Wenfei Tong and I had the pleasure of talking with Mollee Brown and Alvaro Jaramillo (co-host George Armistead was out of town) on their popular birding podcast Life List.
The cover of Wenfei Tong’s book, Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds. Princeton University Press, 2020.
This marks our third podcast appearance talking about the comparisons between wild bird and human pair bonding behaviors—or what we call “dating like a bird.” Wenfei’s book Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds inspired my human version essay, “The Migratory Suitor: I approached courtship as a wild bird might, and learned a new way to love,” published in the November December 2025 BWD (formerly Bird Watcher’s Digest), and now available to read in full at the link above.
Mollee and Alvaro (and George) host a conversational hour-long bi monthly podcast inviting birding personalities from across the world to sit and chat about a topic in the manner of a relaxed coffee date with friends. Wenfei and I had up to that point spoken on shorter time-frame podcasts with mutually agreed context shared in advance (which makes for lots of information in a tighter format if you prefer that style of podcast). Mollee and Alvaro instead guide a looser shared dialogue among the group, with natural digressions and playful humor.
It was delightful listening to others I admire talk about a topic prompted by my essay and Wenfei’s book. Wenfei shared stories of her adventures and observations of birds from her years of research, stories that made the rest of us laugh and want to hear more.
I hope you’ll want to hear more! You can listen to us on the April 11, 2026 episode of the Life List Podcast. If you want to hear the earlier interviews, give a listen to Your Bird Story and the American Birding Podcast.
First pages of the “Migratory Suitor” story for BWD. You can read the full story here. Illustrations by Jenny Kroik.
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