Bird-Watching While Black: A Wildlife Ecologist Shares His Tips | Short Film Showcase

You know, there are essential tools for birding: your binoculars, your spotting scope, your field guide, and if you're black, you're going to need probably two or three forms of ID. Never wear a hoodie. The word for an African-American and camouflage is "incog-negro."

Black birds are your birds: red-winged blackbirds, grackles, rusty blackbirds, Brewer's blackbirds, black-coders, acclaimed black Brant, crows, ravens, and blackbirds are larger than the line. Any bird that's black is my bird.

You know, the edge of day is light, is fading. Those corpuscular hours are the times when many birds come to life. It's such a beautiful time to bird. But if you're black and you're gonna bird at night, you better be careful, because you might be perceived as being up to no good.

Be prepared to be confused with the other black birder. When I meet another black birder, it's like encountering an ivory-billed woodpecker: an endangered species; extinction looms.

These are the rules for the black birder: we have to do something to make birding, to make nature, steady in general more interesting to people of color. Out of every hundred bird watchers, how many are black? Yeah.