This Birding Life Episode 50!

Bill and Ted's excellent birding adventure is captured in episode 50 of "This Birding Life."

Funny how you're just chugging along through life and all of a sudden you're 50 years old! Geez! Half a century? Really? Well, I turned 50 a few years back—can almost remember it, too.

The number 50 is one of those milestone numbers, which is why I'm kind of chuffed that the new episode, just posted, of "This Birding Life" is EPISODE 50!

Now, these 50 episodes did not take 50 years to post, though my frequency of producing new episodes has been irregular—and frustrating to some listeners. That is something that I'm trying to correct, by the way. I'm giving up the image-hungry M4a format in favor of a pure stream of MP3s. I'll still post an M4a version, but without all the embedded images. That image sourcing, selection, and placement is what takes so long and is the primary reason that I'm not currently celebrating episode 60, or 75, or 100!

Episode 50 is an interview with my friend Ted Floyd, who is the editor of Birding magazine, flagship publication of the American Birding Association. Ted and I met up for a bit of birding this spring while I was visiting Boulder, Colorado, where Ted and his family live.

Ted birding, not editing.

I've known Ted for as long as he's been working at the ABA and I find him to be intensely curious about the natural world. He's one of the more knowledgeable field ornithologists I've ever met and a pretty funny guy, too.
--> He’s the author of the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America published by HarperCollins and the senior author of the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Nevada. He's also quite a maven on the night flight calls of migrant birds in the West. And he took his two kids out birding—and started their life lists—when they were only hours old. Respect.
I hope this piques your interest enough that you'll listen to our conversation in Episode 50 of "This Birding Life": An Interview with Ted Floyd.

We enjoyed excellent birds and words while hiking this Colorado canyon.

Incidentally, on our morning of birding, we swept the nuthatches! We got white-breasted, red-breasted, and pygmy all within minutes of one another in the mountains above Boulder, Colorado. That's not something you get to do every day! Except if you're Ted Floyd.

Enjoy!