Talks

Talks

Nathan Pieplow

I speak regularly to bird clubs and ornithological societies about birds and their sounds. To book me as a speaker, email me at npieplow@gmail.com.

I have developed a number of talks and workshops that use audio and visuals to present compelling stories about the behavior, identification, and/or evolution of birds. The length, scope, and focus of each talk can be adjusted to fit the needs of different audiences. Titles include:

  • The Language of Birds (presentation). All around us, all the time, the birds are telling us who they are and what they are doing. In this talk for any audience, Nathan Pieplow unlocks the secrets of their language. You’ll listen in on the pillow talk of a pair of Red-winged Blackbirds, and learn the secret signals that Cliff Swallows use when they have found food. You’ll learn how one bird sound can have many meanings, and how one meaning can have many sounds—and how, sometimes, the meaning isn’t in the sounds at all. This talk from the author of the Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds is an accessible, entertaining introduction to a fascinating topic.
  • A Shared Vocabulary for Bird Sounds (half-day or full-day workshop; can incorporate a field trip component). Most attempts to teach bird sound identification rely primarily on memorization. This workshop takes a different approach. Just as beginning birders learn the different parts of the bird and how to distinguish colors like “buff” and “rufous,” we will study the different parts of a sound and how to distinguish tone qualities like “burry” and “polyphonic.” Once we have a common vocabulary for describing bird sounds, we can apply these skills to some bird sound identification challenges in the region. No matter your level of experience, this workshop will help you listen to sounds more analytically, describe them more accurately, and use them more effectively in identifying birds.
  • Earbirding With Your Phone (presentation / workshop; can incorporate a field trip component). In this session, we will discuss apps for recording and identifying birds with your cell phone, with special attention to Merlin Sound ID. If you have a favorite app, you can bring it and discuss; if you’ve never used your phone for recording, identifying, or making spectrograms of bird sounds, we will get you set up.
  • Beyond Beginning Earbirding (half-day workshop; participants should take “A Shared Vocabulary for Bird Sounds” first). Once you acquire basic skill at birding by ear, what is the fastest way to work up to the next level? In this workshop you will learn how to use heuristics: mental shortcuts that don’t get you all the way to an identification, but that can cut identification problems in half. You’ll learn a few heuristics in the first part of the workshop, and in the second part, you’ll create your own, to help yourself with a bird identification problem you are particularly interested in.
  • The Internet of Wings: How the Data Revolution Is About to Change the Way You Bird (presentation). What if your phone could pick out rarities for you from a flock of birds? What if it could tell you exactly where an individual migrant came from and where it is going? These technologies already exist, or soon will. In this talk, Nathan Pieplow will discuss how cutting-edge innovations in bird tracking and automatic identification can enhance conservation, supercharge citizen science, and broaden the appeal of birding. You’ll learn how the song of a White-crowned Sparrow communicates not just its species identity, but its street address. You’ll learn what happened when a flock of curlews ran into a snowstorm, and how we know. And you’ll learn how YOU can collect the data needed to reverse declines in bird populations.
  • The Amazing Sounds of Birds (presentation). What bird uses its voice to echolocate inside dark caves? Which bird sings a duet with itself? What bird sings the longest song? What bird has the largest vocabulary? In this presentation for general audiences, Nathan Pieplow answers all these questions and more, using some of the most remarkable audio from over fifteen years of recording birds in the field.
  • The Best Bird Sounds You’ve Never Heard (presentation). What if I told you that vultures, shorebirds, and House Sparrows are some of the most accomplished avian singers in North America? Maybe you’ve never heard them before. Or maybe you’ve never heard them quite this way. This presentation will delve into the surprising world of bird sounds that are hidden, underappreciated, and sometimes flat-out denied to exist. You’ll discover the concealed complexity inside a so-called “chirp”; hear the surprising sound of a vulture’s flight display; and learn about many common birds whose song you may have missed, including singing ducks, hooting sandpipers, and wing-clapping owls. Your guide will be Nathan Pieplow, the author of the Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds, who will unravel the mysteries of some of the rarest and most startling sounds in his collection after two decades of nature sound recording.
  • The Mystery Owl of Mexico (presentation). In 2015, Nathan Pieplow and Andrew Spencer obtained the first-ever photographs, videos, and audio recordings of the Cinereous Owl, a little-known bird of the mountains of Mexico. This talk tells the exciting story of their hunt for the owl across three years and thousands of miles, and their surprising discoveries about its biology and taxonomy.
  • Listen to Her Sing (presentation). Only male birds sing, right? Wrong! In fact, this widespread notion has a lot more to do with human cultural and geographic biases than it has to do with nature. In this talk, Nathan Pieplow explores the often-overlooked songs of female birds. You will hear the pair duets of meadowlarks and blackbirds, the musical songs of female cardinals and orioles, and the distinctive song of the female Canyon Wren, among others. In which species do females actually sing more often than males? How do you know when you’re listening to a female Blue Jay? And where did we even get this crazy idea that only male birds sing? Answers to these questions and more in this presentation.
  • End of the World: Capturing Siberia’s Wildlife on Video (presentation). In 2017, Nathan Pieplow and three other birders traveled to the ends of the earth — through Siberia from the Mongolian border to the Arctic Ocean — to make video and audio recordings of some of Earth’s most remarkable creatures. In this tale of their adventure, Nathan shares video footage that illuminates the family lives of Great Gray and Snowy Owls, the survival tricks of the Arctic Fox, the courtship antics of the Ruff, and much more.
  • The Secret Lives of Ducks (presentation). Ducks aren’t comical and innocuous goofballs. If they were people, they would be violent gangsters, abusive boyfriends, messed-up stars of reality TV. In this talk Nathan Pieplow will reveal the secrets that make ducks some of our most fascinating and misunderstood birds. You will play Mallard Courtship Bingo, learn about the Genital Arms Race between the duck sexes, and hear how ducks can literally manage to sleep with one eye open. (Note: this talk frankly discusses explicit aspects of duck sex and touches on themes of sexual violence.)

I am continually developing new speaking topics and workshops, so if you’d like to learn about something not listed here, let me know!