10-10: Bird Collections, From the Inside, with Nick Mason
The American Birding Podcast
naswick
4.7 • 677 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
The state of Louisiana hosts one of the world's largest repositories of ornithological knowledge, the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural History. With nearly 200,000 bird specimens, including important collections from the tropical Americas, this institution informs a lot of what we know about bird taxonomy in this hemisphere. Dr Nick Mason is the curator of that collection, and he joins us to talk about the fascinating work done at this place and what museums are doing to make sure bird science stays on a sound footing into the future.
Also, the ABA's live What's This Bird program is breaking ground in online phenology... sort of.
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This episode is brought to you by Naturalist Journeys and Birding Louisiana.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Discover Africa's remarkable wildlife with naturalist journeys. Their small group safaris explore |
| 0:06.8 | some of the continent's richest habitats from Botswana's Okavango Delta to the Serengeti |
| 0:11.9 | in Kenya and Tanzania. Watch elephants and giraffes gather at waterholes awake to a bird |
| 0:17.5 | chorus at dawn and enjoy the extraordinary diversity of birds and mammals that make |
| 0:21.8 | Africa unforgettable. |
| 0:23.7 | Travel with expert naturalist guides and fellow nature lovers on a safari designed for discovery. |
| 0:29.7 | Learn more at naturalist journeys.com. |
| 0:42.3 | Hello and welcome to the American Birding podcast from the American Birding Association. |
| 0:48.3 | I am your host, Nate Swick. I have my voice back this week. Thank goodness. I want to talk briefly about the ABA's What's This Bird Live program for a sec. For those who don't know, my ABA colleague, |
| 0:55.8 | Greg Neese, and I host a biweekly live web stream where we talk about bird identification. |
| 1:03.3 | The idea being that we have this Facebook group called What's This Bird? That has been really |
| 1:07.4 | successful, almost too successful, honestly. It's well over 100,000 |
| 1:12.0 | members these days. And the live stream started as a way to grab a few interesting photos |
| 1:18.7 | submitted to that group and kind of talk through the identification in more detail than you |
| 1:23.9 | can get in a Facebook group where frequently all you get is the name of the bird. |
| 1:28.9 | So we host these on the ABA's YouTube channel. So if you're interested, feel free to check |
| 1:32.8 | those out. They are all there from the very first one we did during the pandemic. |
| 1:38.6 | Side note, you can also watch two people age over a few years, not saying it's an Indiana Jones |
| 1:44.1 | and search for the Holy Grail situation, but it's an Indiana Jones and a search for the |
| 1:45.4 | Holy Grail situation, but it's a little disconcerting. Some unfortunate COVID-era haircuts from yours |
| 1:50.8 | truly, too. Look, we're all doing the best we could. I always mean to tie what's to spur |
| 1:57.2 | to the podcast a little bit more. I'm doing that now. We're due for another one this week, Fridays |
... |
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