09-47: Birds and Board Games with Elizabeth Hargrave
The American Birding Podcast
naswick
4.7 • 677 Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do birding and board games have in common? More than you'd expect! Birder and game designer Elizabeth Hargrave has made it a mission to bring these two things together and her bird-themed game Wingspan does just that. Wingspan has been covered by the New York Times, Smithsonian, and Science magazine among other places and has managed to elicit interest at a time when enthusiasm among the general public for both birding and board games are at an all-time high. She joined host Nate Swick in 2019 me to talk about both.
Also, the Philadelphia Eagles are getting in the bird conservation business, which opens up opportunities for all sorts of bird and professional sports crossovers.
Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This episode of the American Birding podcast is brought to you by Erlem College. If you are a young |
| 0:04.9 | birder in your life is thinking about college, put Erlem on your list. Located on a major migration |
| 0:09.7 | flyway and surrounded by nature preserves, explore your passion with brilliant faculty through |
| 0:15.0 | research, field work, and travel around the globe. At Erlem, Science, Discovery, and Joy, take |
| 0:20.6 | flight. You can learn more at |
| 0:22.2 | earlm.edu slash birding. That's e-A-R-L-H-A-M dot edu slash birding. |
| 0:33.2 | Hello and welcome to the American Birding podcast from the American Birding Association. I'm |
| 0:38.0 | Nate Swick. More than any other city in North America, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is justifiably |
| 0:45.1 | the cradle of American ornithology, not only for the work of ornithologists like Charles Peel, |
| 0:51.0 | Alexander Wilson, and John James Audubon, the whole Academy of Natural Sciences |
| 0:55.6 | crew to the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, which was one of the very first hobby birding |
| 0:59.9 | clubs in the country, founded in 1890, but also to the modern-day birders and ornithologists |
| 1:05.8 | from the region. Even the city's many sports teams call back to this avian heritage, the NHL's Philadelphia |
| 1:12.9 | Flyers. I mean, come on. Baseball's Phillies, obviously named after the Vario. The 76ers of the |
| 1:20.0 | NBA named, I assume, for the high count of American Widens at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. |
| 1:25.8 | And more than that, football's, Philadelphia Eagles, the birds, as they're known to their |
| 1:32.2 | Kelly Green-clad fans. |
| 1:34.4 | Yes, Philadelphia has given a lot to birds and birding. |
| 1:37.8 | And the birds, by which I mean the current Super Bowl champion Eagles, are going even farther |
| 1:42.8 | with a new birds supporting birds initiative with the new Birds Supporting Birds |
| 1:44.7 | Initiative with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation to support the organization's ongoing |
| 1:50.8 | research initiative studying and tagging Great Shear Waters in the Stellwagen Bank |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from naswick, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of naswick and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.