10-16: Mob Tape Malpractice? with Marty Freeland
The American Birding Podcast
naswick
4.7 • 677 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pishing, mob tapes, and playback are all tools that birders frequently use to supplement their birding experience, be it to show other birders a great bird or to bring birds close for photographs. They have typically been seen in the community as benign but the ease of their use certainly raises questions about how they affect the birds we enjoy. Marty Freeland is a Stanford student who has not only been thinking about these questions, but has attempted to answer them in a scientific manner. His work helped inform an essay by Peter Pyle that was published both in the most recent issue of Birding magazine and on the ABA website. He joins Nate Swick to talk about his work, his thoughts on the use of "electronic pishing", and the amazing pishing behavior of lyrebirds.
Also, the ABA is hosting a membership drive this spring! By joining or renewing now, you can help unlock an additional $100 per member for the ABA's programs!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the American Birding Podcast from the American Birding Association. |
| 0:09.7 | I am Nate Swick. |
| 0:11.3 | We've got some fun stuff coming up here at the ABA that perhaps listeners of this podcast would be interested in. |
| 0:16.6 | I always do an appeal for membership at the end of the episodes, but I will hold off a little bit this time around, or at least add some more context, because we at the ABA are going to host an old-fashioned live membership drive in May, May 19, to be more specific. |
| 0:34.2 | We'll be streaming a few things online, which I suppose makes it less than old |
| 0:39.0 | fashion, but it's hard to get a burning organization membership drive on network TV these days. |
| 0:42.9 | So we're doing the best we can. What this means is that we have a generous donor who is |
| 0:48.7 | willing to donate, one of our board members, Willie Hendrickson, who will contribute $100 for |
| 0:53.7 | every new or returning member |
| 0:56.3 | to the ABA through the end of the month through May 31st, up through the first 200. |
| 1:02.5 | So that's, that's $20,000 potentially into the ABA's nest egg, as it were. |
| 1:08.4 | On the 19th of May, we will be live streaming for not sure how long we're |
| 1:13.8 | still working on that at least three hours maybe more Greg niece and I will do a special |
| 1:19.0 | what's this bird live and podcast fans may be interested to know that I am planning a special |
| 1:24.6 | live take it or leave it episode so if you've ever wanted to contribute to live take it or leave it episode. So if you've ever wanted to |
| 1:29.5 | contribute to a take it or leave it episode, you can send me some hot bird takes at podcast |
| 1:34.9 | at aBA.org or you can join us on the live stream and you can give your opinions while |
| 1:41.1 | we're doing it while we're doing the thing. I'm planning on getting some really good |
| 1:45.2 | hot take havers to participate with me. It should be, no, it will be, it will be a lot of fun. |
| 1:53.8 | So join us on May 19th. More info to come as we get closer. And if you're thinking about joining |
| 1:58.4 | or renewing, this is a great time to do so heck if |
| 2:01.5 | you joined last month you can even renew early and it will count towards our goal not that I'm trying |
... |
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