It's spooky season and we have a terrifyingly good lineup for the This Month in Birding panel for October 2026. This month sees TMIB rookie Emmy Broeg along with veteran bird talkers Nick Lund and Tim Healy for discussions about birds in media, celebrity owls and eagles, googly eyed bouys and more!

LInks to articles discussed in this episode:

How Movies and TV Made Birdwatchers Uncool—and Then Cool Again

A rare family of barn owls moved into Manhattan's Upper West Side. New Yorkers are captivated

Wildlife Experts Stunned to Find That Bird Flu Killed Jackie, the Beloved, Internet-Famous Bald Eagle

Scientists develop 'floating scarecrow' to protect threatened seabirds

Bird attacks passengers at Chicago O'Hare Airport in Terminal 5: "It chose fight, not flight"

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Birders across the ABA Area are taking part in their state or province's Breeding Bird Atlas project, with 44 States and 8 provinces taking on the project to build a bigger and more precise look at where birds are. California is the latest, and the birdiest place to take it on so far, with an effort that started this year. Morgan Tingley and Sam Safran are part of the team that is organizing the project. They join me to talk about it.

Also, 2026 was a banner year for Great Lakes Piping Plovers!

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Birders know that the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Duck Stamp program is one of the most effective conservation initiatives in the US, but what of the Duck Stamps themselves? How are they chosen? What do judges look for? Why does one family always seem to win? This year Catherine Hamilton, a southern California based birder and artist, was given the responsibility of helping to choose the year's most enduring conservation image, and she joins host Nate Swick to talk about her experience.

Also, Nate is back from a great weekend with Birds Houston, and is looking forward to the ABA's next Community Weekend in Charleston, South Carolina.

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The recent split of our Mew Gulls into Short-billed Gull and Common Gull, in the Americas and Eurasia, respectively, has offered yet another complicated identification concern for dedicated gull-watchers to ponder. And ponder they have, in North American Birds, Common Gull in Eastern North America by Chicago area birder and author of The Gull GuideAmar Ayyash, takes a look at the status of Old World Common Gulls in the ABA Area, suggesting that there are mysteries hiding within the bird we used to call Mew Gull.

Also, birders should be on the lookout for a significant irruption of Rocky Mountain bird species into the lowlands. More at aba.org.

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There are a few lucky places in the ABA Area where parrots still fly free, even if most have captive origins these day. But these big loud flashy birds have a history and future than is perhaps more interesting than many birders might imagine and these feral populations can even give us some insights into the frequently threatened wild birds in Mexico and Central America. John McCormack, director of the Moore Lab of Zoology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, was one of the authors of a paper about how two closely related Amazon parrots in southern California more or less fit into the landscape together and he joined us in 2021 to talk about it.

Also, Nate returns from the St. Louis Community Weekend with stories about warblers and serendipitous swifts. Join us for our next community weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, in November!

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The last Thursday of the month means it's time for This Month in Birding. For September 2026, host Nate Swick welcomes Andres Jimenez, Mikko Jimenez, and Sarah Swanson to discuss real data in the bird name debate, Dodo intelligence, Ontario Plover news, tiny backpacks for birds and much more.

Links to items discussed in this episode:

Birds of many feathers? Examining perceptions among US birders following the American Ornithological Society's eponymous renaming decision

Federal government assessing threats to piping plovers in Wasaga Beach

Only two complete dodo skulls are known to exist. Scientists just looked inside them – and discovered this

Tiny backpacks reveal the secret, sometimes circuitous migrations of small songbirds

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El Niño is one of those strange climate phenomena that we're still trying to understand, particularly as it pertains to birds and birders, who are driven by and inspired by weather systems. This year's El Niño looks to be a particularly intense one, and birder and educator Tyler Wenzel explored it in a recent Field Ornithology piece on the ABA's website called Intense El Niño Sends Humboldt Current Seabirds to Central America. He joins us to explore it in more detail.

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Birding editor Ted Floyd joins host Nate Swick once again for another attempt to whittle down the Big Bird List using a random number generator. This episode of Random Birds features some widespread species that everyone has heard of, including a couple of common raptors and some eastern songbirds. Plus a swipe at Czech composer Antonin Dvorak that was a long time coming.

Also, some of 2026's most anticipated taxonomic changes were leaked from an unlikely source.

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