There are 70 million plus who think he was leading them towards some “Great Again” place. I don’t care. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Hundreds of thousands of acres of rich habitat exist now because of Black people bound to the land by a racist institution. It’s everything from pretty bird pictures and watching birds in my backyard during quarantine to social commentary about Ahmaud and Breonna [Taylor]. — Prince Harry’s Quarantine Lament: The Ex-Royal Is Reportedly Feeling a Little Sad in L.A.— Astronaut Jessica Meir Returns Home to a “Completely Different Planet”— Can a New Book Finally Settle the Feud Rumors Between Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton?— This Is What Swedish Chefs Learned While Keeping Their Restaurants Open in the Pandemic— Even Stephen King Thinks We’re Living in a Stephen King Book— A Pandemic Won’t Kill the Open Office, but Slack Could— From the Archive: The Lonely Heir, an Inside Look at Prince Charles’s Childhood. I was busy raising a family, but “meh” is how I mostly felt. But my gosh, most of the people that I know as birders are white, and we hear so much that brings us together, and I think about all of those times that I’ve spent with people who are different from me culturally, ethnically, in many life experiences both good and bad. A hermit thrush skulks in a real thicket of saplings impenetrably bound by honeysuckle vines behind my contrived Thicket, which is itself impenetrable to all but me. And so last night was just—man, it was this next straw on this broken camel’s back, of being black. A step out the sliding back door, through the screen porch, and there’s green. And then [with] that focusing, and the sort of holding my breath as I focused on that bird, literally and figuratively, there was this transcendent moment. News of a possible pandemic flowing East to West dissipated, mostly, into tweeted diatribe, mixed with my worry about teaching another overloaded wildlife-policy lecture class with no teaching assistant, and another field lab with no research assistant. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation. Drew Lanham, dreamed of flight. I see culture and conservation as inextricably linked and hope they’re catching on. And it’s not something that a lot of people think about. So I got up this morning, and I’d actually posted last night but then I made it private, and this morning got up and just changed the settings. Then, in 2008, Barry Obama arrived and the plain was suddenly fruited! But then there’s a terror when someone decides, Oh, well, let’s go into this neighborhood and bird, or let’s go here, or let’s go there. Then came the report of Breonna Taylor, murdered by police as she slept in her Louisville apartment. The spatiotemporal markers for my life once included teaching days and sprints though airports, but staying home short-circuited all of it. The author’s backyard, September. Northern cardinals sang as if red might get redder. Drew Lanham finds himself spending more time a... lone hiking the Southern Appalachian’s Blue Ridge escarpment in South Carolina. Christian Cooper’s video went viral, and it was a stark illustration of Lanham’s work. How am I going to be perceived as a black man with binoculars, in a place where people might not want me to be? I mean, I’m 6’3”, 250 pounds; this guy was 5’10”, 160. I evolved from luddite to greenhorn and was ready to log on when the links were mailed. Not just counting lots of birds, to be still in a bird, and to watch it, and to understand it. I cannot just watch the birds in gusts of heavy wind that blow through my backyard on the edge of a weather front without thinking of the barriers that persist. So, I made it up as I went along. We’ve been asked to hack our way with rusted butter knives, to navigate with a half-empty Bic lighter, walking with plantar fasciitis and no map or soothing automated voice telling us when to turn left or to stop at the cliff’s edge before tumbling off into the abyss. Projects by Field Operations, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, and Stoss: Landscape Urbanism. So waiting is my watchword, and I will face teaching again with caution and some dread. I remember landlines, dialup modems, the wonder of faxes, and waiting for film to be developed at now-extinct corner drugstores. Having the assumption that it’s an escape is really a privilege. could be called friends of anybody Black or anything green. I wanted in that process to then be able to exhale. But I sort of inhale deeply, just deep belly breaths with birds that help me be in that place, so to focus on one bird for a long time is an important thing for me now. Wildlife ecologist J. I fear every sore throat, dry cough, sniffle, or odd headache; fear that I’ll be damned with a diagnosis. Was the process on Saturday similar? It’s sort of a homogenized hobby. You can find all programs on this website. Look out for deer — and the police…” He assures me that he knows the drill. If I’m lucky, there will be a chance at gathering some venison. Ecoregions of South Carolina, as defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2002. Some people have the freedom to go where they want and with impunity be and act how they want to act. Drew Lanham imagines a meeting between Civil Rights icon the Rev. It was my own Sane County Almanac published to immediate peer review. Goldfinches re-gilded their plumage past winter-tarnished hues and again became black-oil sunflower-seed pigs. It is surrounded by Chinese and Japanese privet that were here when we arrived and have since grown to 20 feet tall and can’t-see-through thick. Mid-March 2020 doesn’t seem so long ago. Maybe, for them, my fantastical idea of Rachel Carson and Martin Luther King strategizing about environmental justice seems too farfetched. But I got this call one night, and she asked if I would be interested in doing an enumeration piece. And in the midst of COVID, that’s no small thing. An amazing, amazing bird, and I was thinking about the trials and tribulations of being a bird, how this thing had flown 1,000 miles, probably, by the time it got to where I was. The terrain doesn’t “offer thin air vistas or many bare rock spires,” he says. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Chimney swifts flew in tight formation, and Carolina wrens seemed to work every daylight hour ferrying food to their chicks in the makeshift plastic-flowerpot house. When we went virtual, I was caught flat-footed. There’s the evidence of everything that happened, of someone essentially threatening you with police as if the police were the weapon. J. Though quarantined and socially distanced for most of one calendar year and who knows how far into the next, I feel that pressure. But individual disposition might be the thing that gets us from one marker to the next. If they did the basic work, they all got A’s. Pit bulls are the preferred pet, and on too many days one can hear the staccato pop! What’s going to take me or some family member or beloved friend out? J. I may have some knowledge of that place that says, No, I don’t think so. I forgot dates. I workshopped with writer friends on Mondays and Fridays. Along with the ascending zzzzzzzzzzzziiip of the parulas in still bare-boned tree canopies and the zeee-zee-zee-ZOO-zee! Join renowned author J. Northern harriers drift over stubbled corn and dry-rattling soybeans. And people who could tell the differences between these birds, who for most of the public would look the same, were not taking the time to notice the difference between these black people. Taking Nature Black® keynote speaker Dr. J. I waited on the great crested flycatchers to show up and move into the new house I risked my life to hang 20 feet up in a cherry tree. And it took me a while to find the bird and I finally found it, and there it was, back in the shadows just singing its guts out. I slip on switchbacks and get mired in mucky spots as parts of majority America finally recognize that black and brown skin have been “pre-existing conditions” that killed us in dramatically disproportionate numbers way before the virus did. You find yourself sometimes almost psychologically bowing to show that you’re not being aggressive or that you have no ill intent, and so it’s this game, this internal gaming that is tiresome. I can honestly say I'm less fearful walking in forests and in places where I know there are four-legged predators that can kill and eat me—I am less fearful in those situations than when I recognize the lights of a police cruiser trailing me for no reason. The cancelled events began to call in for remote rescheduling. Brains whir and hearts feel. Drew Lanham, a Clemson University ornithologist who has worked to make conservation science more compelling, relevant and inclusive, is the 2020 recipient of the Center for Biological Diversity’s annual E.O. In his first year in office, I sank deeper in, and knew that we were being infected with something insidious way before any kind of biological pestilence arrived. Drew Lanham: Yeah, they have. Drew Lanham Lanham is a birder, naturalist, and hunter-conservationist who has published essays and poetry in publications including Orion, Flycatcher, and Wilderness Magazine and in several anthologies including The Colors of Nature, State of the Heart, Bartram’s Living Legacy, and Carolina Writers at Home , among others. As the quarantine took hold, there was the news of Ahmaud Arbery, hunted down while jogging by vigilantes in South Georgia. While observing backyard birds, I’ve spent almost as many hours pondering my singular identity as a Black man and the pestilent privilege of White impunity perpetrated since 1619. November 3rd opened the way for some repair, but even with wings clipped to lame duck, he spews every kind of lie. Should I not go there? I think the washouts are showing in fewer smiles, and an exhaustion that I can’t quite shake. For more on this editorial decision, see A Note on Usage. Support independent nonprofit public scholarship on design. Yeah. But the ornithology group is usually still struggling with Carolina wren-call variations or why I would ask them to write haiku to learn field I.D. Birding is often described as a kind of escape, and your work shows where that’s not the case—where human problems are mirrored in birding. They will be sharing their stories of discovering birds and their unique experiences of birding while Black in America Costs measured in misanthropy, hate, fear, resentment, and disenfranchisement; the costs are obstacles in the dark we’ll falter over again and again, until they are removed. “The Thicket.” My range has been reduced to something the Carolina wrens would find restrictive. And this last Saturday, I was back up at the same spot, and I was watching this bird called a hooded warbler, this beautiful little citrine yellow bird with this olive green back. There may have been augmented coffee way before 5 p.m. Honestly. Still, spring break sounded sweetly tantalizing. I torch square inches of planting beds in prescribed fires ignited with matches instead of drip torches. Things still felt edgy. He's a poet and a writer who addresses race, culture, and relationships to … It’s a new nine rules essentially, but they’re really sort of these revelations that I struggle with as a black man in this country sitting in my backyard watching birds, but even wondering if I’m safe in my backyard after Breonna Taylor was killed in her home. Looking at some of the responses online to what I posted, it said, Oh, my god, that was terrible, and did you see that poor dog? I offer the in-class liberty of free thought with endless multiple choices. Am I in a safe place? This interview has been condensed and edited. On Monday in Central Park, another black birder, Christian Cooper, asked Amy Cooper, a white woman, to leash her dog in the Ramble, as required by the park and as needed to protect the birds there. Ad Choices. It’s fully being itself in its habitat now. I began to count good fortune for health and full breath from one cycle to the next: Sunup. The next semester looms and I don’t feel confident about meeting in classrooms yet. Drew Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Master Teacher, and Certified Wildlife Biologist at Clemson University. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Add to Calendar A native of Edgefield, South Carolina, J. Well, what I understand that Christian did was, Hey, lady, you know your dog’s breaking the rules? So there was this Zen moment of thinking, and it led to some other of these rules that I’ve now refreshed. The ecologist and writer discusses the viral Central Park video, and how the hobby is only an escape for some. Right wingers went righter. I resent these things. She’d given me two weeks. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. There is butterfly bush, lantana, English ivy, and an international assortment of other “undesirable” things that would cause native-expecting eco-visitors to discount my eco-card by a few points. Was it the fish that attracted them or the lily pads and pond weeds I planted that they couldn’t resist? But, also, last spring seems agonizingly distant, in the way that one recalls the worst kind of wandering journey. Students are invested in the courses by Valentine’s Day, in that the chance has passed to drop without a record on their transcripts. At times like these, the time I spent on social media took up more headspace than before; my pretty-picture posting of backyard birds, or chronicling of a rare wander to take in Piedmont prairie birds; or dispatches from Sunset Camp, the postage-stamp-sized place I bought on a small mountain lake, take on intense meaning. That was the plan, until a beast only visible through electron microscopy lumbered onto the scene. Mid-March 2020 doesn’t seem so long ago. We have 36 more days of denial to further erode the potholed trail we’re on. I’m lucky. I bird with friends from time to time, but I really found the time that I get to spend alone with the birds, it’s a communion of sorts. Even so, I recognize how much has dripped to erode me since mid-March. Class was mercifully over. Drew Lanham honored ‘for his passion and creativity in the fight to protect the wild creatures we share the Earth with.’ birdwatchingdaily.com Ornithologist J. Time now to chart a new way. Are others watching me as I watch birds? Showers were optional. Looking for more? In some cases, whole canopies were lopped off by the electric company or some seat-of-the-pants “tree surgeon,” leaving only stumpy trunks pointing skyward. The political havoc and racial injustices of the other two plagues will not be noted by comparable magnitudes of numbers lost, but by an immeasurable toll of pain and misery inflicted on mental well-being. I wore the same running shorts for days at time, while taking turns, above the waist, amongst two or three presentable collared shirts. A virus seeking Black victims. Even when I escape to watch birds, that’s part of the question. pop! I’ve been asked before about that nine—was there something magical you were thinking, something numerological? Time will tell if the grade inflation results in some environmental-policy malfeasance or bird-misidentification crime. J. Not one but three trips to my fantasy-next-life state of Montana — called off. American robins whinnied. [via Twitter]. Lacking insurance, money-strapped, or both, people on the hill make do — or don’t. That’s what happened there: I didn’t want to lose the flow. Jealousy and envy began to sink in as report after report--many of them on And that’s when I did. That week, I did watch birds, but mostly locally. Not what we mapped or planned. I’d always enjoyed those enumeration pieces, and I never thought of writing one, and she said, “Well, you know, you could write something about birding and maybe your experiences as a black birder—just run with it. There were many days when I had no clue what day it was at all. When he leaves, I always warn him, “be careful! On the hill, there isn’t the disposable time to sit and watch birds. We have dogs in our home. You know, I don’t think I’m gonna walk the streets of that neighborhood with my binoculars after dark or at dusk looking for nightjars. The energy expended in thinking about not being taken out is almost enough to make one give in, just step off the overlook. And that we’ve been fighting. Those predators, those sharks, swim differently in the water. Conditions, of course, will determine how far one travels towards a destination in a given time, and weather, footing, and random encounters with other beings can make a great deal of difference on the journey. Police and racist institutions acting with impunity, killing at whim. Drew Lanham! Day after day, from the first week of spring through the midsummer nightmare of swelter, sickness, and protest, I sat after all the Zooming and absorbed the usual cast of characters that brings the world in on wings. Maybe this is what it felt like for those Egyptians in Genesis, beset by calamity after calamity because they pissed off God by enslaving the Hebrews. I feel sometimes like I have to remind myself to breathe. It flew off my fingers. In the four years since to present day, the world has waited on tweets he likely types from the shitter that can drive financial markets or cause world leaders to move missiles into firing position. There isn’t much green space there. Although these people are my neighbors, I live a different life. That was important to me, that one bird. It’s all contrived — hostas next to New York ferns. I know my data the best. The course is popular and students usually clamor to get in, but just a meagre complement, five-maybe-six out of 20 on the roster, “attended” those field trips. Reached by phone on Tuesday, Lanham discussed the video, his birding, and his writing. And I’m a dog lover. Fear that those tasked with serving and protecting will do neither for me or for my adult child, and that our Black bodies can be discounted by a cop who decides it’s time for my son or for me to die. Oh yeah, it was all a night trip endured in cold, driving rain. You’ve estimated that birding is 90% white. After the plague descended, I lost days in the backyard. It’s a wearing down, like water washing across stone; the kind of loss that’s imperceptible unless one sits and watches for millions of years. But the distinctive part of a hooded warbler is its hood. And I came back on the grid and my phone was blowing up. I awake with these things on my mind, mixed up in all the tiny responsibilities of first-world adulting, and I’m groping my way again on the treacherous path. Each breath is a loan reclaimed with interest, and the next not guaranteed. But I got to nine and I sort of exhaled. So for someone to say, “I’m gonna call the police on you, black man, and tell them that you are assaulting me, or that you have offended me”—there’s a good chance, based upon our news stream, there’s a good chance you’d have the police knocking on your door asking you to prove that you didn't do what someone else said you did. There are people who are studying some of these issues writ large. There are times in writing litany that you feel like you’re not breathing, and you feel like if you take a breath, you’ll lose the thought, you’ll lose the words, you'll lose the flow. Now, winter is here again; and the death toll soars beyond a quarter of a million; and the collateral damage of joblessness, homelessness, and poverty rates further demoralize a nation; and unarmed Black people continue to die at the hands of the police; and even though millions marched in the summer streets to insist that Black Lives Matter, 45 has defended confederacy, teargassed peaceful protests, and rolled back environmental policies to feed a political base hungry for superiority at any cost. What prompted you to write that piece in that form in 2013? You’re a poet, essayist, and memoirist, and this piece melded all those forms. Drew Lanham] Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise. Professor Lanham’s presentation describes a black naturalist’s improbable journey in a largely white field. Join Facebook to connect with Drew Lanham and others you may know. This year, by late February, news streams were filling with rancid political rant and unfamiliar terms — COVID-19, novel corona virus. Because of the ongoing pandemic, this years Birds on the Niagara Festival will be virtual. So much is preventable and fixable, if Americans would just think and feel beyond hate and self. There are some lovely old black cherries I could call a “grove” if my hand was forced. Drew Lanham’s The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature. The backyard is the antithesis; as secure and isolated a place as I know without going into some wildness. It has felt like destiny. Drew Lanham in his talk "Coloring the Conser... vation Conversation" sponsored by The Spring Creek Project. And that’s really what it comes down to: It’s the transgression of a perception of who we should be. And I breathed. I bemoan petty problems and bitch to people with “-ology” degrees about much that’s inconsequential. Drew Lanham will be joining young Black birdwatchers for the second session of Birding While Black: A Candid Presentation, hosted on National Audubon Society's page and as part of #BlackBirdersWeek. The writing ebbs and flows in this morbidly target-rich environment — what with another globally disastrous nature story piled on top of all that climate change has already wrought.