The Birders Show Interviews New York Times Bestselling Author Jennifer Ackerman
About The Birders Show
Last year, our creative studio + production house launched “The Birders Show,” an original YouTube series dedicated to the beautiful world of birds and birding. The show is produced, filmed, and edited in-house by our Bogota-based team and features our expert co-hosts, Chris Bell and Diego Calderon, interviewing a who’s-who of luminaries from the world of birds.
‘The Genius of Birds’ by Jennifer Ackerman.
About Our Guest
As the author of the bestselling books “The Genius of Birds” and “The Bird Way,” Jennifer Ackerman has become one of the biggest names in ornithology and birding in recent years. Her books have been translated into almost 30 languages, highlighting the unique international appeal of birds and birding. She has written editorials for the New York Times, and her books have been included in end-of-year lists by publications like The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National Post, and The Sunday Times.
We were pleased to discover that she was already a fan of the show and had enjoyed watching all of our previous episodes (which you can see on our YouTube channel here). She was delighted to be asked to appear and proved to be an engaging, informative, and fun guest, just as we imagined she would be. She even graciously joined us on the live launch of the YouTube episode to answer her many fans' questions.
About Her Bestselling Book The Genius of Birds
Our conversation with Jennifer covered a range of topics focused on avian intelligence, including birds of prey in Australia, intelligence and organization among ant-following species in the Neotropics, tool use by New Caledonian crows, and playfulness in birds and how that functions as a mark of intelligence. The interview serves as an ideal complement to her books.
The New Caledonian Crow is an adept user of tools, and perhaps the world’s smartest bird species.
Filming Show Segments In the Field
Bring the Audience Along on a Birding Adventure
This new episode also features an “In The Field” segment. These short videos complement the main interview and typically feature one of our co-hosts during a birding adventure. For this episode’s ‘In The Field’ feature, Chris documents an off-the-beaten-track journey to the Colombian Pacific region in search of the rare and surreal Long-wattled Umbrellabird. The segment features high-quality, digiscoped footage of the bird, Chris’s thoughts on the trip, and notes on the behavior and habits of this poorly-known species. It also includes footage of the endemic and critically endangered Lehmann’s Poison Frog. The segment leads to an interesting discussion with Jennifer about the nature of bird evolution and the origins of the display behaviors known as ‘lekking’ in which many different species engage.
Frame Birding as an Exciting Pastime
These ‘In The Field’ segments also highlight the enormous scope for birding adventures in a country like Colombia, with the ultimate goal of painting the birding pastime in a new, more exciting light. As a hobby, birding has often been dismissed as a sedate and even dull activity, but the birding culture in Colombia and across the Neotropics is characterized by adventure and exploration. By including clips of a birding trip that included a 10km hike through a humid tropical jungle, climbing from 300M/1000ft to over 1,000M/3300ft, we can position birding as a hobby for travelers, trekkers, and adventurers.
Upcoming Guests on The Birders Show
A World Record-Setting Birder
We’ve got some wonderful guests coming up on The Birders Show. Our next episode will feature an interview with Arjan Dwarshius, the Dutch birder who broke the global Big Year record in 2016. Arjan observed 6,582 bird species in 40 different countries that year, smashing the previous record by over 500 species. We sat down with Arjan to talk epic birding quests, conservation, and the personal and environmental impact of such a big year.
The “Urban Birder”
Following that episode, we will be launching Episode 7, starring David Lindo, aka ‘The Urban Birder,’ whose mission is to make birding more accessible and available for people from all walks of life, particularly those who live in big cities. David is a passionate advocate for inclusion in birding, and his lifelong love of birding in urban spaces is truly infectious and inspiring. It promises to be another excellent episode.
Upcoming Segment Feature
Behind The Scenes of a Groundbreaking Scientific Expedition
We recently launched a new “Cheep.”‘Cheeps are our term for short birding segments, where our team members film themselves birding in the field. In our latest Cheep, Diego takes us behind the scenes of a groundbreaking scientific research expedition that he was a part of in February. This expedition explored the little-known Murrucucu Mountains in the Colombian department of Cordoba. The goal was to rediscover the “lost” Sinu Parakeet. Unfortunately, the parakeet proved elusive, but the team discovered 30 new species in the region and made a series of important scientific discoveries in the process. The journey has attracted international attention, even being shared widely on social media by Leonardo Di Caprio. You can see the full Cheep below.