Alabama Audubon has invited your own podcast host, Nate Swick, to be the keynote speaker at the 2026 Black Belt Birding Festival. The festival highlights the birds, the ecology, and the civil rights heritage of the region. To get excited for this summer's event, we welcome Andrew Lydeard, Alabama Audubon's Program Coordinator, and Chris Joe, third generation farmer whose family's 200 acre cattle farm in Newbern, Alabama, is an important site for the festival and a great example of the conservation and community efforts that the festival seeks to highlights. We talk birding Alabama, festival highlights, and how the community has come to love birders. Also, the Breeding Bird Suvey is back and Nate is excited to get back on his routes. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating or a review if you are so inclined! We appreciate it!