Wow that was incredible. I wish Nils and Mark lived in Canada we could benefit from their gifts. ❤

Great interview and program--Congrats Joe and David

👍Great interview, I learned a lot, thank you!

Really interesting.

Evening Grosbeak is on the British List, Highland 1980 and St Kilda 1969.

3:08 What a beautiful bird 🦅

Is that Wandle trail in the background? It looks like Wandle trail in Mitcham

Thanks both of you and also Joe's mother for this deeply touching honesty! Nature saved and continues to save my life since my childhood. Not having made really loving and reliable relationships in the human world, having a neurodivers brain, nature and contact with animals became my HOME. Exactly this reliability and constancy, what you are talking about, matters profoundly. Nature is just there, puts no expectations on you and there is this communication and connection without words, which I appreciate most. Thanks, Joe, for writing such an honest and brilliant book, thanks for the way you are! Thanks your Granddad, Mother for their support and the birds for showing you the way!

This is superb, thoroughly enjoyable

This is the most inspirational nature supporting video interview I have ever seen.

That's wild, I just passed Jen in the hallway at work today. I knew about the passionate naturalist side, but had no idea about the avid, accomplished and respected birder!

I really loved the insight this gave me - I found your channel a couple of months ago and I can't say how much I appreciate listening to yourself and the passionate guests! Thank you.

Urban birding looks amazing!

Great conversation! What this decision by the AOS has produced so far is mostly rancor, ridicule, and division. When I'm in the field and someone raises the subject, the response is mostly laughter, jokes, and eye rolls. I feel like one point was not adequately addressed: this whole thing started with activism. Young activists decided to target bird names with the political goal of "decolonization" of the language as an objective. If you listened to the people originally demanding this change you'll find this aspect is very evident. They succeeded in getting the ear of politically sympathetic leadership at the AOS. This doesn't represent birders as a whole, but is strongly supported by a segment of birders who are mostly younger and who find this activism appealing. Catering to them has divided the birding community, not for the better. Kenn Kaufman has criticized the signatories to the petition against the AOS decision for being too old. I find this amazingly ageist, and it ignores that birders as a demographic do skew older. I think in siding with a vocal activist minority made up of the least experienced birders, the AOS has only managed to divide the birding community in an unnecessarily destructive way. And they've made it clear that they don't care whether the majority supports their decision or not.

Super-enthusiastic and full of beans - what a superb guest.

What a thoughtful, knowledgeable and modest birder - a most enchanting guest.

Nice chat guys, would love to catch-up when either of you are near Brisbane, Queensland in the future....have either of you had any involvement with BirdNET or Birdweather? Fascinating new stuff....

Drew is so interesting I would love to hear more from him

This was very interesting can we have a return visit ?

Please can Alvaro come back and talk again he was very interesting 😊

Great stuff! Finally a common kingfisher in a Spanish birding video! We're coming to Spain in April looking forward to it!

Another belter of an interview! Really enjoyed the discussion. I particularly like ATM’s mistle thrush and sparrowhawk where the colour of the brick blends with the plumage of the birds. If every school had a bird depicted on one of its walls, we’d soon have a nation of birders.

Superb footage. The owls have a very 'Yeah, you've seen us, can you GO now?' kinda vibe to them!

1:09:01 This is the situation that I so poorly represented about the right to name birds during the talk. From Kevin Zimmer. “The idea that “no figure is without sin, so let’s cast them all out” (or, “some are bad, so all must go”) strikes me as absurd. In 1997, I published a paper showing that what was considered a single species, the Rusty-backed Spinetail, in fact, included a somewhat cryptic (in appearance) second species with a very different voice, that was restricted to successional vegetation on white water river islands, with a distribution that was entirely parapatric to that of the greater population of Rusty-backed Spinetail. This population already had a Latin trinomial (subspecific) name, but it needed a new English name. Lacking any distinctive morphological features that readily lent themselves to a descriptive name, being just one of many sympatric species of river island inhabiting spinetails, and occupying a geographic range completely surrounded by the range of the species from which it was being split, left no obvious choices for an English name. So, given the timing (following the untimely death of Theodore A. Parker III in a plane crash while conducting conservation biology in Ecuador), and the venue of the publication (the AOU Monograph dedicated to the memory of Parker and commemorating his transformative influence on Neotropical Ornithology), I decided to name Cranioleuca vulpecula “Parker’s Spinetail” as a nod to Parker’s role in being among the first to shed light on the unique river island avifauna of Amazonia, and, because my initial recognition of vulpecula as representing a distinct biological species came through discrimination of differences in its vocalizations versus those of other populations of “Rusty-backed Spinetails”, a skill in which Parker had few, if any peers. So, according to the stated philosophy of the Bird Names for Birds movement, and endorsed by the EBNC, Parker’s name should be stripped from Cranioleuca vulpecula because: 1) Ted was descended from colonizers [This, conveniently ignoring the fact that the original Theodore A. Parker from whom Ted was a direct descendent, was, in fact, a Unitarian preacher and one of the most important figures of the early American abolitionist movement, and a funder of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. His 1852 sermon “Justice and the Conscience'' inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This, is exactly the fascinating sort of lineal ornithological history that the anti-eponym crowd is threatening to erase.]; 2) Indigenous people may have had their own names for vulpecula; 3) the honorific name somehow implies “ownership”, thereby disrespecting not only Indigenous cultures who may have known the bird first, but also disrespecting the bird itself; 4) the names of birds should reflect the “true essence of the bird itself” not, be named after humans; and 5) the application of a name honoring a colonizer or lineal descendent thereof is somehow exclusionary to historically and currently underrepresented groups, and presents a real barrier to their participation in birding, ornithology and conservation. Furthermore, we are led to believe that the solution to this egregious act of social injustice is not only to expunge the name Parker from C. vulpecula (simultaneously casting off the yoke of colonial oppression and restoring the innate dignity and respect to the poor, aggrieved little spinetail - but to say that I, as the first Western ornithologist to recognize the distinctiveness of vulpecula at the species-level, and to bring attention to those differences, quantify them, and publish them, should have no say in what to call it, just because I too, am descended from colonizers and therefore, at least an indirect beneficiary of past colonial transgressions. Instead, the naming process will be turned over to a committee of people who know nothing about C. vulpecula, but who will be properly sensitive to all possible conflicts and concerns of every possible “stakeholder” (In the view of the EBNC, apparently, everyone is a stakeholder EXCEPT descendants, particularly male descendants, of Western Europeans), and, who, after appropriate expansive participation and input by the general public (at least 90% of whom probably will have no personal experience with C. vulpecula), will then bestow an English name on C. vulpecula that is egalitarian, inoffensive, respectful to the bird, and captures its essence in a way that will be helpful to beginning birders.”

Great podcast! There's a conservationist called Gavin Gamble who wrote an absolutely fantastic article about swifts that Chris Packham raves about and he's rightly described Gavin as a 'top bloke' too. Worthwhile looking up - yes Mark's books are brilliant I've got a copy of 'Our Place' right next to me as I type this.

Thoroughly enjoyable! Thanks for this Mark and David!!

I've had the incredible good fortune to be lead by Killian on a Wings tour in Lesvos, Greece. As David pointed out, his ID skills are unparalleled and very impressive. I share Mr. Mullarney's curiosity and interest in evolution in nature. With very few exceptions (mutations), it is not haphazard or random. There is a specific reason why birds - or any plant or animal - are shaped and colored the way they are. Science aside, not only is Mr. Mullarney very learned, he's a very nice man!

One point to add to my commentary on new research by Bob Fosbury on the health impacts of daylight deprivation. In the live cut and thrust of discussion I confused the light required by our mitochondria. it is not ultraviolet light, something that can be harmful to life, but INFRARED light. without which mitochondria are less healthy. In short we need to be in daylight and to be outside to achieve true well being.

Great recording David, just finished reading Tales From Concrete Jungles. Have just taken up bird watching at age 69 after retiring and you are a great guide as to what to follow and read. Thank You.

For that Hummingbird with the Red Tie contact Jefferson Bob in Potosi, Ceara, Brazil. He is on You Tube. The home of this bird is in Chapada Diamentina in Bahia, Brazil.

Congratulations. Did you have a Beija Flor do Gravata Vermelha?

bird

I believe there is a bat called a Flying Fox. That has "flying" in the name and does actually fly, not just glide. Maybe he forgot about that one. - from Kristin in Calgary, Canada.

An inspirational presentation,thank you

Hello Sir!

Definitely will be reading the book. Thanks!

Interesting that peahens hear the display of the peacock. - from Kristin in Calgary in Canada.

Impressive and intriguing how Dr Bakker and her colleagues are pushing back frontiers of knowledge in almost unimaginable ways. She is fluent and comprehensive in her replies to Urbie’s challenging questions. Her new book seems like a ‘must’.

I have bought the books a few months ago. Absolutely impressive! What a hell of a job!!! Thank you for that.

Marvelous conversation!

Hugely impressive and it's surely a game changer. For birders that are genuinely excited by the challenge of identification, this is obviously a must have. Roll on to the publication of the English edition!

Glad I managed to catch up with this webinar. Excellent talk by Mike Toms as usual - sorry I couldn't join live. I was very privileged to be asked to contribute to the first book - Red 67. Fantastic project! So pleased that bird/nature organisations are finally seeing the value of communicating through the arts in addition to the usual scientific avenues. Thank you! :-)

What a wondrous project!

fascinating - great interview

I want to get in touch with Ian Parsons regarding some very strange coincidences. Could you let me know of a possible way to contact him?

great work, Alice

enjoyed this - thanks guys

great stuff

thanks again, David. a real pleasure talking to you about this.

Hudson is an extraordinary character - thanks to Conor for telling his story. Unsung hero is absolutely right.