known chapters in North American ornithology. This episode, which is Part 2 of a two-part series, highlights the USFWS effort to reestablish a population of Thick-billed Parrots in Southeast Arizona.

• View our episode trailer here.  Among Mexico’s most emblematic — yet also enigmatic — species of birds is the Eared Quetzal. OutBirding team Micah Riegner and Bret Whitney aimed to change that by launching a trip into the Sierra Madre Occidental of Chihuahua to document, for the first time on film or video, many of the basic life-history attributes of Eared Quetzals. The imagery they brought back from those high-elevation, mixed-conifer forests is nothing short of spectacular, and marks a significant leap forward in our knowledge of this highly distinctive, beautiful bird.

• View our episode trailer here.  In our first identification-focused video, Chris Benesh and Dave Stejskal take a deep dive into the world of the "yellow-bellied" kingbirds of the southern and western US. Several species of flycatchers in the genus Tyrannus can be confused in the field, so Chris and Dave break down the best ways to identify these handsome songbirds by sight and sound. In addition to discussing helpful videos, photos, and audio recordings from the field, they strive to simplify this oft-challenging group to give you straightforward tools you need to identify kingbirds.

• View our episode trailer here. Picnics in the field have been a hallmark of Field Guides since our first birding tour in 1985. On this edition of the Camp Kitchen, John Coons and Dave Stejskal create one of their famous chicken salads while out in northern Arizona. Along the way, they spot some Pinyon Jays and share some great stories of eventful picnic meals from tours past.

• View our episode trailer here. Northern Wheatears are quite rare as fall migrants through the eastern United States, so the one that appeared recently at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey caused quite a stir among local birders. Doug Gochfeld shares some lovely imagery of this wayward traveler and demonstrates how wheatears from different regions of the Arctic breeding range migrate to their African wintering grounds.

• View our episode trailer here. The Thick-billed Parrot is a globally Endangered species inhabiting the Sierra Madre Occidental of northwestern Mexico. The northernmost nesting population is only a few hours’ drive south of the US border, and the parrots used to occur regularly in some of the “sky island” mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.  To gain historical perspective on the first ecological studies of Thick-billed Parrots in the Sierra Madre and also the saga of the US population, Bret Whitney, Micah Riegner, and Rose Ann Rowlett invited some of the early researchers to give their first-hand accounts of these little-known chapters in North American ornithology. This is Part 1 of a two-part series.

• View our episode trailer here. On their expedition to Chihuahua, Mexico, Micah Riegner and Bret Whitney cooked up some chicken mole while studying Eared Quetzals and Thick-billed Parrots. In this episode, Micah shares his technique for delicious "field mole" and also offers a preview of upcoming episodes featuring the quetzals and parrots of the Sierra Madre.

• View our episode trailer here. Though he spends much of his year in Brazil, Bret Whitney is intimately acquainted with the birds of the Texas Hill Country. In this bonus video, Bret carefully takes us close to a Painted Bunting nest for a neat study of the breeding biology of this lovely songbird.

View our episode trailer here. The summer of 2020 marked an exciting moment in the northward expansion of White Ibis along the Atlantic Coast of the United States. This year, these pioneering wading birds nested in New Jersey for the first time ever, at the Ocean City Welcome Center near Cape May. Tom Johnson and Doug Gochfeld were on the scene to document the progress of this months-long nesting event, and conservationist Kashi Davis helped to provide context about the changing marsh island ecosystem of the Jersey Shore.

View our episode trailer here. In addition to birds, Chris Benesh is passionate about many other aspects of life on earth. In recent years, this energy has been channeled into learning more about scorpions - their identification, distribution, life histories, etc. In this video, Chris and scorpiologist Kari McWest discuss scorpion taxonomy and head out into the field to look for a localized species near Tucson, Arizona. Chris also tells us why scorpion hunting isn't really all that different from birding.

View our episode trailer here. Eared Quetzals are mysterious birds from northern Mexico, and this year, several nomadic individuals have arrived in the United States. In this edition of Bonus Birds, Chris Benesh chronicles the lovely pair of Quetzals that have taken up residence in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona (much to the delight of the birding world).

If you find yourself captivated by these birds, stay tuned for upcoming OutBirding episodes from Bret Whitney and Micah Riegner as they take us to the homeland of Eared Quetzals and Thick-billed Parrots in the mountains of Chihuahua, Mexico.

View our episode trailer here. The wetlands and grasslands of the glacier-scarred northern Great Plains are home to a staggering abundance of wildlife in spring and summer. Doug Gochfeld and Tom Johnson visit North Dakota in late spring to spend time with the striking birdlife of this Prairie Potholes region, from Wilson's Phalaropes to Yellow-headed Blackbirds to LeConte's Sparrows. In addition, they explore the impacts humans have had on this changing landscape.

Over the years, we’ve led many fun birding tours to Brazil, from the Atlantic Forest to the Pantanal to the Amazon (and beyond!). Complementing the varied birding experiences across this huge nation, it’s long been tradition to sip on a caipirinha at the end of the day while reviewing our bird checklist. Marcelo Padua and Megan Edwards Crewe join us from Brazil and England to show us how to make this refreshing, iconic cocktail.

Sometimes, when it rains, it pours! We already featured Connecticut Warblers from the breeding grounds in our Boreal Forest episode, but this migrant in Cape May, New Jersey put on a jaw-dropping performance in September 2020, weeks after that Boreal Forest episode premiered on OutBirding. This bird was too cool NOT to show off, so here's another helping of Connecticut Warbler just for you. Tom Johnson shares a few tips for finding and identifying this impressive bird during fall migration.

Jesse Fagan shows us why he loves living and birding along the Pacific Coast in Lima, Peru. Watch all the way to the end for a special treat!

• Kirtland’s Warbler is a rare songbird that only breeds in the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada and winters in the Bahamas. Tom Johnson and Doug Gochfeld head to Michigan and Wisconsin to get to know this loud warbler, and to explore the pine plantations that have helped to preserve the future for this species.

• Southern Louisiana is home to incredible concentrations of waterbirds. Though the natural marshes and coastline of the state are fantastic for birds, human-created crawfish ponds also create very important, ephemeral waterbird habitat. Dan Lane takes us on a birding tour of crawfish country and shows us a diversity of wading birds here while teaching us about the interaction between birds and the crawfish.

• It’s really no contest — the best night-birding in the Americas north of Mexico is clearly found in the US state of Arizona. Micah Riegner takes us around his home turf on a quest to show us a spectacular array of owls, including highly coveted Flammulated Owl and Northern Pygmy-Owl.

• John Rowlett is one of the founders of Field Guides, and he helped to create and refine the world of birding tours in the 1970s and ’80s. He also happens to be a fine scholar and a darned nice guy. In Part 1, John talks about his early years birding in Texas with his sister Rose Ann and mentor Edgar Kincaid. Part 2 concludes with a discussion of John’s involvement in the seminal work The Bird Life of Texas.

• After a long absence, California Condors once again soar above the colorful relief of Arizona’s Grand Canyon. John Coons and Dave Stejskal take us to Grand Canyon Village and the Navajo Bridge area in pursuit of these behemoth vultures, and John tells us the story of their history on the landscape with the help of Dr. Steve Emslie.

• Every summer, the Field Guides staff gathers in Arizona for our annual business meeting. In August 2018, during our meeting in the Chiricahua Mountains, we enjoyed a spectacular Montezuma Quail sighting along Cave Creek. Bret Whitney shares the moments when we all converged to see the handsome quail, and we also get a peek behind the scenes at a fun-filled annual meeting.

• Boreal forest covers a huge expanse of the North American continent in a belt stretching from Newfoundland to Alaska. This biome is hugely important for many breeding and migratory bird species, including some that birders everywhere lust over. Doug Gochfeld and Tom Johnson take us to the western Great Lakes region to spend time with Connecticut Warblers and Great Gray Owl, and they find some six-toed woodpeckers along the way, too!

• Peter Burke once led birding tours for Field Guides and is also a field biologist and acclaimed bird artist. From Ontario, Canada, Peter joins Jesse Fagan for a conversation that ranges from New Guinea to Chile and from Kirtland’s Warblers to cassowaries!

• On our Field Guides tours, we take a lot of care to prepare tasty and healthy field picnics. At lunchtime, this often allows our groups to relax and spend more time in the field. During a recent trip to North Dakota, Tom Johnson prepared a simple chicken curry on the camp stove, and Doug Gochfeld was on hand to film the kitchen exploits and sample the results. And the birding wasn’t bad either! Just a few miles away, Yellow Rails clicked from a prairie marsh, and back at camp, Northern Saw-whet Owl and Long-eared Owl called in the pines overhead.

• Dave Stejskal unleashed his impressive birding skills in late May 2016 by discovering the first Pine Flycatcher ever found north of Mexico during a camping trip in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona. In this video, Dave re-visits Aliso Spring and tells Chris Benesh about the improbable circumstances of the big find AND the process of making this not-so-simple identification.

• In addition to leading Field Guides tours, Bret Whitney and Dan Lane are ornithologists and research associates of the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science. In this multi-part series, Bret and Dan speak to Van Remsen at LSU on a subject that is a perennial favorite for birders — English common names. It’s great to hear this subject explored by ornithologists who are also inveterate birders.

• Here at Field Guides, we are mad about birds — but we also have eyes for other aspects of the natural world. Plants, insects, and other critters captivate us along the way, and now there is a fantastic online tool that helps us identify and organize our sightings. Chris Benesh takes us on an exploration of iNaturalist to help us enhance our natural history learning and enjoyment.

• Living far from major human population centers, prairie birds like Baird’s Sparrow and Sprague’s Pipit often don’t get the same attention and love as other North American songbirds. Tom Johnson and Doug Gochfeld head to western North Dakota during the breeding season to marvel at the wide-open spaces these birds call home, become acquainted with the rippling song of the sparrow, and gaze upward at the pipit’s astonishing flight display.

• Tom Johnson stumbled across a fascinating and delicious Cauliflower Mushroom while birding in the forest near his home in Cape May, New Jersey. Join Tom as he shows how to harvest, clean, and cook this unusual woodland treat.

• Joe Grosel leads many of our Field Guides tours in Southern Africa, but many birders haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Joe and birding with him in the field. Jesse Fagan helps to change that in this fun and wide-ranging interview. Come for leopards and hyenas, stay for the Pennant-winged Nightjar, and get to know Joe!

• A large part of our Field Guides team lives in the very birdy US state of Arizona. Micah Riegner, John Coons, Chris Benesh, Dave Stejskal, and Rose Ann Rowlett take us around the state to a broad diversity of habitats as they show off the many species of woodpeckers that inhabit Arizona's deserts, canyons, plateaus, and mountain forests.

Membership gives you access to our complete series of OutBirding with Field Guides videos, with new episodes being released on a regular basis throughout the year. We are aiming to release 3-4 videos monthly initially.

Our 48 episodes have a total runtime of 16 hours, 57 min. We launched in September 2020 with 18 videos and are currently adding a new video 3-4 times per month. Most episodes are 15-20 minutes, with some shorter, and others longer.

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