For two minutes every day, millions of public radio listeners across America learn about wild birds from their songs, behaviors and the environmental challenges they face on “BirdNote,” a show that started in Tacoma on local public radio station KPLU (now KNKX).
Today, BirdNote plays on 330 stations around the country. It’s one of the most popular public radio shows in the United States, according to executive director Nick Bayard, reaching about 8 million people per week.
Later this month, it will celebrate its 20th anniversary.
BirdNote doesn’t lose sight of the fact that keeping people entertained is key. The ultimate goal is to get people in tune with environmental conservation and, maybe, goose them into bird watching. But who doesn’t like listening to a bird sing, even if it is coming over your radio.
“All of a sudden, on comes the BirdNote theme song, and you’re immersed in the lives of birds,” Bayard said. “Your blood pressure drops. You get to learn a little bit.”
Birds are everywhere
It’s a cold morning at Titlow Park in Tacoma where Bayard meets with The News Tribune for an interview. As if on cue, hundreds of birds swarm on grass and in the water: Canada geese, gulls, buffleheads, widgeons and mallard ducks.
Bayard, an amateur birder himself, can identify them all. He calls birds miraculous, whether it’s the tiny 0.12-ounce Rufous hummingbird or a 300-pound ostrich.
“You can pretty much go outside anywhere and find birds,” he said. “People sometimes ask, you know, will you focus on other animals? Well, I don’t think we will. There’s just a lifetime of things to cover in the world of birds, and there’s just nothing quite like them.”
The people who migrate to BirdNote can approach birding in different ways, Bayard said.
“There are people who are really passionate about trying to see as many species as they can to build a list,” he said. “(Other) people really care more about the individual bird than the species.”
How it’s made
BirdNote has a staff of nine. Bayard is based in Tacoma, but the rest of the staff and a few contractors are flung far and wide.
The annual operating budget is $1.2 million. It’s funded almost entirely by listener donations and provided free to radio stations.
“We don’t get any government support, very little external corporate support,” Bayard said.
All of the information on BirdNote is thoroughly vetted. The organization has a science advisory council made up of ornithologists which goes over current science. Fact checkers vet every episode.
Each episode consists of bird facts and high quality recordings of bird songs and calls. Most of the sounds listeners hear come from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Some shows might focus on a single species, while others will focus on common bird behavior or facts.
Some episodes have focused on the danger windows present to birds as well as house cats that are left free to roam outdoors. According to the American Bird Conservancy, house and feral cats kill 2.4 billion birds a year and threaten some species with extinction.
Culture
The show isn’t dry science. Bayard says staff aims to keep BirdNote a little quirky, interesting and weird.
“One of our core values is the human connection to birds,” he said.
Following a 2020 racially tinged incident in New York City’s Central Park involving writer and Emmy-winning birder Christian Cooper, members of the Black AF in STEM Collective created Black Birders Week. The week, in late May and early June, celebrates and uplifts Black people in nature and Black birders.
BirdNote marks the week with programs highlighting the work of Black ornithologists, writers and narrators, Bayard said. The shows are produced by Black birders.
“I think those have been some of our best episodes,” he said. One featured 19th century abolitionist Harriet Tubman who would mimic owl calls as a secret signal for the Underground Railroad.
BirdNote en Espanol
A weekly Spanish language version, BirdNote en Espanol, plays in seven Latin American countries and Spanish-language stations in the United States, including Voice Tacoma Radio Universal.
The most recent featured the roseate spoonbill, a pink bird that lives along the Gulf of Mexico.
Bayard thinks the show will grow in Latin America like it has in North America.
“There’s sort of a snowball effect,” he said. “You start to get enough shows in the archive and produced and enough stations airing it that it sort of becomes more of a norm for stations to want to air it.”
What birders say
In phone interviews, The News Tribune spoke with several BirdNote listeners on how they discovered the program and how it changed their appreciation of birds.
Michael Bell of Seattle and his son Zjences, 12, became BirdNote listeners after Zjences wrote a music composition where he studies at the Seattle Conservatory of Music. It was inspired by loons and their haunting calls.
“It sounds happy, but also sad,” Zjences said of the loon. “It seems like there’s a lot of emotions.”
BirdNote covers birds from all over the world, something he appreciates. The program has not only inspired Zjences and his family to watch birds locally, but sent them on trips to Mount Rainier and Ocean Shores. He has favorite birds, chief among them is the crow — his school’s mascot.
“But they’re also, like, really smart,” he said.
He’s not alone among his peers, Michael said. “I think that his age group, they have a tendency to be out in nature,” he said.
Kimberly Bradmon of Romeo, Michigan, has been a BirdNote listener for nearly its entire run. She first heard it as a nanny when her charge’s parents asked her to listen to a classical music station. Now, she listens to it with her own kids every day. The show has converted both Bradmon and her kids, who she home schools, into birders.
“They enjoy learning all the little factoids,” she said. “We do a lot of artwork with birds. In geography, we’re learning a lot of places. They’ll study the birds of (those places) a little bit.”
Saundra Holloway listens to BirdNote online from her home in Yuma, Arizona. She’s been a fan for about a decade.
“I have learned so much from them,” she said. “I’ve learned how to identify bird song by some of the broadcasts.”
She listens with her great-niece, Zoey, who she is raising.
“It’s something that’s really important for young people and for old people that love birds,” she said. “I absolutely would not have the thirst for the knowledge of birds without BirdNote.”
BirdNote’s future
In 2024, BirdNote kicked off a campaign to bring younger people into the wings of birding, with a focus on Gen Z (13- to 28-years-old.)
“We’ve really focused on producing more episodes that empower people to take action and tell them what those actions can be,” Bayard said.
A national survey will be conducted at the end of 2025 to ascertain its effectiveness.
“We’re really trying to grow and launch an equally or more successful next 20 years,” he said.
Where to hear BirdNote
- Tacoma public radio station KNKX at 6:31 a.m. and 8:59 a.m.
- Podcasts: BirdNote Daily, Bring Birds Back, BirdNote en Espanol.
- Website: birdnote.org
