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 8th 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 21st Century and he joins us to talk about it.

Also, have you seen the new Listers documentary?

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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!

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It's This Month in Birding for August 2025 and, as we do at the end of every month, we’ve got a great panel of birders to discuss the month’s birding news and scientific publications. Jason Hall, Mikko Jimenez, and Jordan Rutter join host Nate Swick to talk about grackle behavior, museums, and our very favorite penguins.

Links to articles discussed in this episode:

The Rodrigues parakeet's last day: What one extinct bird tells us about the role of museums

Exploration and dispersal are key traits involved in rapid range expansion, urban bird study finds

Conservation sweet spots: How protecting nature helps both birds and humans in the US

Fighting isn’t sexy in lekking greater sage-grouse: a relational event model approach for mating interactions

Dagger beaks and strong wings: New fossils rewrite the penguin story and affirm NZ as a cradle of their evolution

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