living on the wind across the hemisphere with migratory birds

He'll talk about the special challenges of researching these birds and what we could learn from them that could help us humans. Today on the show, we to talk with Weidensaul about his latest book, A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds. Janet Babin: From The Wall Street Journal, this is The Future of Everything.

Scott Weidensaul: I don't have an academic degree in science or ornithology, but in the last, particularly the last quarter century, I've gotten very involved in some groundbreaking science projects, working with a lot of friends and colleagues and collaborators and giving the opportunity to peel back some of the mystery around this phenomenon of migration that's fascinated me my entire life. It studies bird migration on national parklands in Alaska with the National Park Service. He's also one of the principal investigators for the critical connections project. Scott Weidensaul has spent decades studying and writing about migratory birds. And as global citizens, the birds have been challenging for researchers to study. They cross national borders, spending some of their time at breeding grounds while wintering in a different location and their arduous travel seem to push the limits of physical existence and the places where these birds live and the resources they rely on are under increasing pressure. Janet Babin: Now, in our last episode of The Future of Everything, we talked about songbirds, but migration and the plight of migratory birds kept coming up. And in the 50 years, and it was 50 years ago, this past fall and 50 years since then, I went from somebody who was an avid birder and kind of on the outside, looking in terms of migration research to becoming more and more directly involved. It was this river of birds of prey flowing down along this long Appalachian Ridge. The winds were blowing from the Northwest. The first day we went up there just happened to be one of the big migration days of the year cold front had come through. And I get hooked on birds migration on one particular day when I was 12, when my family and I visited Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Eastern Pennsylvania on this high Appalachian ridgetop, along which every fall tens of thousands of hawks and eagles and falcons migrate.

Scott Weidensaul: I've been interested in nature since I was a little kid and I get hooked on birds very early.

But naturalist and writer, Scott Weidensaul, he seemed to have this in internal compass that guided him to his career early in life. Janet Babin: Lots of us don't know what we want to be when we grow up or didn't know, it can take a while for some of us to ease into life's direction. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. This transcript was prepared by a transcription service.

Living on the wind across the hemisphere with migratory birds