That’s me! In honor of the Grue Jay I came up with a list of other potential hybrids that’d have cool names. Mt favorite was Smooth-billed Ani x Groove-billed Ani aka the Smooth Groove Ani aka The Steely Dan Ani.

Has anyone ever seen a hybrid of Blue-winged Teal and Green-winged Teal and why isn't it called a Teal-winged Teal?

Suck it robots!

Join Nate Swick and Kelly Smith for a fun weekend of birding in Fort Myers, Florida! Registration is now open for the October ABA Community Weekend in Fort Myers!

If you require a distraction from The Horrors, you could listen to @captaintimh.bsky.social @n8swick.bsky.social and I deliver the hottest takes in birding, including my plan to weaponize swans. www.aba.org/09-41-take-i...

I just bought $160 worth of nature books for $60 including shipping. I didn't need them. But I got them anyway. The new edition of the Collins guide to Europe is in here, by the way.

Not to spoil this week's Take it or Leave it episode of the American Birding Podcast, but we manage references to The Simpsons, Futurama, Arrested Development, AND Back to the Future in there.

Atlantic Puffin, Tufted Puffin, Horned Puffin.

So against my better judgment I'll probably watch this. I worry, though. www.hallmarkchannel.com/adventures-i...

I recorded an interview with novelist Amy Tan the other day for an upcoming ABA podcast episode, and I'm pretty sure she's the first guest on the American Birding Podcast who has been featured on The Simpsons.

I'm just happy that my home state of NC got two native species here.

I have downloaded the Avilist excel spreadsheet of birds of the world and it is clearly an impressive amount of work, but it is so huge that it makes my computer run like a steam engine and takes 10 minutes to search for one bird.

Only one week left for participants of the North American Breeding Bird Survey to complete their routes for the 2025 season! Don’t forget to enter your data online and mail in a physical copy of your data sheets and route map when you’re finished. The sooner the better!

Lots of stuff getting tossed from this bill but as far as I can tell, the elimination of the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area, which includes the Bird Banding Lab and the Breeding Bird Survey, is still in there. Would love to hear otherwise if anyone knows more.

Four year late but Hot Limpkin Summer finally reached Greensboro, NC.

It’s important to remember that every one of these rocket explosions is a massive pollution event of the coast and ocean.

"It’s for brainstorming, it’s for extrapolating, it’s for helping me come up with 20 ideas for different questions" Motherfucker that's what TAKING WALKS is for!

Yup

The release of the new AviList, the latest attempt to create a standardized bird taxonomy, has radicalized me into an IOC zealot. Sadly, eBird will adopt this mess and we'll be stuck with it unless I go back to a spreadsheet list.

This equates to approximately 764.8 years of funding the Breeding Bird Survey.

I was taking summer courses at college and was up at 3 AM watching this game in my shitty off campus duplex. Immediately afterwards I jumped on my bike to go to the library computer lab to read media reactions. What a time.

🤷

The potential deletion of 100 years of bird banding, breeding bird survey, and various other survey data would cripple bird conservation efforts not only in the US, but in the entire hemisphere.

When I officiate rec league soccer games for children I won’t even accept a post game juice box from a team because of the potential appearance of impropriety.

Look, if you want to work birding into a murder mystery the way to do it is to have the murderer get caught because they found a county bird at the site where they dumped the body and created an eBird checklist for it.

Watching a murder mystery where birdwatchers have murdered each other, possibly over who can see the Rare Bird Du Jour. What these shows get wrong is that 99.9% of birders, if you express even the slightest interest, will drag you over hill and dale to SHOW you the bird.

When I was a senior in high school I dressed as the pope for a halloween night marching band performance so in a very real sense I was actually the first american pope.

They’re coming for the Breeding Bird Survey, managed by USGS.

Next week's American Birding Podcast features Rosemary Mosco who is a lovely human and her new book The Birding Dictionary is not only very very funny but an important and effective outreach tool.

Scenes from a morning at Pinckney Island NWR in SC.

Thanks to your support we have the #1 Book in the Birds category! timberpress.com/titles/dexte... 🪶

Loved hanging with @n8swick.bsky.social on one of the best birding podcasts out there. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

in case you're wondering, "what's the harm in claiming an extinct species has been brought back from the dead" when it most certainly has not, our interior secretary is already using it to justify taking animals off the endangered species list

I was on CTV Edmonton Morning this week talking about spring migration and actions people can take to help birds at this time of year. @birdscanada.bsky.social #birds www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/vid...

Everyone wants there to be a grand scheme behind all of this but the terrible truth is that extremely stupid people are in charge and they have a fanatical devotion to wrong, childlike concepts of society and economics cooked up by right wing radio hosts in order to sell tainted dietary supplements

Bruh. I’ve had group chats about sensitive bird sightings more secure than the one between our VP and Secretary of Defense

"As I write, the sun is rising on a nearly perfect spring morning, replete with caroling robins and ravens already on the wing. The day is marred only by the absence of my good friend Victor Emanuel, whose too brief tenure on this planet ended 11 March 2025." www.aba.org/victor-emanu...

Alexa is a narc.

Duke's sarcoma center saved my son. Not exaggeration. The cancer board found the right treatment for his rare situation only b/c the hospital attracted world-class docs & researchers, almost exclusively funded by NIH. The people pulling this funding are fucking ghouls. apnews.com/article/trum...

Tom Johnson was a prolific contributor to our publications, mentor, guide, and all around friend to many at the ABA. Read Doug Gochfeld's remembrance of Tom in North American Birds, offered open access to the public in Tom's memory: tinyurl.com/p7bvv25h

Contupus borealis (Olive-sided Flycatcher) rename. Tired: Boreal Pewee Wired: Big Top Pewee

$50 to any Democrat in the House who introduces the Shut Up About Canada, You Pumpkin-Spiced Freak Act

It was an absolute delight to talk with @n8swick.bsky.social for the latest episode of The American Birding Podcast. We chatted about the history of bird data, my Binoculars to Binomials course, and how birders might embrace creative data viz. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Always such a honor and pleasure to be on this podcast and just talk #birds! Also cheers to everyone who plays along with “Birds are amazing!” 🍻 HT @n8swick.bsky.social @jodyallair.bsky.social

It is both breaking my heart and making me incandescently angry that one of the few silver linings of covid is the rapid progression of mRNA vaccine treatments for cancers - right as the GOP has declared all out War both on science as a whole and on mRNA vaccines specifically.

Accidentally fired the guys running the nuclear program. Accidentally fired experienced air traffic controllers. Accidentlly fired the people trying to contain the bird flu.... Accidentally fired...

A good general epistemic rule of thumb: If you have spent a few hours or weeks studying an area large numbers of smart, educated people have worked in for decades, and you believe you have discoverer an earthshattering truth they all missed, your default should be to regard this as VERY unlikely.

I know it's small in the whole scheme of things, but the bloodbath at NPS in Hawaii is almost certainly going to lead directly to the extinctions of no fewer than 4 native Hawaiian songbirds in the next 4-5 years.

I enjoy schadenfreude as much as the next guy, but the response to these sorts of stories is "It is terrible what is happening to you. What are you going to do to help us fix it?" And if at that point they still can't get over the need to "own the libs", *then* you can say fuck 'em.