The last Thursday of September means that it's time for another This Month in Birding, featuring friends from around the birding world gathering to talk about interesting bird news and science from the last month or so. This time around we welcome Frank Izaguirre, Andres Jimenez, and Sarah Swanson to talk about Barred Owls, baby cowbirds, and our favorite bird conservation success stories.

Links to items discussed in this episode:

Suddenly Birding Is the Hot-Girl Hobby of the Year

Taking Action to Avoid Extinction: Successful Regional-Scale Lethal Control of Barred Owls Supports a Federal Strategy to Save Spotted Owls

How a Parasitic Bird With No Parents Learns What Species It Is

North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species

The surprising recovery of once-rare birds

How many bird and mammal extinctions has recent conservation action prevented?

A Big Year is maybe the ultimate expression of birding obsession, with all the drama inherent to the effort. Brothers Quentin and Owen Reiser’s attempt at a Big Year maybe most of all. It’s the subject of their documentary, Listers, an attempt to throw themselves into the birding world through perhaps the most extreme expression of the hobby. It’s profane, it’s funny, it's honest, and it covers all aspects of the birding world, warts and all. Owen joins us to talk about the film and his experience undertaking what he calls a "fully dirtbag Big Year". Plus there's a companion book!

Also, check out the ABA's biweekly What's This Bird show on YouTube!

For more than 40 year the National Geographic Field Guide has been an essential text in the library of US and Canadian birders. The venerable series is in its 8^th edition now, published as East and West earlier this year and as as guide from coast to coast just recently. Ted Floyd, a regular on this podcast, is the author, but a field guide is only as good as its illustrations. Former Bird of the Year artist Andrew Guttenberg is the art coordinator for this series as it takes a turn into the 21^st Century and he joins us to talk about it. 

Also, have you seen the new Listers documentary?

Gray-headed Chickadee is certainly one of the most enigmatic species of breeding birds in the ABA Area. Though it is found broadly across northern Eurasian it was, until very recently, also known from an isolated breeding population in northern Alaska and far northwestern Canada. Those bird, long a bucket list objective for ABA Area birders, might be gone, and the reasons for that are unclear. Alaska birder and conservationist Brad Meiklejohn explores their disappearance in the Lost on the Frontier: The Mysterious Disappearance of North America’s Rarest Breeding Bird, published in the July 2025 issue of Birding magazine, and he joins us to talk more about this avian mystery. Stay tuned for a publicly accessible version of this article. 

Also, the auction featuring some of our past Bird of the Year cover art is up and running!