Last October, a group of female birding friends gathered at Opossum Creek Retreat in Fayetteville, West Virginia, which is also the home of the New River Birding and Nature Festival each May (when there's not a pandemic happening in our world). They dubbed this gathering "Wonder Woman Weekend" and they spent time birding, talking, laughing, eating, and reconnecting to each other, to birds and nature, and to themselves.

The group included women ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s, representing many diverse seasons of a woman's life. They are working moms, single women, married women, divorced women, widowed women, career women, stay-at-home-moms, grandmas, fur-moms with fur-babies, and everything in between.

They decided to record a conversation about the thing that brought them all together: BIRDING. Some of them have been birding for decades, while others have only been birding a short time. They talked about ways that birding has inspired them, and what birding has meant to them especially during the most difficult times in their lives.

Regardless of your gender, we hope you'll enjoy this conversation between common—yet quite uncommon—Wonder Women, and we hope this message also encourages YOU during this global crisis that is affecting every person on our planet.

Sean Dooley is the National Public Affairs Manager for Birdlife Australia. His book, The Big Twitch, written in 2005, covers his 2002 attempt to break the Australian “Twitching” record by seeing more than 700 birds in a single year. He is the former record holder for Australian Big Year Twitching.

Sean lives in Melbourne, Australia, and has seen firsthand the devastating fires that Americans have been following with great concern in the media. According to Sean, the extent of loss is now 12.2 million hectares, which equates to more than 30 million acres—an area larger than the state of Pennsylvania!

Wendy Clark, president of Bird Watcher’s Digest and host of Out There with the Birds, met Sean in 2015, and they’ve been good friends since. Sean took time in January to talk with Wendy about what it’s like to be a conservationist in Australia at this critical time; how the birds and bird habitats are faring with the destruction; and most importantly, how Americans can provide real support for this country in crisis.

Join host Dawn Hewitt as she interviews Eva Matthews Lark, program director for Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine. Listen in as Dawn and Eva talk about the amazing birding experiences, natural history, and landscapes that Hog Island has to offer.