Bird-watching inclusivity takes flight
I went bird-watching in Oakland with a group a few weeks ago. As we strolled around the park, our binoculars trained on the treetops, I felt happy to be a part of a community that has the same fascination with birds that I do.
Until one comment ruined the morning.
When we moved into a redwood grove someone spotted a brown creeper, a tiny songbird that skitters up and down tree trunks.
“A brown creeper? Are you talking about a person? Watch out!” joked an older man, grinning at me.
No one else seemed to notice. But I felt a little shaken by the statement and left shortly after. As I walked back to my car, I wondered why most groups of bird watchers I see are white, and what could be done to make this activity I love more diverse.
Lack of inclusivity has long been a problem with any number of outdoor activities. According to the National Park Service, 77% of visitors to parks in 2020 were white. Studies from the past few years show that people of color are underrepresented in rock climbing, skiing and camping. But birding is a low-threshold activity; it doesn’t require peak physical fitness or expensive gear. If we can make birding more inclusive, perhaps it’s a gateway to improving outdoor access in general.
Conversations around diversity in birding aren’t new. In 2020, a Black birder in Central Park was falsely accused of threatening a woman in an incident that brought issues of racism and the outdoors into the limelight. Questions about inclusivity have continued in its wake. This month the American Ornithological Foundation announced that all birds in North America named after people will be changed to rid them of monikers tied to racists and colonialists. It’s an enormous undertaking; for centuries it was in vogue for naturalists to christen birds after themselves or those they admire. But today, names like James Audubon — best known for his enormous contributions to ornithology — have lost their luster. Audubon’s history of slave trading and white supremacy has led many organizations, including the Bay Area’s Golden Gate Bird Alliance, to distance themselves from his name.
In years past, changing the name of just one bird was a huge, dramatic undertaking. Now, big names in birding, like Kenn Kaufman and David Sibley, authors of the best-known contemporary birding guides in the country, are on board with the renaming, which will
affect at least 150 birds.
While this shift is lauded as a big step toward inclusivity in what has historically been a very white field of study, it does raise questions. Is this effort performative? Or will it actually make a difference in the culture of bird watching?
I turned to an expert to find out. John Robinson, a former avian biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, has written several books on birding, including “Birding for Everyone: Encouraging People of Color to Become Birdwatchers.” He told me that renaming birds can’t really be compared with other efforts to eliminate monuments to slave owners or colonialists.
“Racist histories are fairly obvious when you live in the South. You see a Confederate flag or statue every time you drive by the courthouse,” Robinson said, “but not so much with the Lewis’s woodpecker or Wilson’s warbler. We as birdwatchers are so in love with the birds we identify that we don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out who named them.
“However, people who launched this
do have a good point,” he added. “The more you look, the more you see. The more we start examining who was Wilson, or who was Audubon, we’ll realize there’s slavery there.”
The team tasked with renaming the birds consists of ornithologists, but also experts in communication and social sciences. Most likely, birds will be named after their physical attributes or habitats, which for new birders like me, offers an advantage. It’s much easier to identify red-winged blackbirds than Brewer’s blackbirds, for example.
“When you are brand new to birding, it can be daunting to learn all these birds,” Robinson said. “By renaming them as something more descriptive, I think that’s going to help.”
While this will no doubt serve new birders, change will be slow to come for those like Robinson. “People like me who started in 1979, we’re dinosaurs. There’ll be this transition period where the older crowd uses old names.”
Could this be the catalyst that starts to make the outdoors more inclusive? Maybe, but in the Bay Area, there’s already
been progress. Each spring the East Bay Regional Parks hold a Black Birders Week. There are fellowships for people who are underrepresented in conservation, such as people of color and those with disabilities. I’ve also found small, informal groups of birders on Instagram and will be tagging along with a group of young-queer-bird-watching enthusiasts soon.
Robinson told me this is how change actually happens: through community.
“We need to make birding more approachable,” he said. “When people pick up a magazine or look on TV at people enjoying birds or nature, they inevitably see a white person. To the extent that we can bring more people of color out doing these things, it creates an instant role model.”
Name changes are just one piece of a larger reckoning, it seems. The overall message, however, is one we can all be inspired by: Birding and the outdoors really are for everyone.