The Big Year Podcast

A hardy welcome to summer birding and the return, after a break for migration, of The Big Year Podcast.  Seems silly of me to tell you the title of the show, since you must have known it when you clicked on the podcast to begin with.    Today, we have two guests.  Our first guest is Tobin Brown, who did a Nebraska Big Year, and broke the previous record for birds seen in the state for a single yea...

The year was 1969.  I was a month shy of my ninth birthday.  It was way past my bedtime, though it was only 10pm.  In my memory of the event, it was the middle of the night.  Along with my family, gathered around the black-and-white television in my parent's bedroom, we watched the broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing.  At 10:56pm EDT time we witnessed, along with the rest of the world, a grain...

The Big Year Podcast April 1, 2026   It is April 1, 2026, I’m Robert Baumander and welcome to season 4 of The Big Year Podcast.  My 4th season?  Really?  So glad to be back again.  Miss me?  It’s been an exciting journey and this season promises to be the best ever.  Maybe. Or not.  I’ll let you be the judge, when it’s all said and done, but boy am I looking forward to some of the guests I’ve alre...

Welcome to another episode of The Big Year Podcast.  I’m  your host and guide to the world of Big Year birding, Robert Baumander.  It’s December 1, 2025 and you’re listening to the Season Three Finale. That’s right, l have been blathering on now for nearly three years.  When I began this podcast in January of 2023, with my big year birding mentor, Sandy Komito, I had no idea where this would lead....

It’s a rainy day in Birderland. It’s October 30, 2025 and I am writing this on night before Halloween.  I won’t claim that this is going to be a spooky episode, but there are one or two scary birding stories from our guest Liam Ragan.  Liam broke the record for a Vancouver Island, British Columbia Big Year, but beyond that, he does a lot of fine conservation work out west, for the Rocky Point Bird...

It was the perfect way to begin The Big Year Podcast On the Road, Again, with discovery of a very rare bird, right here in my backyard, near Cambridge, Ontario.  A young birder by the name of Nathan Hood found a Spotted Redshank, a rare visitor lost on its way back from Eurasia.  Almost every birder I know in Ontario, from within 2 to 3 hours drive, has shown up to see this amazing rarity.  It’s S...

Welcome all to The Big Year Podcast.  I’m Robert Baumander and you’re, well, you.  It’s the end of July, 2025, and you know what that means?  Certainly an all new episode of the Big Year podcast, naturally, but mostly, we’re smack-dab in the heat of the summer and the lack-of-birds blues.  In July and August, it's more about the butterflies and bees than the birds in the trees.   It's hot, humid,...

Happy Canada Jay Day.  It’s July 1, 2025 and for most people it’s a holiday and a chance to  barbecue, picnic, get away from the house and watch or set off fireworks after dark.  For birders,(those poor souls that have to work for a living during the week), it’s a day to celebrate birds and go birding with friends, family, or just get away on your own and and listen to the summer breeding birds in...

Well, thank you once again for joining me on the Big Year podcast.  As May turns to June, spring migration is coming to a close. I've been busy all the merry month of May, birding in Long Point Provincial Park, where we got to see a Summer Tanager, Rondeau Provincial Parks for a Mourning Warbler, and Point Pelee National Park for Prothonotary Warblers and a Yellow-breasted Chat and Hillman Marsh f...

Happy Podcast day, one and all!  Welcome to back to The Big Year Podcast.  Thank you once again for joining me.   It’s April 15, 2025 and spring migration is well underway here in southwestern Ontario.  It’s actually a bit of a miracle that I finished this episode on time because the last 2 weeks have been very busy for me and my fellow birders.  It started with a Western Grebe in Port Credit, a B...

Yes, The Big Year Podcast is back. And after a long, cold, snowy winter, the temperatures are finally on the rise and the birds are finally on migration. It’s March 15, 2025 as I sit down to write this, I’m looking out my front window, here Brantford, Ontario to bright blue skies and hearing Northern Cardinals in full song, a sure sign of spring and the migration season to come. I hope you are all...

It is December of 2024 and we’ve come to the end of another season of The Big Year Podcast.  Welcome one and all as we look back on another year of birding or are looking forward to next year and possibly your own Big Year.  If so, let me know and we can have a chat, sometime.  I love to hear your stories, big or small.   Today, we have a mixed bag of birding guests.  Over the course of 2024 I've...

Well, it's Friday, November 7, 2024. I'm now five weeks late for my latest podcast, this episode with Joshua Gant, which was supposed to have appeared on October 1st. Well, I got busy in October, actually in September as well, and I started a project that kept me pretty busy. Not only was I building a set of cat shelves in the living room for the cats to play on this winter, I was building a dream...

Welcome, birders and non birders who have to put up with the birders in their lives, to the Big Year Podcast, with me, the one, the only,(thankfully), Robert Baumander.  As I sit and type this introduction, it is August 1, 2024 and the unofficial start of The Dog Days of Summer.  Actually, for birders in Ontario, at least, the birding really begins to slow down near the beginning of July.  But eve...

Today’s episode, features a trailblazer, who was the first woman to do a full out ABA Big Year and has been an inspiration to women in the birding world ever since she saw 723 species in 2008, one more than Sandy Komito’s first Big Year in 1986.  Lynn Barber is an author and artists and had done two Texas Big Years prior to her ABA Big Year and has since done Alaska and Wisconsin Big Years,  Her f...

Well, happy birding to everyone who has chosen to join me here today. It is Saturday, June 1st, 2024, as I type.  I'm Robert Baumander and this is The Big Year Podcast.  My guest is Brett Forsyth, who, in 2022, did a self-powered Big Year, which means he never got in the car to go to see any bird, only walking or cycling from home. So that was a grind of a Big Year because he cycled nearly every d...

Welcome back to The Big Year Podcast.  Sorry to have been gone so long, but birding seemed to drag me away from editing more often than not in April.  Not to mention that I was recovering from a severe hand injury, when I fell after seeing both Ross’s and Snow Geese in Burlington in March.  I hyper extended all the fingers on my right hand, using it to brace myself and protect my camera as tripped...

Hello there everybody,   Welcome back to The Big Year Podcast. This is part 2 of my chat with the new all time record holder for a Canada Big Year, Bruce DiLabio.  As I type this, it’s a sunny spring day in late March and the excitement of migration season is just around the corner.  It’s what all birders crave after a long, cold winter in the northern US and Canada. However, for those in the sout...

Hello Birders, welcome back to The Big Year Podcast.  I am so excited to be back for a second season.  I wasn’t sure we’d get renewed but the birds tweeted their approval and desire to hear from even more Big Year birders, so here I am and boy do I have a great line up of guests ready to share their stories. Over the course of the spring and summer, you will get to hear form Lynn Barber, the one o...

  Hello birders, and other non-feathered friends, and welcome to Episode 14 and the final episode of Season 1 of The Big Year Podcast.  I am thrilled to have Kelly-Sue O’Conner, who runs Birder Brains, who along with myself and many other birders, live with various mental health issues, including Attention Deficit-Hyperactive Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Post-concussion Syndrome.  In...

We are back. Welcome once again to the show about birders and their Big Years. I had the pleasure of speaking with Tiffany a while back and in a previous episode we were discussing the life changing events that accidentally pushed her into doing a Big Year in the Lower 48 states.  And today as we continue with our discussion we shall see how life changing doing a Big Year was for Tiffany.  At a cr...

Welcome to Episode 12 of The Big Year Podcast.   For those of you here for the first time, my name is Robert Baumander, but I spent 41 years as Captain Video for the Toronto Blue Jays.  Along the way I performed as a magician and Escape Artist, managed the computer system for Pizza Pizza, volunteered in elementary schools and The Hospital for Sick children doing magic and story telling and science...

And a hearty welcome to episode 11 of the Big Year Podcast. I'm Robert. Baumander, and I'm your guide to the life of the big year birding experience. Late in the year 2011, which seems like a lifetime ago, I saw a little movie called, not surprisingly, The Big Year.      One of my favorite actors, Steve Martin, was starring in it. I was also a fan of Jack Black and remembered him from way back whe...

Welcome to Part 4 of my 5 part series on the Birders of the Ontario 2022 Big Year. Today I will be talking to Ezra Campanelli who was one of the 3 birders that broke the all time record for species in an Ontario Big Year with 357 species seen.  He is one of a crop of young birders who are taking Ontario and the birding world by storm.  These young birders are so knowledgeable that they are teachin...

Welcome to Part 3 of my 5 episode series on the birders of the 2022 Ontario Big Year.  Three birders broke the all time record, including William Konze, who didn't even set out to do a Big Year, let alone break the record.  Though he didn't end up on top, his accomplishment is still a testament to his dedication and hard work. Travel in Ontario, which is even bigger than Texas, can be exhausting,...