Birding While Black--Does it Really Matter?

Birding while black; it's not something that I simply think about, it's something that I live. A birder since the age of eight, I've always been the odd one out; the "rare" bird in the flock. Now approaching the fifty year mark faster than I care to admit, it wasn't until my late twenties that I began to encounter the other rare birders of color out there. It's unfortunate that it's become normal for me to be "that guy". Accepting it has been a challenge and at times a chore. On a few occasions it's been downright scary. Not that I haven't enjoyed the bird-filled days afield with my fair-faced friends, but being the only one at a meeting, or having the stares (real or perceived) linger on you just a little longer gets tiresome. Even more so, having my color factor into my thoughts as to where I might bird is a sad but true reality. Do I really want to chase Chukar into the same far flung areas that folks have set up to separate themselves from the "mongrelization" of America? Will the folks who live in places where black faces are uncommon (or not readily accepted) accept my crepuscular habits as something less suspicious than the search for secretive sparrows? Will the police really believe that I was just looking for the skulking Connecticut warbler that was reported in that shrubby corner of the park yesterday?

 These have been just a few of the realities that I've lived and pondered over the years--almost on a daily basis. Perhaps, as some say, it's my own paranoia. Certainly with Obama in office all of the racism and hate has disappeared. African-Americans have arrived and so certainly among the largely liberal bastions of birders progress in the area of diversity has been made. Really?  Really? Guess again. I'm here to tell you that skin color still matters in 2011. Birding is among the "whitest" things a person can do. I just happen to be one of the few that adds a different hue to the mix. It's critical that along with biodiversity we think about the human component as something just as important. Linking humans of all hues to nature--through birds or otherwise, means that more will be engaged in trying to save it. Air, water, birds, trees--we all need them. That word has to get out.

Students birding at a Summer enrichment experience-definitely not the norm!

  This past weekend I had the distinct honor of being a panelist at the Focus on Diversity: Changing the Face of American Birding meeting at the Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia.  A long overdue effort, it finally took the courage and uncanny persistence of a New Jersey birder and middle school teacher to turn the talk into action.  Dave Magpiong is not a star in the birding world. That was until yesterday when his dream for what should be took a flying leap off of the ledge of potential into being.

Dave & fledgling birders (photo courtesy- fledgling birders.org)

 Quicker than a Cooper’s Hawk with the comedic comeback, Dave is as deeply impassioned and purposeful a person as I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Beyond his daily work as a teacher he founded an organization dedicated to getting kids out into nature with birds as the vehicle for doing so. His Fledgling Birder's Institute ( http://www.fledgingbirders.org/ ) is proof that one person can indeed make a huge difference.  I met Dave  for the first time at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival last November in Harlingen, Texas. There we and several other fine fellows including Dudley Edmondson, Douglas Wayne Gray, Jeremiah Alexander, Roy Rodriguez and Paul Baicich became the Sky Dawgs. (What are Sky Dawgs you might ask?  Well, they are ravens. The name was bestowed upon us by Dudley on a winter birding trip in Duluth and it has stuck.  It’s a complimentary thing I think as ravens are smart, playful, mischievous and mysterious birds that hold sway in the lore of many native cultures. Plus, they are black—like me!)

 At Dave’s insistence, prodding, pleading, cursing and cajoling, we found ourselves together in a hotel room one night with a few beers (okay –more than a few), a pizza or two and a bag of pork rinds.  With the combination of nutritious food, wholesome drink and kind company, the recipe for something less than an intellectual discussion was primed. However, we gathered there not to exchange bird sightings or crude jokes (though both did slip into the conversation from time to time), our hearts and heads instead were ready to share our ideas about why diversity should matter to birders beyond their life lists. We all had anecdotes of racism on the birding trail—covert, overt and sometimes scary—to solidify why the discussion of diversity had to be enjoined by the almost lily white cadre of millions who call themselves birders.  The hours of talking were a boon to my soul as I learned from this group of extraordinary people why the face of American birding has to change. That night, after much laughter, some empathetic anger and maybe even a timid tear or two, we all committed ourselves to the effort—to making something happen beyond the talk that too many conservation organizations simply throw out as well-meaning politically correct double talk when pressed about why the lack of color is so prevalent among them.
 

Typical Outing--One of these things is not like the other!

Beyond that initial meeting, the rest of the week with my fellow Sky Dawgs was spent cruising the South Texas landscape, finding Aplomado falcons and other birdy treasures.  I’ve never laughed as hard as when we encountered the mother of all western diamondback rattlesnakes or thought we’d been locked behind the gates of Laguna Atascosa one evening (Stay tuned for the story!). Watching the sun set on rafts of redhead ducks was a bonding over birds I’ll never forget.  I’ve also not felt as close to a group of birding friends as when we shared our hearts and minds over the serious issue of how people matter too.  I must throw a huge debt of gratitude to Mary Gustafson who organizes the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival and  made the very courageous decision to diversify the leader group at the  event last year. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is also one of the Sky Dawgs. I’ll teach her the double-secret handshake when I make my way down there in a couple of weeks.  I don’t think the others will mind!

And so this past weekend, it happened.  The meeting Dave Magpiong dreamed of and we all talked about in that hotel room happened.  A room of folks—of all colors and persuasions-- filled a conference room at the John Heinz Refuge to capacity at the first Focus on Diversity: Changing the Face of American Birding meeting.  They listened, asked questions, net-worked and shared their heads and hearts as we had in that room that November night in Texas.  I felt honored to be among the number and humbled to serve on a couple of panels that spoke on the issues.  Private citizens and folks from several federal agencies (USFWS, USDA Forest Service), the American Birding Association, Audubon Together Green  and various other organizations showed up to support the cause. Folks as famous as Kenn Kaufman, John Robinson, Richard Crossley and Mamie Parks were there to lend their celebrity to the cause. Unfortunately, several other organizations that should have been there to support the cause weren’t. The absence of folks from such an important gathering who say they care about such things spoke volumes to perhaps a lack of true commitment to the cause and a deeper problem that needs to be addressed.  We’ll all be watching to see if they join the push to make the community of birders a more inclusive neighborhood. We’ll welcome all comers to the party.  It matters if we want to conserve birds, habitats and have generations of people who look like the future of America to do so. Their perceptions of nature, the issues and ultimately passion and commitment to protect birds, water, air, trees and all the natural things that matter to all regardless of color will be shaped now.

 Regardless of the absence of some of the “big guns”, I think one conclusion was obvious from the gathering.  Changing the homogeneous face of American birding will start with the individual.  For each of us, reaching out to someone of a different hue, mode of thinking or simply different somehow than ourselves will go a long way to making birding look more like America.  And that my Dear Kindred Conservationists, matters as much as the birds.

Philly Sky Dawgs--r-l; Dave, me, Paul, Doug, Roy, Dudley

 Kudos to Dave and to my Sky Dawgs! Here's to the work ahead and the next adventure! And here's a hearty toast and tip of the hat to all those all who attended and committed to changing the face of American birding. Until we meet again! Good Birding!

Drew

Pilgrimage

The first time I spied the curiously titled A Sand County Almanac  on my big brother Jock’s desk, I was maybe thirteen or fourteen  years old.  The three Canada Geese on the cover of the book caught my attention. Somehow the scene of the waterfowl, cast in green and honking under an overcast sky and the red-lettered title on the cover didn’t fit with the psychedelic covers of Carlos Castaneda and Kurt Vonnegut novels I was used to seeing in his room.   However, the printed birds –like the real ones--were an irresistible magnet and so I was drawn to the book in many ways because it just didn’t seem to fit who I thought him to be and it called to me, the birder and naturalist I was becoming.

As I flipped through the little book, its yellowing pages were littered with words that drew me in further- “nature,” “land,” “conservation” and “wild” came together in a magical formula that felt like my country life written down.  Edgefield, SC where I was growing up was filled with such ideas.  I lived them daily as I watched my father do his best to make a farm work while keeping things wild.  And then there were the illustrations of things that seemed familiar to me. The fine-lined drawings of wildlife jumped off the page and flew or scurried into my consciousness.  I stole the book from Jock’s desk and read it cover to cover.  I’m not sure I really remembered who the author of the book was but I knew the work spoke to me like none other ever had.  Later on I would learn of course that Aldo Leopold had penned the eloquent lines of prose that spoke of harmony, land, conservation and ethic.  His words would become like gospel to me as my conservation conscious evolved.  The more I read it, the more I believed the words and wanted somehow to see and be where the ideas ripened like autumn fruit in Leopold’s mind.  I imagined the shack he’d recovered from a chicken coop and the land he nurtured from negligence to a place of respite and respect.  I wanted to go there and feel the soil in my hands, see the river’s high mark and maybe be inspired to live the words Aldo wrote.  In the tradition of a great pilgrimage to some high and holy place, I had to visit the farm. And so when Jack Kloppenburg and Trish O’Kane invited me to Madison and the University of Wisconsin to talk about an article I’d written last winter in Orion Magazine (More than Birds; A Crisis in Birder Identification), I agreed to do so under one condition; I had to visit Leopold’s Shack.  With dates set and the conditions for the pilgrimage met, I traveled to Madison as autumn’s arrival here in the South is just beginning to gild the tulip poplars and hickories with yellow and burn the maples and sourwoods with scarlet and purples.

A dinner-party and discussion group hosted by Jack, Trish O’Kane (a PhD student) and several undergraduate students the night before my pilgrimage convinced me that I was among kindred conservation spirits.  As we talked about everything from the politics of deer hunting to the reality of Peace Corps work, I learned of Jack’s pioneering dedication to sustainable, local food production and how eager his environmental sciences students are to teach others about the natural world and the importance of protecting it. As I sat there, a stomach-full of homemade chili, cornbread, and Coca-Cola cake  my mind wandered to the expectations of the next morning.  What would it be like on the farm?  How would I react to finally getting to a place I’d envisioned as heaven on earth? 

Leaving the urban behind in a surprisingly short time, our little bus zoomed past fields and farms that used to be prairie. This is what I imagined modern Wisconsin to be like, rural and wide open.  After all, it’s where cows and cheese rule.  I knew that glaciers once scraped their icy bellies across the landscape leaving pits that became ponds and potholes in the prairie.  I was surprised at the rises though.  In places, high hills and bluffs rose above the former plains.  Although not much of what naturally was—was there, it was still an appealing scene; a leftover landscape that Aldo Leopold lamented in some ways but recognized too that humankind could find a place to belong.   

During the ride Jack offered commentary on culture and ecology as we paralleled the levee-tamed Wisconsin River.  We stopped to take a look at the waterway a mile or two from our destination.  On top of the dike, I wondered how different the scene would’ve been for Leopold.  The water flowed past, carrying life and things downstream as it did in Aldo’s time and presumably for eons before.  It had in fact brought him scrap lumber to construct the cabin he called the Shack. A great blue heron stalked a distant shoreline as ring-billed and herring gulls sailed overhead in a low, gray sky.  A student spied a bald eagle hiding its hulking form in a big cottonwood.  The overcast ceiling mostly hid the sun and the day seemed fit for contemplation.  I had been hugging a 1^st edition copy of A Sand County Almanac   to my chest  like a holy tome as we stood there.  Somehow hoping I guess to have its words seep me into me as I soaked up whatever the day would offer.  I felt compelled to share “the word” and read a passage about the river bringing “possessions “that helped build the farm and the land.  The students stood in silence, sensing the moment of reverence.  It felt more sacred to me than time I’ve ever spent in any church.

On to the Shack, we drove through woods and wetlands designated as refuge to protect the wild things Leopold loved. Through a tunnel of trees, advanced in the Fall flush of color beyond what I’d left back home in Seneca, a recent rain lent a glistening gravity to an increasingly spiritually charged morning.  Our farm host, Dr. Stan Temple, met us at the farm gate.  He’d just witnessed migrating Northern Leopard frogs across the narrow blacktop and shared the wonder of that scene with us while lamenting the death of so many under the careless wheels of  a  “progress” --a phenomena whose scale Leopold  probably foresaw. Stan seemed like one of the pines Leopold had planted, solid and unpretentious but happy to be at home in the place.  As we walked the trail into the property, I lingered behind trying to soak in something, anything—everything up through the soles of my boots.

Northern Leopard Frog

Stanley Temple is a world-renowned ornithologist and respected for his seminal reports on the devastating impacts of feral cats on bird populations in North America.  Retired now from the University of Wisconsin, he held the same chair of wildlife ecology that Aldo Leopold did. Having competently followed in the footsteps of the Father of Wildlife Management and Conservation Ethic in the Ivory Tower, he now embraces his role beyond the academic to deliver the conservation word in a different way.  Humble, knowledgeable and gracious, his gentle manner and casual yet respectful attention to every detail of the place was inspiring.  As he explained the past practices—Leopold’s love affair with pines and the current battles to eradicate invasive exotic plant pests among them, I began to absorb the place. There was a meadow. Once a fallow field it was full of switchgrass, bottlebrush, purple-blooming asters and sunny black-eyed Susan's.  A pileated woodpecker’s call cut through the sounds of feet shuffling through the leaf litter and multiple conversations.  I still couldn’t believe I was there, trodding the same ground as a hero I’d never met but revered like a saint.  As we rounded the bend “it” was suddenly but subtlety there, a little gray and brown streaked wooden structure with a white door.  It just sat there, humbly waiting in understatement beneath a towering pine on the right and guarded by a huge maple with each leaf glowing like a miniature sun in the mid-morning glimmer.  I was really here. I stopped; stood there in some act of unconscious meditation.  I think I mumbled a few words of disbelief.  Perhaps only I heard them.  I’m not sure how those who travel to Mecca or Jerusalem or whatever place they deem holy feel when their eyes meet their expectations.  I can tell you that I was left speechless with a very large lump lodged snugly in my throat.

Dr. Stanley Temple- Keeper of the Faith

 

 

 

 

As we walked forward, the Shack grew in physical size but not by much.  The perspective of proximity didn’t lend much to the former chicken house’s measurable dimensions. However, it grew to gargantuan proportions in my soul.  Each plank in the construction became clear. Lumber, nails, screws, hinges, shingles, windows, latches—all had come together  to be this place that thousands now trek to in reverence. The simple white door glowed with invitation.  The Shack breathed as the leaves fluttered and blue jays and black-capped chickadees flitted around it.  The front yard held a fire ring and a few of Leopold’s famous benches.  The simple seats looked more like saw horses than chairs but were testament, like so much here, of Leopold’s economy. An old-timey hand-operated water pump stood looking new and blue in the shadow of the antique architecture.  I snapped photo after photo somehow trying to capture the essence of the place but it was like trying to catch the last glimmer of fading light shifting through the remains of the day.  The perfection of what one sees in certain things and at special times is fleeting and impossible to capture.  The present perfect is always past and therefore never  to be held again. There was no angle or perspective from which to do what I felt justice. 

 The Shack fits perfectly into a landscape that Leopold never saw.  The mature trees standing watch over the place, the recovered meadow, the planted pines that now guarded the entrance were all figments of Aldo Leopold’s informed imagination.  They were things that might be if the land was respected and revered—a tired parcel nurtured to paradise. I sat on a bench and felt the sound hardness of the oak that Leopold must’ve sensed recording birds in the dawn chorus.  I inhaled deeply to see if I might somehow take some of the inspiration into my being. The students milled around and talked. Many were just as inspired as I was  but I think the difference in years and experience may have not given them the same opportunity to fall so deeply in love and headlong obsession with the ideas that grew from the acres Leopold treated as respectfully as one might treat a wayward teenager  struggling to become something more. 

  

 

Stan unlocked the door and invited us inside.  It was almost too much ---but I did go in.  If the outer dimensions seemed small, the  inside was comfortably cramped. That Leopold brought  his wife and children to build and live here is testament to his devotion to both family and the farm.  That they willingly did so is testament to their devotion to him and his ideas of treating nature as an entity to be loved and lived in with reverence.   Beyond the artifacts of their lives here, I saw through the shutters of the thrown open windows, Aldo Leopold’s vision of the Land Ethic. Stan’s words informed my inspiration as he showed photos of the Leopold family’s farm life.  We left the cabin to visit the place where the good oak fell and again, I loitered behind, selfishly wanting to somehow live in the moment alone. I wanted to gather all of it up and hoard it in my heart. 

As we walked back past the cabin, past the "Parthenon"  (really an outhouse) and down towards the river, we passed through patches of ground trying to become prairie again.  Chest high grasses and fall flowers were doing their best to make the transition to be something Aldo would have waxed poetically about.  A family of eastern bluebirds warbled softly in an oak woodland that used to be a sandbar on the Wisconsin river and a "V" of Canada geese, rare in Leopold’s time but abundant now, honked their way down the river.  Cedar waxwings, ever the sociable songbird, lisped their thin songs on the breezy day now nearing the noon zenith.  The footing was unsure and I knelt to put my hands in the shifting purchase.  I plunged them deep into the heart  of the place, trying to somehow leave some seed of my soul in the sand. I imagined that Aldo himself at some point did the same to feel what this place was and what it could be. The coarse, chocolate colored soil yielded itself to me readily, fell through my hands, resisting my attempts to make it stick together like the clay of my southern home place would.  The curiously titled book that had drawn me in was now clear as spring water. I had come full circle to the place where an idea of ethic and morality to nature evolved and perhaps some of me, was reborn on that day.

 

Dream Writing

Last night

Under a veil of slumber

A poem stirred me

Bubbled up like cool spring water

Freed from the grip of consciousness
Worry

Typed in flashes of rapid eye movement
Dreaming

The words poured 

Sweetly

Oozed like warm honey 

Drizzled

Danced in rhythms

Simple and complex

Couplets and cinquain

Haiku

The words swirled round about

Like Autumn’s first leaves  

Falling

Teased by October’s cooling breath

A fox’s tracks laced in the snow

The inspiration slipped away at dawn