Ear Candy Alert: Latest Podcast Episodes!

If you enjoy listening to podcasts about birding, there are new episodes posted in the past few days from two podcasts in which I'm involved.

This Birding Life has been going for more than a decade and just passed the 70 episode count. Episode 73 is a collection of four different birding-related stories I recorded during a recent trip to Taiwan. These first-person tales range from trying to charm you way into an exit-row seat on an international flight to being rescued in dire remote circumstances. Here's a link to listen to episode 73 of "This Birding Life" entitled "More Birding Stories."

That's me in the yellow sleeves with our Taiwan birding group.

"Out There With the Birds" is the second podcast I'm part of, along with my colleague and friend Ben Lizdas. Where TBL is an interview-style podcast with me interviewing an interesting person or people, OTWTB is pretty much just Ben and me talking back and forth about anything that comes to mind. And we usually crack up along the way.

Ben lives and works outside of Madison, Wisconsin, so most of our episodes are recorded via Skype, which makes the audio quality , occasionally challenging. When our paths converge, we record episodes in person and take lots of silly selfies.  Here's a link to a recent episode that included a short discussion about recent research into male duck genitalia.

If you like what you hear, please click on the RSS feed link to be notified when new issues are posted. TBL is once monthly, OTWTB is twice monthly. In between episodes, you should go birding.

Happy listening! We'll see you out there with the birds!

Birding Trips Bucket List

Guianan cock-of-the-rock.

I have a friend who travels professionally, running high-end tours and events for corporations and organizations all over the world. I used to think of myself as a well-traveled person, having been to 30+ countries around the world. That is, until I saw an Instagram post by my buddy (I'll call him Tim) as he was visiting this 200th country!! TWO HUNDRED COUNTRIES! That's an epic level of world travel.

There are a lot of places I've always wanted to visit, and of course I want to visit them primarily for birding. But things like culture, history, cuisine, music, and meeting local people interest me almost as much.

So, here are 10 places that are on my Birding Travel Bucket List, and a brief explanation of why. I'm hoping that this blog post will act as a penny tossed in a wishing well, bringing me the chance to some day cross these off the list with an actual visit.

Birders lunching near a village in Papua New Guinea.

10.  Kazakhstan. I love being in the wide-open steppe and big sky habitat, and from what I've heard, this country is just that, in spades. Add in some fantastic birds, interesting culture, and the fact that much of the former Soviet Union was off limits for most of my life and you've got a winner.

9. Nepal. The opposite of flat. While I have no desire to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest, I have always been fascinated with the culture and people from this part of the planet. Also: very phunky pheasants.

8. Chile. Birds & wine. Wine & birds. And the end of the Earth.

7. Morocco. I've always wanted to travel in the deserts of North Africa. Lots of endemic birds, too.  I also have a fez collection.

6. Thailand. Pittas, hornbills, and actual Thai food. Oh my!

5. Tanzania. To be fair, there are half a dozen African countries to which I'm equally drawn. But somehow this one seems to creep to the top thanks to its national parks and natural abundance. Tanzania has some world famous sites associated with it: Kilimanjaro, Lake Tanganyika, Ngorongoro Crater, Gombe Stream, Zanzibar. And 1,100 species of birds.

4. Ecuador. While we're on the topic of bio-abundance, Ecuador ranks near the top in terms of its bird list, with 1,660 species recorded. A birder can go from the highest elevation cloud forest to lowland forest in a single day and rack up a significant list en route.

Rainforest birding in Central America.

3. Hawaii. OK so I realize that this is not a country and its native bird life is pretty much doomed thanks to climate change, habitat loss, and introduced exotics. But it would be my 50th U.S. state and I've always wanted to put nene (Hawaiian goose) on my North American life list.

2. Antarctica. Getting to go to Antarctica would solve several things: I'd be able to brag about visiting all seven continents on Earth; I'd be able to drop arcane facts on people, such as: Antarctica is the largest desert on Earth; I'd get to see snow petrel.

1. Australia. For some reason, Oz has always topped my list of most-desirable birding destinations. Certainly the birdlife there is wildly appealing, and the Aussie people are, too. The landscape of Australia is as varied and alluring as the continent's history. There are things everywhere in Australia—on land and water—that can kill you. Besides all these reasons for my attraction, the first article I ever edited for Bird Watcher's Digest,  way back in May of 1988, was about birding on the Cape York Peninsula in Australia. From that moment I was hooked.

These are just 10 places I'm eager to visit for birding and the other reasons mentioned. Ask me tomorrow or next month and I'd probably come up with a slightly different list. After all, there are more than 10,000 bird species out there and I've still got 160-some countries to go to catch up to my pal, Tim.

If you'd like to read more about some of the places I've been (and God bless you, if you do) try scanning back through the last decade of posts on this blog. There are some great trips among the spots, including trips to Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Guyana, Guatemala, Uganda, South Africa, and more.

If you enjoy listening to podcasts, I've shared many of my birding adventures via my podcast, "This Birding Life," which is sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics and Rockjumper Birding Tours.

Some of the trips I take—both domestic and overseas—have room for other people to join me. One in particular, co-hosted by Rockjumper and the American Birding Association, is taking place in January of 2017, is a New Zealand birding adventure. A special invitation has been extended to "This Birding Life" podcast listeners to join us on this "trip of a lifetime!" New Zealand is so very close to Australia—my number one dream birding destination—and it has sheep instead of snakes! Bonus!

While on this fantastic trip, participants will be invited to be a part of a "This Birding Life" podcast episode. But the more appealing aspects of the trip are all the birds we'll see, the islands we'll visit, and the new friends we'll make.

BOTB birding in Israel in 2016.

 I'll be posting more about the trip here and elsewhere, but for now, you can get more information on the Rockjumper Birding Tours site here:

http://www.rockjumperbirding.com/tourinfo/aba-new-zealand-subantarctic-island-cruise/

Thanks for reading and I'll see you out there with the birds.

BT3

p.s. I'm sure you have your own Birding Trips Bucket List. If you want to share, please do so via the Comments section.

New Podcast Episode: "Backyard Rarity, Part One"

Western flycatcher. ©Bill Thompson III

On Sunday, December 13, just after noon, I was dumping a bucket of vegetable scraps on our compost pile next to our garage when a small, weird-looking, greenish bird flitted up from the brushy thicket in front of me. It was a small flycatcher, like an Acadian flycatcher, but the field marks didn't fit. In fact, the more I looked at this bird, just 10 feet away (naked eye—I wasn't wearing binocs) the more I realized that it was something completely different.

It had a rounded crest at the back of the head. It had an oblong-shaped, bright white eyering. It had buffy wingbars. It's breast and belly were a yellowish-green. It was flicking its wings and jetting its tail. Its large-looking bill had a pale lower mandible. And it was in southeastern Ohio in mid-December, when most North American flycatchers should be somewhere in the tropics.

The bird moved and I bolted inside for binocs, a camera, and Julie. We raced back out and, after a few panicked moments, re-found the bird. After some wild conjectures, we finally came to the conclusion that this was an Empidonax flycatcher. After we eliminated all the eastern Empids, we moved on to the western ones and BAM! Arrived at the western flycatcher complex, a single species that was split in 1989 into two distinct species: Pacific-slope flycatcher and cordilleran flycatcher.

And that's when the fun really began. The latest episode of my This Birding Life podcast, "Backyard Rarity, Part One," covers the experience of finding, identifying, and sharing of this rare bird. Give it a listen for free at Podcast Central, or on the iTunes podcast channel.

 This Birding Life is hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest and sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics and Rockjumper Worldwide Birding Adventures.

New Podcast Episode: Birding Uganda Part 1

Uganda's national bird the grey-crowned crane.

The latest episode of my "This Birding Life" podcast is now available for listening over at Podcast Central as well as in the iTunes Podcasts section. The episode is titled "Birding in Uganda Part 1" and the material covers the initial few days of my wonderful trip to this East African country last November.

Uganda conjures up many associations for people—both good and bad. The country is trying very diligently to overcome a past filled with upheaval, political and military violence, disease, and social persecution. Its rich natural resources (especially minerals and oil) have garnered immense attention from multinational corporations. This combined with the growth in Uganda's human population are just two factors that are putting increasing pressure on wildlife and wildlife conservation within the country. Uganda is one of the few places in Africa where mountain gorillas and chimpanzees are protected and can be observed readily by ecotourists.

The vast national parks in Uganda and the abundant wildlife that thrives in them, including elephants, giraffes, water buffalo, and all manner of antelope relatives and a variety of primates, all combine to make this land-locked nation a premier destination for wildlife watcher. Oh, and Uganda's bird list is nearly 1,100 species, so birding is a rapidly growing source of tourism revenue.

Our trio, at the start of our trip, standing outside the Uganda Wildlife Authority headquarters. From R to L: Dominic Mitchell, Tim Appleton, BT3.

I was invited by the Uganda Tourism Board and the Uganda Wildlife Authority to visit their country last November. Also on the trip were two colleagues from England, Tim Appleton, MBE, co-founder of the British Birdwatching Fair and Dominic Mitchell, founder and publisher of BirdWatch magazine, a leading U.K. birding periodical. Both of these gents are extremely well-traveled, are top-notch birders and naturalists, and are just plain fun to be around.

 The day after our arrival in Kampala, Uganda, we met with tourism and wildlife authorities, then we got in a spot of birding before attending the opening ceremonies of Uganda's Bird Birding Week.

Attendees at the opening ceremonies for Uganda's Birding Week.

 As you'll hear in this episode of the podcast, the opening ceremonies contained a lot of speeches by tourism and wildlife authorities and government representatives as well as words from two of Uganda's leading birders, Herbert Byaruhanga and Johnnie Kamugisha. Each speaker began his or her speech by thanking and welcoming all the organizations and dignitaries. I've edited the content quite a bit in the podcast to give you an idea of what was being said without sharing every word spoken. One thing became clear to me on this first full day: Ugandan's are very proud of their country.

Uganda has done a lot to encourage young birders and female birders.

Another thing that I found to be immensely impressive was the amount of effort, funding, and attention paid to encouraging young birders, women birders, and to training and certifying birding and wildlife guides. Everywhere we went in the country we met young birders, guides in training, and people in general interested in making careers in the wildlife tourism industry.

Long-crested eagle.

 The day after the opening ceremonies, we drove northwest across Uganda to Murchison Falls National Park, where we were slated to participate in Uganda's national Big Birding Day. The drive took us all day for a number of reasons. First of all, getting out of Kampala was a traffic challenge.



Secondly, the roads in Uganda are a bit of a mixed bag—some fine and passable, others quite challenging. And finally, because we kept seeing birds and animals that made us shout for our driver to stop!

Our rugged safari vehicles got us all across western and southern Uganda.

Hippos watching our boat as we crossed the Nile.

 At sundown, we reached the mighty Nile River, across which lay Paraa Lodge, our home for the next two nights, and our base for the Big Day. We enjoyed a lovely meal that evening and, in the podcast, you'll hear the music and singing of a group from the local village who come to the lodge to welcome guests.

The musical group from the nearby village at Paraa Lodge.

Our Big Day guides were very talented birders and naturalists.

I'll let you learn how we did on our Big Day by listening to the podcast. Suffice to say we had an awesome time. It's definitely the most lifers I've ever found on a Big Day. And also the most mammals.

I hope you enjoy "Birding in Uganda: Part 1" which is episode 51 of the "This Birding Life" podcast.

If you'd like to meet Herbert and some of his fellow Ugandan birders, please plan to come to the American Birding Expo, October 2 to 4, 2015 in Columbus, Ohio. Uganda is an Expo sponsor and will have representatives there to share more about birding and wildlife watching in their country.

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! 

 

Episode 49 of This Birding Life Podcast

This Birding Life podcast episode #49 "A Visit to the British Bird Fair, Part 2" is now available for your ear-filling pleasure over at Podcast Central and in the iTunes Podcasts section.*

This episode is, as the title suggests, part 2 of my visit last August to the British Bird Fair held annually at Rutland Water Reserve in central England.

David Lindo, The Urban Birder, is interviewed in the new episode of This Birding Life.

This event is amazing for a birder to attend—so many vendors offering everything even remotely associated with birds and nature. A few years ago I can back with the following: two plastic animal masks for the kids, seven bird art books for Julie, an equal number of nature books for me, two new bird feeders, a collection of bird sound CDs, a new squall jacket, several sets of bird-themed notecards, a handful of hats, more birdy stickers for the birdmobile, a bucket list of a dozen world birding hotspots I hope to visit, and about 75 new birding friends. Needless to say I did not bring back much of the money that I went over with.

The Bird Fair was started by my friends Tim Appleton and Martin Davies more than two decades ago. Since then it's grown into the single largest annual generator of conservation funding for birds. So it's not only an amazing event, it has also raised incredible amounts of money for conservation and contributed to some critically important conservation efforts, especially in concert with BirdLife International. Visit the Bird Fair website to learn more about this wonderful event.

The Falkland Islands stand (or booth) at BirdFair.

Back to this podcast episode: It contains interview with several Bird Fair vendors from around the world, including England, Australia, Malaysia, Israel, and the Falkland Islands. It also includes a bit of traditional English country music recorded at the Saturday night barn dance at Bird Fair.

In our own modest way, we're trying to emulate the Bird Fair with our inaugural American Birding Expo, which will be held October 2 to 4, 2015 in Columbus, Ohio. The Expo is free and open to the public to attend. It's a commercial, retail event for birding and nature consumers to meet and engage with companies, organizations, destinations, manufacturers, retailers, publishers, and artists all of whom wish to market themselves to birders. There are currently more than 70 confirmed vendors representing more than 25 countries worldwide. So it's going to be a very interesting gathering of bird and nature people from around the globe.

In the days just prior to the Expo, the American Birding Association will host its first-ever Members' Summit right on the Expo grounds. This gathering is also free to ABA members and will feature seminars, panel discussions, and field workshops in addition to some fun birding field trips. Details on the ABA Summit can be found here.

And speaking of bird clubs, there are several special reasons for bird clubs to consider attending the Expo en masse. Those reasons can be found on this page on the Expo website.

You'll certainly be hearing more about the American Birding Expo in the months to come. And I hope you'll make plans to be there, too. If so, I'll see you there. If not I'm sure I'll see your somewhere out there with the birds.

Special thanks to Bird Watcher's Digest and Carl Zeiss Sports Optics for their sponsorship support of This Birding Life.

*[Sidebar: My podcast episodes are also apparently shared on a substantial number of podcast aggregators on the Web, which may help explain the rather staggering number of downloads it receives annually: more than 750,000!]

New Podcast Episode: Sketches of Homer, Alaska

Last May, I was the keynote speaker at the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival in Homer, Alaska. The festival was really rich in terms of field trips and speakers, the birding was excellent, the people were super friendly, and the weather perfect. My friend Marianne Aplin, a longtime U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service person working in the refuge system, had been inviting me to the festival for a number of years, but, because it usually coincides with International Migratory Bird Day, I could never go. In the spring of 2014 I decided to make getting to Homer a priority and I'm sure glad I did.

Homer is a wonderful small town on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, surrounded by Kachemak Bay. It's about a five-hour drive southeast from Anchorage. While the festival attracts mostly Alaskan birders, the town of Homer supports the festival fully and a lot of Homerites—even non-birders—participate.

Huge turnout for the Beginners' Bird Walk in Homer.

I got a life bird (spruce grouse!), got to see some other really special birds (Aleutian tern, tufted puffin, varied thrush, harlequin duck, and Northwestern crow), met a lot of new friends, judged a bird-calling contest, helped out a couple dozen young birders in a competition, experienced an earthquake, witnessed a birds and beers bash, participated in a beginning birders walk, gave my keynote talk, and played a lot of music.

BT3 with two of the members of the Fledgling Birders group in Homer.

I created a podcast episode for "This Birding Life" about my experience in Homer. If you give it a listen, I'll bet it'll make you want to head north to Homer. As I found out during my visit, Homer is the center of the universe—we're just not sure which universe.

"This Birding Life" is sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics and hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest.

For more information about the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival, visit the Homer Chamber of Commerce website at www.homeralaska.org.

New Podcast Episode: "Voices of Argentina!"

Magellanic woodpecker, female.

I've just finished episode #46 of my "This Birding Life" podcast, entitled "Voices of Argentina." In this episode I interview a variety of interesting folks whom I encountered during a recent birding trip to Argentina. We talk about birds (of course), culture, food, music, the landscape, and many other things.

Scanning the Iberá Wetlands.

Music and birds are the two largest rivers running through my life so I'm really happy to be able to include some Argentine music in this episode. The style of music is called Chamamé and it's a meeting or blending of the folk music of Europe (German accordion and Spanish guitar) and the Guaraní people of Argentina. We were entertained one evening by a duo playing Chamamé  and singing while some local dancers showed us the typical moves associated with each song. And all this was occurring while we were being fed a traditional Argentine asada meal of grilled meats and vegetables. Plus the famed Argentine wine. A memorable night indeed.

Duo playing Chamamé.

After they'd played two sets of music the band even let me play a bit during their break. Another thrill and yet another country where I've had the good fortune to bond with fellow musicians. After the show we exchanged CDs and hearty handshakes.

As you'll hear in the podcast, we birded in just two regions of Argentina (which is a huge country): the northeast around the large Iberá Wetlands Preserve and in the central southwest in the Andean foothills of Patagonia. The birding was incredible in both regions. Special avian treats included Andean condor, many-colored rush-tyrant, Magellanic woodpecker, greater rhea, and horned screamer. We saw a total of about 230 species during our 10-day trip, though, as our wonderful guides noted repeatedly, we were not there at the height of the birding season.

Greater rheas.

Andean condors.

If you are interested in learning more about birding in Argentina, please visit the travel page we've set up on the Bird Watcher's Digest website: www.birdwatchersdigest.com/travel/argentina. This page has links to Argentina's main tourism websites as well as links to the paces we visited, including lodging.

Drinking maté with Starsky, Dominic, and Tim.

My special thanks go out to Tim Appleton of the British Birdwatching Fair who invited me on the trip. And to Pablo Cagnoni from Inprotur, the organizer of the trip in Argentina, as well as to our wonderful guides, hosts, drivers, and planners.

Birding on a large estáncia in Patagonia with our lead guides Scarlett (dark hat) and Eugenia (second from left).

My fellow travelers on the Argentina adventure were Niklas Aronsson of Vår Fågelvärld (Our Birding World magazine in Sweden), Dominic Couzens (a popular and prolific nature writer in the UK), Matthew Merritt (editor of Bird Watching magazine (the original) in the UK). Click on their names to find out more about them.

From left: BOTB, Niklas, Tim, Dominic, and Matt.

Thanks for reading and listening!

Amazon Kingfisher! New Podcast Episode.

The famous Amazon kingfisher!

There's a neat new episode of my "This Birding Life" podcast available. This one is an interview with Jeff Bouton, the amazing birder who found the Amazon kingfisher during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival last November about an hour east of Harlingen, Texas.

Jeff Bouton

 Many of you may know Jeff from his current role as a product specialist in the birder/naturalist markets for Leica Sport Optics. He's been to almost every birding festival in North America serving as a speaker, birding guide, and expert on digiscoping. Before that he was a field researcher doing bird surveys, a professional hawk watcher, and even a purveyor of the indoor sport known as karaoke. ALL of these experiences helped to mold Jeff into the top-notch field birder that he is today. His keen observation skills, honed over years in the field, were the reason he noticed something unusual about a kingfisher he saw perched on a tree as he drove past last November. Most of us might have passed it off as a poor look at a belted kingfisher. Not Jeff. He turned the car around to look again at the odd bird... and the rest is history.

Crowds of birders immediately converged on the roadside wetlands where the kingfisher was found.

Over the next few weeks, the Amazon kingfisher that Jeff found—only the second one ever recorded in the United States—was seen and enjoyed by thousands of people. The bird may have moved on, but Jeff's amazing find will be talked about for decades.

Have a listen to this new episode "Jeff Bouton and the Amazon Kingfisher" which is free to download over at Podcast Central as well as in the iTunes podcast library. At either of these links you can also enjoy any of the previous 44 podcast episodes. All for free!

 

"This Birding Life" is brought to you through the generous sponsorship of Carl Zeiss Sports Optics.

New Podcast Episode: MBS Speaker Highlights

 

Episode 44 of my podcast "This Birding Life" is now available for your ears and eyes. This one features short excerpts from seven different speakers at the 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium. I wish I could have shared ALL of the speakers' programs, but it's probably best that you appreciate these things in person. Featured in this episode of TBL are portions of presentations by Jen Brumfield, George Armistead, Sharon Stiteler, Sara Morris, Scott Shalaway, Mark Cocker, and Al Batt.

 I hope you enjoy it. And while we're talking about the Midwest Birding Symposium, you can get on the pre-registration list for the 2015 MBS which will be held in Bay City, Michigan, September 10-13, 2015. We'll be co-hosting the event with Michigan Audubon and, in case you were wondering, Bay City is a charming town with lots of great birding sites nearby.


Thanks for listening!