Birding as science, place, and wonder.
Bird Podcast with Shoba Narayan treats birdwatching as science, travel, memory, and conservation work. Recent episodes move from Delhi habitats and Shola forests to Mauritius, Bhutan, Costa Rica, and the odd biology of bilateral gynandromorphy.
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Bird Podcast with Shoba Narayan is a nature and ornithology show built around close attention to birds and the places that hold them. It treats birdwatching as field craft, science, literature, travel, and conservation practice. The center of gravity is Indian bird life, but recent episodes also move through Mauritius, Bhutan, Costa Rica, Colombia-linked field observation, and wider evolutionary biology. The show is grounded in named species and actual landscapes: Shola forests, Delhi habitats, Monteverde cloud forest, Paro, Mauritius, the Western Ghats, and city habitats where birds remain visible if someone is looking carefully. It likes specificity. A conversation may turn on a bearded vulture learning to drop bones, a bird with male and female halves, or the patience required to observe without disturbing. There is room for beauty, but not only beauty. Extinction, habitat fragmentation, hunting, fumigation, wetlands, endangered birds, and ecological restoration all sit inside the frame. Recent guests bring different ways of seeing birds. Rohan Chakravarty connects illustration, humor, research, and bird behavior. Dr. Hamish Spencer explains bilateral gynandromorphy through chromosomes and development. Dr. V.V. Robin uses genetics and bioacoustics to think about mountain birds and Shola forests. Sudhir Vyas maps Delhi as bird habitat rather than just a city. Ashish Pitti speaks about birdwatching as patience, reading, memory, and a quieter way of being outdoors. Field-led episodes add another texture, following birds through Mauritius, Bhutan, and Costa Rica with guides, conservation sites, local histories, and visible habitat. The show does not flatten birding into a checklist. It is more interested in the link between observation and understanding. A species leads to a forest. A nest leads to behavior. A city pond leads to migration and loss. The result is a gentle but information-rich show for people who want birds to remain connected to science, place, and responsibility.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants birdwatching with ecological context, Indian natural history, and accessible scientific explanation. It also fits people drawn to field observation, conservation stories, and bird books.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its range: it can move from a Delhi reed bed to Shola forest genetics, then to Mauritius restoration or a Costa Rican quetzal without losing the bird at the center. It balances named species, place-based reporting, and expert conversation more closely than a simple birding diary.
Welcome to the Bird Podcast — hosted by Shoba Narayan. This podcast will focus largely on birds, specifically on Indian birds with occasional global forays.India is home to some 1200 bird species, amongst the highest in the world. This podcast showcases and highlights our feathered friendsWe will talk to naturalists and birders about common and special birds such as the Greater Coucal, Himalayan Quail, Nilgiri Flycatcher, the Malabar Trogon, the Great Indian Bustard, and other amazing species.We will highlight issues both old and new. About India's vanishing forests and wetlands and how it impacts birds. About breeding areas of migratory birds and how they are hunted en route. We will speak…
One bird, male on one side and female on the other: your field guide earns its keep.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A cartoonist turns Indian bird behavior into vivid, approachable science through bone throwing, beetles, and conservation.
Rohan Chakraborty's Bird Business gives this episode a bright, easy way into bird behavior, pairing his cartoonist's eye with the habits and oddities of Indian birds.
A Colombian bird opens a clear path into how male and female cells can develop in one body.
A bird spotted in Colombia gives this episode a clean way into bilateral gyandromorphy, the striking condition in which male and female sides can develop in one body. Dr.
A grounded tour of Delhi's birdlife, from monsoon reed beds to wild painted storks nesting inside the city.
Delhi comes through as a northern-plains city with a surprisingly dense bird life, seen through Sudhir Vyas's long habit of watching it closely.
A calm, thoughtful case for slowing down and finding restoration in nearby birds.
Birdwatching comes through as a habit of attention, with Ashish Pitti linking it to music, inner quiet, and the small pleasure of noticing birds close to home.
Field stories for serious mammal seekers.
From a newt's pond to Everest, in Welsh.
Particle accelerators, compost piles and Queen's guitarist, all explained.
Steven Novella and a rotating panel dissect weekly science news and debunk pseudoscience claims.
Bird Podcast with Shoba Narayan speaks with Rohan Chakravarty about Bird Business, a book built around 100 Indian birds chosen for behavior rather than species count.
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Shobha Narayan reports from Mauritius, where 156 bird species include nine surviving endemic land birds.
["Bird Podcast with Shobha Narayan uses Sudhir Vyas\u2019s book The Birds of the Delhi Area, edited by Anita Mani under the Indian Pitta imprint, to map Delhi bird life.", "Vyas brings 50 years of birdwatching and an Indian Foreign Service career to a discussion of how Delhi sits at the junction of the Upper Gangetic plain, the Aravalli, and the Yamuna.", "He says Delhi wetlands, Okhla reed beds, and the Delhi Zoo colony still support bitterns, painted storks, and other herons, even as urban growth pushed open country farther out.", "The episode also tracks how raptors, sandgrouse, little terns, and Indian skimmers declined over time, while eBird charts and handwritten diaries were used to measure change."]
Ashish Pitti discusses The Living Air, published by Indian Pitta, through a Jordan's Courser search in Coimbatore and a Great Indian Bustard display at Rolapadu.
At NCBS in Bangalore, Esha Munshi catalogs bird specimens in a feather library for future research.
An interview with Dr.
An interview with conservation biologist Dr.
Shoba Narayan interviews Ugandan bird guide Judith Mirembe about her journey into birdwatching, conservation work, and the Uganda Women Birders Club.
Shoba Narayan interviews Judith Mirembe, a Ugandan bird guide and conservationist, about her journey into birdwatching and her work with the Uganda Women Birders Club and Shoebill Watch Uganda.