Black Birders Week 2024

 Black Birders Week 2024

     by Louise Ruggeri

If you’re looking for a way to recover from May warbler neck, but still want some bird-related fun and education, I recommend checking out Black Birders Week from May 26 — June 1. 

If you’ve never heard of it, Black Birders Week is a series of online and in-person events that highlight and celebrate Black birders, while also advocating for “diversity, equity and inclusion in the birding community” according to their website. 

It was conceived in 2020, in direct response to the May 25th “Central Park birding incident” involving Christian Cooper. I think we birders all remember this, but in case you don’t: this was when a white woman was charged with filing a false police report because she claimed that Cooper, a well known NYC birder and author, was “threatening” her life. In reality — which is clear in the footage he took with his phone — he only asked her to leash her dog in an area where off-leash dogs are not permitted. As Cooper himself put it, her behavior towards him was “unmistakably racist.” 

Troubled by this incident, an existing collective of Black STEM professionals, called BlackAFinStem, decided to take action. Just 4 days later, one of their members, Corina Newsome, officially introduced Black Birders week on Twitter, saying: 

For far too long, Black people in the United States have been shown that outdoor exploration activities, such as birding, are not for us. Whether it be because of the way the media chooses to present “who” is the outdoorsy type; or the racism experienced by Black people when we do explore the outdoors — as we saw recently in Central Park — we’ve decided to change that narrative.

That first year, I watched nearly every presentation and panel discussion, while also following the hashtags and posts on social media. I learned a lot from the participants, who openly shared their experiences of feeling vulnerable or targeted while birding because of their skin color. Also discussed was the lack of representation of Black nature enthusiasts in the media and in advertising. And there were a lot of calls to action to local and national birding organizations to make birding more inclusive and accessible.  

But it wasn’t all about this — there was also a real feeling of celebration. And, of course, as you usually get with a group of birders, there was a lot of discussions and geeking out over birds and bird sightings, as well as all the inevitable bird-nerd jokes that only bird-nerds get.

One of the things I was unaware of before that first Black Birders Week in 2020 was just how big the community of Black nature enthusiasts really is. Even the organizers were surprised by this. Corina Newsome said, in an interview on the ABA podcast that year, said that she cried when she saw the volume of posts on social media during the event because she had “never seen that many Black people…doing the thing that I love doing…”

New connections were made that first year too. When the week was over, people were encouraged to use the hashtag #becauseofblackbirdersweek on social media, to share how the event impacted them. The resounding sentiment was that people felt less alone, and more supported because of the event. My favorite post was from a woman who discovered that she was not the only Black hijabi birder here in the states. Another favorite was a post where someone wrote that “in 40 years of birding, I never thought I would see the day when I wasn’t the only black birder I knew.”

Each year’s events are loosely based around a theme. 2023 was centered around creativity and had fun programs, like the “takeover” they did of BirdNote Radio. 2021 celebrated Black birders around the world. Each day in the week also has its own theme and hashtag too, to encourage engagement online.

This year’s theme is “Wings of Justice: Soaring for Change” — which is a sort of throw back to the origins of the event. The week will start with master falconer Rodney Stots as a special guest speaker. You can keep up to date on the programming via the BlackAFinStem.com website & social media sites.  They’ve also partnered with Cornell, the National Audubon Society, the Smithsonian Institute — so keep an eye out for announcements from them as well.