This Month in Birding - April 2026

Nate Swick· Host0:00

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to the American Birding Podcast from the American Birding Association. I am your host, Nate Swick. I have a good and long This Month in Birding for you this time around in April 2026. No need to linger here in the intro. Let's get onto it. Jody Allaire, Jenny Duberstein, and Gabriel Foley join me to talk about cool raptor doings, birds and your brain, belonging in ornithology, and our best April Fooled stories. Some good stuff this time around, all coming at you after this week's rare birds. [upbeat music] This is your rare bird focus for the end of April 2026. A wayward Baikal Teal, a stunning adult male no less, seen last week near Point Pelee, Ontario, has reignited the discussion that we always seem to get with vagrant waterfowl, that of provenance. This is a potential first provincial record, so perhaps it matters more. But the chatter only ever seems to wane once we reach a critical mass of records of these Old World waterfowl species in North America, and it doesn't seem like we've reached that point yet with Baikal Teal, particularly in the eastern half of the continent. As I mentioned, this is a stunning little duck species from East Asia, notably unrelated to any of the ducks we call teal here in North America. It's actually basal to the rest of the dabbling