![]() ![]() Though some would precede Audubon, and many come after, no one in ornithology is as revered. Mention him, and like Edison and the light bulb or Zuckerberg and Facebook, more people than not will associate the name with a singular thing: birds. John James Audubon is American birding the name falls wistfully, almost like a mantra, from admirers’ lips. Some are asking, “Wasn’t Black Birders Week over months ago?” “That overblown Central Park thing was put to rest, right?” But just as I don’t forget assaults with deadly words against friends, I must expand my Blackness and bird love beyond a week. Race is an issue in every aspect of American life, including birding, conservation, nature stewardship, and environmentalism writ large. For birders, it is an issue fledged from the nest of its “founding father,” John James Audubon, and flies fully feathered now in present day. Here we go again, some of you may be thinking, the race thing. I celebrate who I am, but like far too many of us “living while Black,” I have also felt the frustration and pain of being discounted or disrespected. Like the seldom-seen skulking sparrows so many of us seek, we are few and far between among an overwhelmingly white flock. ![]() My love of birds lies at the intersection of these and renders me, and the minuscule percentage of others who would declare themselves the same, a rarity. I confess here and declare now multiple identities-race and ethnicity, profession and passion. Drew Lanham and I’m a Black American ornithologist.
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