A small hummingbird flew over 1,900 kilometres, and ended up in a Saskatchewan backyard before a cold winter. The hummingbird – later called Yosemite Sam in national news stories – had performed something called reverse migration, a phenomenon where a bird migrates in the wrong direction. Sam ended up in the care of today’s guest, who protected the Californian bird through a Canadian winter, while she puzzled over how to rehabilitate the bird to the wild.

Jan Shadick is a wildlife rehabilitator, and the Executive Director of Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation. Jan has spent decades advocating for wildlife rehabilitation, and she trains and encourages new rehabilitators.

Animal rehabilitation and care are a beautiful example of how humans can resist our hubris and become more humble with our relationships with nature. As Silent Spring becomes a reality, and as birds migrate across continents, this episode looks at the heartbreaking loss of birds and animals. The conversation also explores how to refuse to accept the continued destruction of biodiversity, by recognizing that we ourselves are animals, and we can be a force for good.

We all have times of silence — when momentum slows down, we turn inwards, or we cannot rush and produce. Taking times of silence can be one essential tool for restoring our energy and then changing how we are directing that energy: to confront a machine of oppression and extraction; nurture our communities and projects; or rebuild how we want to live.

Guest Steven Lovatt is a birder, writer, critic, parent, and teacher based in South Wales. He authored Birdsong in a Time of Silence, detailing the life of his young family through the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when he rekindled a childhood love for birds, as well as the awareness of the birds who are no longer here.

This conversation ranges from poetry to parenting, and asks about that which is endangered in our society beyond birds. We dig deep into the roots of being human, and talk about imagination - one of those fruits that comes from times of silence.

We live in relationship with the animals, our neighbours and creaturely kin, and when the convenience of our modern life causes animals great violence, we seek ways to grapple with and grieve their deaths.

Guest Amanda Stronza is an environmental anthropologist who creates powerful and poetic animal memorials that bring beauty to the deaths of the animals who live among us.

This conversation invites us to pay attention and bear witness to animals, and to see their deaths in a way that honours animal life while also redeeming us – the human animal.

From the wonder of watching tiny, wild critters to the grand, complex world of international environmental research, this conversation spans worlds. It navigates the often-separate disciplines of science and stories, threading them together. Scientist and professor Kai Chan and host Alice Irene Whittaker discuss our responsibilities on Earth, heroic action, the value of nature, the connection between culture and conservation, what it is really like to work on those international climate reports, and rewilding a beautiful planet.

What does wildness mean to us - and what can it mean when it is defined not by a few people, but rewritten for all of us? Guest J. Drew Lanham is an ornithologist, wildlife ecologist, poet, professor, author, and lover of birds. This conversation looks at how a new conservation can be inclusive for all people, and how care for humans, nature, and animals like birds are connected.

Music can help us make sense of, and deeply feel, our climate grief. Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station discusses her acclaimed 2021 album Ignorance about climate grief which struck a chord with citizens and critics alike. Tamara joins Reseed for a conversation that spans selfhood, rootlessness, connection, the heartbreaking beauty of birds - and the role of artists is helping us process, feel, grieve, and reimagine.