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Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up.
Christian Cooper is a self-described "Blerd" (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. While in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the birdwatching ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old when what might have been a routine encounter with a dog walker exploded age-old racial tensions. Cooper's viral video of the incident would send shock waves through the nation.
In Better Living Through Birding, Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous incident in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today. From sharpened senses that work just as well at a protest as in a park to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover them yourself.
Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, this is Cooper's story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days at Marvel Comics introducing the first gay storylines to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas, and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding recounts Cooper's journey through the wonderful world of birds and what they can teach us about life, if only we would look and listen.
1
An Incident in Central Park
I am a Black man running through New York's Central Park. This is no leisure run. I'm not pushing for a new personal best, though my legs pump in furious rhythm. I'm running as if my life depends on it. And though my heart pounds, it's as much out of mounting panic as it is cardiovascular stress. I know what this looks like. My sneakers are old and muddy, my jeans in need of a good washing, and my shirt, though collared, could at best be described as unkempt. I am a Black man on the run. And I have binoculars.
This is not how this evening was supposed to unfold. But all it took was a brief exchange of words to put me in flight. Twilight is racing along the horizon, and I've got half an hour of light left at best. As the sun sinks behind trees wreathed in its glow, so, too, does a feeling of desperation in the pit of my stomach. I'm running out of time.
I check the alert on my phone again and curse myself for turning it off for the entire workday. I'd faced several grueling tasks with hard deadlines and had found the constant vibrating notifications from the Manhattan Rare Bird Alert too indiscriminate ("rare" being rather loosely defined by some contributors) and too distracting during working hours. I preferred to do my birding early in the morning anyway. Then I would head directly to the office, where my colleagues have grown accustomed to my business-questionable attire this time of year (functional and subject to deferred laundering; the demands of my spring migration schedule don't permit much else). So it wasn't until 6:00 p.m. that I turned my phone on and saw the text from Morgan:
"Are you going to go see the Kirtland's Warbler?"
Amusement at what obviously had to be a prank quickly morphed into disbelief as I read the chain of alerts that had preceded it. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" I sputtered, snatching the binoculars off my desk and hurtling out of the office without explanation. At least one co-worker would tell me later that he was certain someone had died.
Now, having sprinted from my office in midtown to the west side of the park near the Reservoir, I slow as I near where I think I need to be. After a few minutes a sinking feeling settles in that I must be in the wrong spot. But as I round a bend in the path, I see a mass of people—nearly all of whom I recognize—and know I've found the place.
Birding Tip
The fastest way to find a widely reported rarity is to look not for the bird but for the coagulation of birders already looking at it.
Reading my stricken expression and ragged gasps as the cocktail of panic and exertion that they are, Mike peels off from the crowd and intercepts me. "Breathe," he says, calm, compact, and dryly British as always. "It's still here; we're looking at it right now." And with a little help from my friends, I find the right spot in the right tree; lock onto the motion among the leaves; and raise my binoculars with hands shaking with anticipation. A bird, slate blue and yellow and smaller than a sparrow, moves from branch to branch with a pump of its tail. I see a unicorn, come alive before my own eyes.
In order to truly appreciate that moment, you must first understand something about this particular bird. The rarest songbird in North America, Kirtland's Warbler is a creature even more unlikely to be spotted in Central Park than the gay Black nerd with binoculars looking up at it. It nests strictly in jack pines of a certain age, habitat requirements so specific that in all the world there are only about six thousand of the birds, restricted to a breeding range that consists almost entirely of a small patch of Michigan. Kirtland's Warblers return there every spring from their wintering grounds in the Bahamas, traveling hundreds of miles to do so. Yet in that routine annual journey, one of these tiny bundles of feathers happened to wander a bit off course, or maybe, like me, this rare bird yearned to ...
Excerpted from Better Living Through Birding by Tom Cooper. Copyright © 2023 by Tom Cooper. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
The title of Christian Cooper's Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World does not fully capture the multifaceted nature of this book. It sounds like it might have self-help elements, provide information on birding and the natural sciences, and include some autobiographical material, but it has an even wider range than this, truly reflecting on who Cooper is as a person. It is a beautiful journey of getting to know someone and his many interests, experiences and nuances of self.
Many know Cooper from a 2020 viral video in which a white woman threatened to call the police on him when he asked her to leash her dog while he was birdwatching in Central Park. As this incident occurred around the same time as the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the video was felt to be symbolic of the political atmosphere. Some saw the woman as a victim of "cancel culture," while others saw her as a racist beyond redemption. The short clip flattened the reality of this interaction, but the book serves to provide background and context for the moment as well as to move beyond it: first, by allowing us to understand Cooper as a full human being, and then by sharing his various motivations, thoughts and considerations in relation to this moment.
Of course, bird-related facts and stories are part of this. Cooper weaves in tips for people who want to start birding, while also conveying the wonder and beauty of observing birds in their natural habitats with all one's senses. He shows how it is a hobby that engages not just the sight, but also the ears in the process of becoming familiar with different songs. There is also the excitement of seeing rare birds, ticking them off a list, sharing in community and traveling to see birds exclusive to a certain region.
We are entertained with elements of travelogue as Cooper shares the privilege he has had of visiting all corners of the world, from the Himalayas to Australia, South America and Iceland. He relates his experiences interacting with different cultures as a gay Black man: for example, being seen as a nonthreat in Australia or an exotic draw in Argentina. Beyond social commentary, he portrays intimate revelations about his childhood and relationships with his mother and father.
Better Living Through Birding shows Cooper as much more than the 60 seconds that catapulted him to fame. After all, he was already an accomplished writer and champion of LGBTQ+ causes, and the viral video scene appears in one of the last few chapters (and one of the least fascinating). The book reads in part as an ode to science fiction, as we learn how he escaped to fantasy worlds through Star Wars, Star Trek and comics, resulting in his work as a writer for Marvel Comics and his creation of its first gay character.
What really draws people together, even if they disagree or are unable to initially understand each other's perspectives, is being exposed to different viewpoints, which is made fully possible when historically marginalized people are able to share theirs. There are so many facets to one's identity, that if you spend long enough freewheeling into different corners of another's mind, heart and history, some element of commonality and interest will undoubtedly spark. Better Living Through Birding gives readers the privilege of getting to know Christian Cooper in this way, and there is so much to explore that you are bound to be drawn in.
Reviewed by Jennifer Hon Khalaf
Brittney Cooper, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Eloquent Rage
Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense World
Jennifer Ackerman, New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds
Rated 3 out of 5
by prem singh yadav
BETTER LIVING THROUGH BIRDING NOTES FROM A BLACK MAN IN THE NATURAL WORLD
Christian Cooper's memoir "Better Living Through Birding" delves into the author's personal journey as well as the joys of bird-watching. The novel begins with a memorable occurrence on Memorial Day 2020, when Cooper requested a dog walker to harness her dog while bird-watching in Central Park. This encounter evolved into a racial altercation, which was videotaped and went viral. Cooper will use this event to reflect on his life and his passion for birding.
Cooper transports readers to his late 1960s boyhood on Long Island, where he was a nerdy youngster who found birding through nature walks with his father and family camping trips. He describes how he would read birding guides to surprise his friends.
The viral video of Christian Cooper confronting a white woman who threatened to call the police on him while he was birdwatching in New York's Central Park helped drive the 2020 protests stemming from the police murders of Black Americans. Yet Cooper has done much beyond this video to raise awareness about racism in general and within the birding world.
The last chapter of his memoir Better Living Through Birding shows him traveling to the Deep South to both reckon with his racial history and promote a more equitable vision of birding through the Black Belt Birding Festival. The event, hosted by the Alabama Audubon (a branch of the bird protection and conservation organization the Audubon Society), sought to increase interest and participation in birdwatching by minorities, as well as to bolster economic and tourism opportunities for the Black Belt, a region spanning Southern states populated by majority-Black farming communities. Individually, Cooper has created a DC Comics graphic novel that includes a story about a Black man who goes birding. He is also on the board of directors for the New York City Audubon.
Birdwatching has historically been overwhelmingly white, privileged and exclusive — a fact that Cooper alludes to as he recalls being introduced to birding, when he and his father arrived as "maybe the first Black people ever for a South Shore walk" with the Audubon Society. In 2011, a survey conducted by the Fish and Wildlife Service found that 93% of birders were white and only 4% were Black. This isn't surprising considering that naturalist John James Audubon, for whom the Audubon Society is named, was a white, racist slaveowner. John Muir, the first president of the Sierra Club, who is often seen as representative of the American love of nature, also enslaved people and was known to have called Black people lazy "sambos" and Native Americans "dirty."
There have been some strides forward in combating this legacy of white privilege and racism. Both the Sierra Club and Audubon Society (some branches of which have committed to changing their names) denounced their racist past in 2020. 2020 also saw the first-ever Black Birders Week. In general, there have been more conversations in recent years about minorities in birdwatching and increasing access to the birding world.
Photo of a northern cardinal in Central Park, New York by Ahmer Kalam, via Unsplash
Filed under Society and Politics
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