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I went birding today and saw many good birds. It's been a while since I went birding for the sake of birding, and a lot of things came up for me today that I wanted to put out into the universe.
One of the best things about birding is the casual interactions you'll have with people. One of you will notice that the other is carrying a scope or binoculars or a camera, and ask the other if they've seen anything good today.
Or maybe they're coming from the opposite direction and they tell you they spotted a western kingbird up that way and then you know to look out for it.
Sometimes you'll be one of many birders crowded around a lookout trying to get a glimpse of a vagrant duck or swan. You're like one unit, reveling in the gorgeousness of the bird, and you feel a warmth, a sense of camaraderie.
Very often, I'll have a group of non-birders slow down or stop near me because they're perplexed by the fact that I'm craning my neck to look up at the sky, or because I appear weirdly fascinated by a bush.
These situations are only fun when I'm looking at a bird that sits relatively still (kinglets, for example, are not beginner-friendly). It's always so nice to show someone a woodpecker for the first time and watch their awe.
Pre-COVID, I used to do a lot of group birding trips (often expert-led) which were a fantastic way for me to see and hear more birds than I would alone, and also to get better at _how_ I IDed birds (using more cues than just seeing the bird at close range).
Birding has been a wonderful thing for me - it's my favourite way to commune with nature, it fits well with my desire to amass very niche knowledge and my love of pattern-finding, and collecting species is so game-like, like collecting trading cards!
But there have been bad corners of it too. I stand out in most run-of-the-mill birding groups because I'm young, brown and a woman. This has definitely affected how people react to me and my ideas (dismissing my IDs, being sore losers when I turned out to be right, etc.)
The ways in which my race and gender presentation interact mean that I haven't really been seen as a threat, or had my race weaponized in interactions with people but that's absolutely a reality for many. Remember the Central Park incident? https://nypost.com/2020/05/26/christian-cooper-recounts-amy-cooper-incident-before-video-footage/
My issues with birding have been more related to my gender, and the way I present. People have written at length about this. This was an article that stood out to me. https://medium.com/@oliviagentile/a-feminist-revolution-in-birding-95d81f4ab79b
There are many parallels between birding and tech/STEM in terms of representation, actually. That article talks about how the representation of women thins out at the top of the hierarchy despite women making up over 50% of self-identified birders in the US. So birding is worse.
It's not just representation and not being taken seriously though. There's also the issue of literal safety. I got my driver's license just a month before the pandemic, so before that I would take public transit for 1.5-2 hours to get to these walks.
I've had a couple of older men sort of take me under their wing because I was very passionate about birding and quite good at it on these group walks, but this attention can sometimes be a double-edged sword.
Today I thought a lot about the man who kindly offered to take me with him to look for a catbird that was spotted in a faraway, transit-inaccessible place. I trusted him since we'd gone on group walks before. He felt that it was okay to put his hand on my thigh in the car :|
I wish I could tell you that I'm somehow unique in having this sheer volume of awful experiences with men who don't understand consent or boundaries or propriety but I'm not alone in this, and it's not a me thing.
All of this has come up because last night I read Aisha White's story of her assault by Jason Ward, a famous birder. So much of what she said resonated with me and horrified me.
CW / TW sexual assualt https://whitehottact.com/2021/02/14/a-trusted-public-figure-raped-me-while-we-were-birding/
CW / TW sexual assualt https://whitehottact.com/2021/02/14/a-trusted-public-figure-raped-me-while-we-were-birding/
I'm happy to see the outpouring of support for her from the community, and I want to add my voice to the list - I believe Aisha. I hope that this doesn't cause her to pull away from birding, something that clearly brings her so much joy.
That's a wish for her, for me and for all of us folks who are just trying to live our lives and do things without being actively harmed.
I want to live to see a day where I don't have to do mental gymnastics about whether there will be other people birding in place X, whether it'll be remote and isolated, whether someone will hear me if I scream... I deserve better. Aisha deserved better.
