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Birding While Black ‹ Literary Hub

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“Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.” –Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan), “Strange Fruit” It’s only 9:06 a.m. and I think I might get hanged today. * * * * The job I volunteered for was to record every bird I could see or hear in a three-minute interval. I am supposed to do that fifty times. Look, listen, and list for three minutes. Get in the car. Drive a half mile. Stop. Get out. Look, listen, and list again. It’s a routine thousands of volunteers have followed during springs and summers all across North America since 1966. The data is critical for ornithologists to understand how breeding birds are faring across the continent. Up until now the going has been fun and easy, more leisurely than almost any “work” anyone could imagine. But here I am, on stop number thirty-two of the Laurel Falls Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) route: a large black man in one of the whitest places in the state, sitting on the side of the road with binoculars pointed towa

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