It’s the last Thursday of the month of May and that means it is time to bring on a panel of birding friends to talk about bird news and goings on on the American Birding Podcast. And it’s another excellent panel this month featuring Mollee Brown, Nicole Jackson, and Ryan Mandelbaum talking Lesser Prairie-Chicken delisting, fire loving birds, and bird safe windows among other things. 

LInks to topics discussed in this episode:

House committee votes to delist the Lesser Prairie-Chicken

Incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for rapid post-fire management: A woodpecker case study

230K birds die annually by smashing into NYC windows. A new bill aims to save them.

Despite being such a charismatic bird, there are very few books about our 2023 Bird of the Year Belted Kingfisher, but this week's guest Marina Richie has written one. Her 2022 title, Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher documents the seven years she spent watching a pair of kingfishers near her home in Missoula, Montana, and her relationship with the birds and with herself. She also writes about it in an upcoming issue of Birding magazine

Also, Nate is back from the Biggest Week in American Birding

In 2016, Arjan Dwarshuis undertook a massive birding year that took him from his home in the Netherlands to 6 continents, 41 countries, and just over 6,800 species of birds. His global big year was a massive feat, breaking the record set, at the time, by Noah Strycker only a year earlier. He wrote about his adventure in a book, and forgive me for this, Een bevlogan jaar, translated this year into Egnlish as The Big Year that Flew By. He joins us to look back on that year. 

Also, join Nate for a panel discussion in Philadelphia next week! And listeners can support this podcast and the ABA's programs and missions by contributing to our 2023 Nesting Season Appeal. 

2023 ABA Lifetime Achievement Awardee Peter Pyle has probably been one of the most influential American ornithologists of the last few decades. His Identification Guide to North American Birds, informally known as “the Pyle Guides”, are widely known as the banding bible, and remain some of the most informative and intimidating bird books on birders’ shelves. The much anticipated second edition of which came out this year. But the's also the chair of the ABA Checklist Committee, and was central to the effort to shepherd the birds of the Hawaiian Islands, at long last, onto the ABA Checklist. He joins us to talk about the new books, checklist committees, and Hawaii. 

Also, join us in Philadelphia next weekend for an event with the Drexel University Academy of Natural Sciences. 

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