Binoculars, bald eagles and my journey as a Black birder

On the first of February, I woke up at 4:45 a.m. and drove 30 miles south. I was headed to a bird meetup at the Newman Wetlands Center, where I would gather with a group of birders to witness a murmuration: a magnificent coordinated flight pattern of thousands of birds during winter roosting. 

We drove in a caravan to the Center. It was 37 degrees, and I remember wishing I had brought warmer gloves as the group waited along a strip of land between two lakes.

You could hear the birds before you saw them. At 7:13 a.m., the black birds began to murmurate — but it wasn’t as majestic as I expected. Although there were thousands of birds, it wasn’t as many as a typical murmuration, leaving me slightly underwhelmed. Despite this, I was excited to have watched the sun rise with our group, and we continued to bird along the wetlands. 

Less than 15 minutes later, I called my partner to check in. She answered, but I suddenly interrupted her with a gasp. I’d just spotted two bald eagles huddled together on a telephone line, as if seeking warmth from one another. I stood there, mesmerized.

“Babe… it happened,” I whispered to her. 

“You saw a bald eagle, didn’t you?”

My partner knew: Ever since I began birding, I’ve dreamed of seeing a bald eagle, and this was my first-ever sighting.

But I haven’t always been a birder. 

Birding with Feminist Bird Club at Stone Mountain Park, Georgia.

I’m someone who likes to be doing things; I jump around from place to place, adventure to adventure. Despite the nickname “Birdie” (short for “Hummingbird”) so lovingly assigned to me by a friend, I stumbled upon birding by accident. Nearly three years ago, a friend invited me to a local meetup hosted by Feminist Bird Club Atlanta (FBC ATL), and I decided to go.

At the meetup, our group of 30 walked slowly down Doll’s Head Trail, south of Atlanta. We moved like an amoeba, whispering in hushed tones while trying to decipher the bird calls we were hearing from the trees above. Two hours later, we’d identified over 25 species of birds and I felt all the stress and anxiety that I’d been carrying that morning fall off my shoulders. The experience of using binoculars for the first time — zooming in and viewing a bird up close — was a moment of immense excitement. The first bird I saw through binoculars was the great egret. I’ll never forget that day.

After that first bird outing, I planned a biking and birding overnight adventure with FBC ATL and my bike group, Radical Adventure Riders (RAR) ATL. On that trip, I got to experience spotting and identifying birds through other people’s perspectives, and learned a lot in the process — but I also felt a pull to find fellow Black women who were birding in my area.  

I crave being able to experience the outdoors on a regular basis with folks who look like me, and find joy together over a shared activity. I knew there had to be Black women who were experts in this area. It’s something I always look for — who’s doing the thing you want to do AND looks like you?

A friend helped connect me to a few folks in Atlanta who were avid birders, and I messaged each of them on Instagram to ask if they wanted to go birding together. Those early conversations led me to create a “Black Birders ATL” GroupMe chat, so that I could connect with more birders that looked like me. One of those people I met up with had started a Black birding group called The Streets is Cawing (TSC), and we’ve since combined forces to host monthly meetups all around Atlanta. These meetups are known as “Take Flight” in a nod to Toni Morrison, who said “You wanna fly? You got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

Birding in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park with The Streets is Cawing.

Morrison was an avid birder but didn’t feel the need to go to faraway places — she often birded from her porch or backyard. Birdwatching has a long history of being elitist: traveling to distant places to watch birds, finding secret locations for birding and not sharing those locations with the masses, feeling like you need a wealth of knowledge to participate in a bird walk with an expert group. Morrison’s approach reminds us that nature and birds are all around us — I want to embody that sentiment and make birding more accessible. Creating a group chat and hosting monthly meetups helps me accomplish that. We encourage folks to come, binoculars or not (we have plenty to go around!), and spend time in nature enjoying one another and the birds.

Although I’ve been able to bird with all sorts of people over the past couple of years, birding with Black folks and being in community is markedly different. It makes me even more appreciative of things like Black Birders Week. 

Founded in 2020, Black Birders Week usually takes place from Sunday to Saturday during the last week of May. This year’s Black Birders Week will take place from May 25–31 with the theme “Grounded in community.” Last year, TSC hosted an event for Black Birders Week here in Atlanta, and we’re hoping to host another meetup for 2025. The event acknowledges the history and contributions of Black nature enthusiasts and birders to the outdoors and highlights the lack of representation in this space. It’s a declaration that Black folks have always been outside, and we will continue to do so.

[Black Birders Week is] a declaration that Black folks have always been outside, and we will continue to do so.

I bird because of the community it connects me with — a space for healing and sharing the outdoors with others. I bird because it creates a sense of calm for me, giving me an opportunity to take pause, be quiet, listen and notice the world around me. And I also bird because of the way it reconnects me with childlike wonder. 

My earliest childhood memory of being outside is trying to climb the big magnolia tree in the front yard with my older brother. We wanted to climb all the way up so we could poke our heads through the top of the tree. Of course that never happened but somehow we kept trying, because we believed it would happen one day. 

As we age and learn about the world, read the news and experience life, it makes it hard to continue to be in awe of things, to play and get excited by the little things. Birding allows me to to access joy on a daily basis — to find so much delight in seeing bald eagles, or a great egret, that I’m left speechless — and I hope that I never lose that feeling. 

Birding has transformed my life in myriad ways; I only wish I had found it sooner.

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