Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

Laura Erickson started birding in 1975 and quickly became obsessed. Over the years as she’s built up her life list (a work in progress), she’s been a fierce advocate for birds. The writer and producer of “For the Birds,” the longest-running radio program/podcast about birds (it first aired on May 12, 1986), Laura has spent this last half-century as a classroom teacher and then a stay-at-home mom, a state- and federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator, a migration counter at two of Duluth’s migratory hotspots, a blogger for a local optics company, science editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, childcare provider for her little grandson, and more, all the while doing her volunteer radio/podcast work.

Laura will talk about her varied birding experiences over five decades, highlighting the deeply personal reasons she became involved in a few specific campaigns: fighting construction of a potential bird-killing communications tower along Duluth’s major migration corridor, enacting Duluth’s cat-leash ordinance, encouraging people to make their windows safer for birds, and promoting bird-friendly coffee.

She’ll touch on some historical trends she has personally witnessed such as the decline of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken, Evening Grosbeak, and Hawaii’s ʻIʻiwi; the increase in the Bald Eagle, California Condor, and Kirtland’s Warbler; how much joy she gets from backyard favorites such as the Pileated Woodpecker, Blue Jay, and Black-capped Chickadee, and how her abiding love for her children and grandchildren makes her ever more focused on protecting the birds that are their natural inheritance.