Bring Birds Back

This season has been all about the mutual impact birds, humans and nature have on each other. To close it out, Bill McKibben joins Tenijah for an honest chat about the future, nearly 35 years after his book debut, “The End of Nature” first sounded the alarm about climate change. He also talks about his organization, Third Act, that encourages fellow Baby Boomers to be leaders and allies to younger...

This is part two of our series on the Sustainability in Prisons Project. If you haven’t heard part one already, we encourage you to listen to that first. Tenijah learns all about Sustainability in Prisons Project’s most successful program to date: rehabilitating the federally endangered Taylor’s Checkerspot Butterfly. Find out how the incarcerated participants at Mission Creek Corrections Center a...

The American prison system is complex and there are so many reasons as to why and how it could be improved. For nearly two decades, the Sustainability in Prisons Project (a collaboration between Evergreen State College and Washington state’s Department of Corrections) has been doing just that — and with visible results. In this two-part episode, we venture into Cedar Creek and Mission Creek Correc...

Nature author, photographer and self-taught birder Dudley Edmondson shares how embracing the great outdoors as a child changed his life for the better. With over 30 years of experience, Dudley has dedicated much of his career encouraging Black and Brown people, especially, to venture into nature as refuge from daily societal pressures and microaggressions. Dudley shares why he’s so adamant about a...

This episode’s guest may be too young to remember the 90’s children’s show, Gullah Gullah Island , but he’s certainly influencing the next generation the same! Isaiah Scott, a rising Gen-Z bird-influencer and ornithologist, reconnects with Tenijah to dish all about his journey into birding while young, Black and curious. He also shares how his Gullah Geechee heritage continues to inspire his work,...

Childhood nostalgia, anyone? Tenijah reminisces about her favorite bird moment in a film and learns all about how it came to be! Our guest this episode is Tony Suffredini, a bird trainer and master falconer, but the real stars are all Hollywood trained professionals – his birds! Tony shares how he got into bird training, how he prioritizes the health and safety of his feathered family on set and h...

Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days – for better or for worse. Luckily, in the case of our feathered friends, it’s good news! In this episode, Tenijah speaks with three experts (starting with Garry George and Katie Umekubo) about the great environmental gains of wind energy – and their unfortunate contribution to the decline of birds. But all hope is not lost – in fact, there’s an e...

In the season 4 premiere, we’re joined by wildlife advocate, ornithologist and (social media star) birder, Corina Newsome! Tenijah speaks with Corina about the latest findings in the State of the Birds report, the impact of environmental racism on urban communities and birds, and the uber important 2023 Farm Bill. Plus, they get into the weeds about why a zero-sum mentality could be to blame for a...

Love is in the air and we’re not talking about your $4.99 Valentine’s Day balloon! For this special episode of Bring Birds Back, we dive into all things bird love! Doves may be the universal bird symbol for love, but romance in the bird world is happening all around. Our guest Wenfei Tong shares various ways birds are wooing each other by song, dance, gifts, and more. From choosy lovers like the L...

In order for us to show up for birds, we must first show up for ourselves. Our show is all about ways we can help our bird friends, but today we’re looking at how birds and nature can help restore us. Over the past few decades, researchers have found strong links between our connection to the outdoors and our mental and physical health. Deja Perkins , an urban ecologist, science communicator, and...

Clark’s Nutcracker and the whitebark pine have a strong mutualistic relationship: the tree is the bird’s best source of food, and the bird is the tree’s most dependable seed disperser. But several factors are putting the tree at risk — and the decline in whitebark pines is making that partnership less stable. Peri Sasnett, a ranger at Glacier National Park and co-host of the park’s podcast Headwat...

Since Tenijah began birding, a lot of questions have come up about why birds do some of the strange things that they do. Writer and biologist Wenfei Tong joins Tenijah to answer some burning questions about what’s going on with our bird friends – questions about different parenting styles to reasons why we noticed birds more during the pandemic, and of course, the question plaguing all of us, are...

Maya Higa is a 24 year old streamer, falconer, and sole founder of Alveus Sanctuary , a wildlife reserve outside of Austin, TX. What's unusual about Alveus is its digital footprint — it's "a virtual conservation education center facility" primarily found on Twitch where Maya streams to teach viewers about the animals and conservation challenges they face. This novel approach to conservation and sc...

For Halloween, corvid researcher Kaeli Swift joins Tenijah for a show-and-tell of spooky birds. Corvids, vultures, and owls all have reputations as ominous and foreboding — and today, we’re digging into those ideas. Kaeli unpacks why the birds are seen as scary, shares cool facts beyond their mysterious façade, and explores conservation opportunities to help these birds.   More info and transcript...

So many of the challenges facing birds are systemic, bigger than what any one person can fix — so how do we get governments to step in and do something? Tykee James , a Sr. Government Relations Representative for The Wilderness Society, has approached this issue in a creative way: by organizing bird walks around the U.S. Capitol. These walks bring in staffers and legislators from across the countr...

Tenijah has been on a birding journey since she was drawn into bird watching at the start of the pandemic — and now, she’s inspiring new birders with Bring Birds Back . For our season finale, Tenijah talks to two of the heroes who inspired her : Tracy Clayton and Ashley C. Ford . They’re podcasters and writers, and they love birds and talk about them on social media or in their work. Tenijah wants...

People with disabilities often face barriers to birding. These can be infrastructural and cultural. The organization Birdability is addressing those barriers by raising awareness, crowdsourcing information on what trails and birding spots are already accessible (or what other locations need to do to improve), advocating for these changes, and building community for disabled people in birding. Teni...

Since her bird journey began, Tenijah’s been learning how to be a better birder —but not just with new birding skills. There’s also the important lesson of how to be an “ethical birder” or treating the birds with respect. Tenijah talks to writer Martha Harbison about “the rules” of birding and how we can be more thoughtful to our feathered friends. But these rules can also be twisted and weaponize...

If we want as many people caring for birds as possible, we need people to not only become interested, but to have mentorship and community available for them. Tenijah speaks with Jeana Fucello and Kasia Chmielinski from the Feminist Bird Club , a birding group centered around being an inclusive, thoughtful home for birders who oth erwise wouldn’t have community. The organization has chapters acros...

Purple Martins and people have a long history. Native Americans started a practice of providing homes for the birds, which was copied by European colonizers. But those colonizers released invasive species and cleared habitats to the point that the species is entirely reliant on man-made housing. Tenijah talks to Kelly Applegate, Director of Natural Resources for the Mille-Lacs band of Ojibwe about...

Names have power. In North America, more than 100 species of birds have eponymous names, many honoring white colonizers. The “Bird Names for Birds” movement to change these names, or “verbal statues,” can be traced to Ph. D candidate Robert Driver’s 2018 proposal about the Thick-billed Longspur (then called McCown’s Longspur, named for a confederate general). More bird name changes are coming, alb...

Migratory birds use starlight to find their way on their long journeys — which makes light pollution a serious threat. Drawn off course by bright, artificial lighting, birds can wind up fatally colliding with windows or wasting precious time and energy that they need to survive. “Lights Out” programs get cities and their residents to turn off nonessential lighting during migration seasons which ca...

Tenijah got hooked on birding at the start of the pandemic, and during the last season of Bring Birds Back she learned a lot about our feathered friends. This season, she’s ready to learn and share more simple ways to help birds — while discovering new birding skills from experts. After going birding with her mom and not seeing much, Tenijah wants to know how to better find and identify birds arou...

In our season finale, Tenijah to Tybee Island off the Georgia coast for a day at the beach... picking up trash. She joins Tim Arnold, founder of Tybee Clean Beach Volunteers, to see first hand how plastics and trash can pose a threat to migratory shorebirds and marine life. And she speaks with Kelly Martin, Texas Coastal Outreach Coordinator at American Bird Conservancy, about some of the actions...

Host Tenijah Hamilton hears firsthand from coffee grower Oswaldo Acevedo in Colombia how shade-grown coffee farms offer better wildlife habitat and working conditions than most industrial coffee plantations. She speaks to Ruth Bennett and Justine Bowe from the Smithsonian Institute Migratory Bird Center about the science behind the Bird Friendly Coffee certification, how bird friendly coffee growe...