Christian Cooper on Birding for Your Soul

BROKEN GROUND: EARTH DAY WITH CHRISTIAN COOPER

CHRISTIAN COOPER ON BIRDING FOR THE SOUL 

(BIRD SOUNDS FROM CENTRAL PARK) 

Christian Cooper: Birds, they are our soul. They are our spirit. They do what we can only aspire to, which is move through the air with impossible ease, crossing fake boundaries that we draw on a map. And they can take us away from those troubling times that we may be experiencing. 

(THEME MUSIC IN) 

Host: This is Broken Ground, a podcast by the Southern Environmental Law Center. I’m Leanna First-Arai, your host. Here at Broken Ground, we dig up environmental stories in the South, and introduce you to the people at the heart of them. 

(THEME MUSIC OUT) 

Host: This episode is all about the natural world— but later this season we’ll be investigating the environmental cost of an artificial one, when we look at the impacts of AI data centers. We’re deep down a rabbit hole researching that now. But for Earth Day, we wanted to come up for some air and remind ourselves how much there is to love about this real world, and why it’s worth protecting. So we’re sharing an interview we conducted recently with a guy whose love of birds and birding is contagious. 

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: My name is Christian Cooper. And I love to spread the gospel of birding.   

Host: Christian Cooper is the author of the 2023 book “Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World.” He’s also the host of a 6-part series on National Geographic called “Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper.” We spoke to him just as spring migration was about to kick off here in the South, so I wanted to know what kind of birds he’s looking out for from his perch in New York City.  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: What I am looking for, or what I am listening for in particular, ’cause I, I am an ear birder, one of those people who relies on their ears a lot to find the birds. I’m listening for(squeaking) which is the, um, very nasal cry of the Blue Gray Gnatcatcher ’cause they come back early. I’m also listening for a little (ticket ticket), which is the, uh, call of the Ruby Crowned Kinglet, ’cause they’re also one of the earlier arrivals. And then I’m listening for a trill. And the trills are the worst. 

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: Because there are so many birds that do trills. 

(WARBLER TRILLS) 

Christian Cooper: There’s the Chipping Sparrow, there’s the Pine Warbler, the Worm Eating Warbler. And for those who are unfamiliar with the warblers, the warblers are the stars of the spring migration in the East because they are colorful, they are small, they are active, they are incredibly varied. And we have something like thirty-five different kinds in the East that you could possibly see.  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: And the Pine Warbler is always the first one back. 

(PINE WARBLER TRILL) 

Christian Cooper: Kind of makes sense because, like the name suggests, they nest in pines and the pines are already leafed out ’cause they’re always leafed out. So those birds can come back and find what they need first. And the key is – to their trill – it’ll fade in and out at the beginning and the end. 

(PINE WARBLER TRILL) 

Christian Cooper: So you’ll listen for that and you just might find a small, bright yellow-greenish bird, and that would be your Pine Warbler, especially if you’re around pine trees. 

(PINE WARBLER TRILL) 

Leanna First-Arai: This winter, of course, has been a very snowy, uh, icy one. Would you come to expect anything different after a year like this?  

Christian Cooper: Well, the thing to remember is that where the birds are wintering is not necessarily impacted by the weather where we are. They don’t know necessarily what’s been going on uphere. So their patterns are, are determined largely by the length of the days. That’s what gets their juices flowing and gives them a kick in the butt and makes them think, ‘Oh, I’ve, I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta go, I gotta get up there.’ 

Leanna First-Arai: Okay. Guessing you might have, like, a favorite bird for different environments, different places that you might find yourself. Would there be, mid-migration, a particular bird that when you spot it or when you, when you hear it – as you mentioned, you’re an ear birder – you just light up and, if so, what is that creature and how does it look? Sound? 

Christian Cooper: Yeah, there is one, for sure.  

Leanna First-Arai: Okay.  

Christian Cooper: And the one I like starts arriving in the middle of the migration. And that’s the Blackburnian Warbler.  

(MUSIC IN HERE)  

Christian Cooper: It is, like all the warblers, small. It is kind of grayish, you know, black and white a little bit. But against that is this – in the males – this dayglow fiery orange throat, that’s just incandescent when you get a good male. That bird just knocks my socks off. Plus, it’s got a very distinctive song, very high pitched, very fast. Some people can’t hear it because the, the range is so high.  

Leanna First-Arai: Uh-huh. 

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: It’s seven notes, and the last note is so impossibly high and urgent ’cause it slides upwards, um, that it sounds like the bird is being strangled. 

Leanna First-Arai: Oh my goodness! 

Christian Cooper: Yeah. So when I hear that for the first time every spring, I’m like, ‘It’s here! It’s here!’ And then I go nuts ’cause I’ve gotta find it, ’cause it’s not enough to hear it; I’ve gotta see it. 

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah. Yeah. Is that one you can do, or is that too high pitched?  

Christian Cooper: I can do a bad, human sort of mnemonic for it. 

Leanna First-Arai: Okay. 

Christian Cooper: A friend of mine came up with this one and it’s pretty good. So Q this is for you. Come-uh, come-uh, come-uh, come see MEEEEEE!!! 

Leanna First-Arai: Wooh! 

Christian Cooper: But that’s – imagine that sped up and, like. impossibly high pitched. 

Leanna First-Arai: “Come-uh, come-uh, come-uh, come see me!!” Okay. Yeah, oh, well thank you for that. So, how, how did that, the Blackburnian Warbler, how did that become your warbler and when did it strike you that that was yours? 

Christian Cooper: I saw one  

Leanna First-Arai: Mmm. 

Christian Cooper: And that was it. 

Leanna First-Arai: The dayglow? 

Christian Cooper: It was like, it, it was love at first sight, you know, I mean.  

Leanna First-Arai: It was love at first sight. 

Christian Cooper: To me, a Blackburnian is the sound of all the joy in the world just pouring forth.   

(BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER TRILL) 

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Leanna First-Arai: What were your very earliest birding moments? You know, how did you get going? 

Christian Cooper: My spark bird, as they call it, which is the bird that gets you started down the dark path of birding, was a Red-winged Blackbird.  

Leanna First-Arai: Hmmm. 

Christian Cooper: My parents put me in some summer wood shop class. I have no idea why, ’cause, no interest, but I ended up building a bird feeder … 

(SFX/HAMMERING ON WOOD, POURING BIRD SEED) 

Christian Cooper: … and I put that up in the backyard and I kept wondering what all the crows with a little patch of red in the shoulder of the wing were.  

(RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD CALL) 

Christian Cooper: And it turns out they’re Red-wing Blackbirds, they’re not crows at all. So that started me. And then, um, my dad was huge on camping. The whole family was a family of campers, which is especially back then, unusual for an African-American family.  

(VARIOUS SFX) 

Christian Cooper: Because both my parents were teachers, they had the summers off. So one summer we took a cross-country camping trip from New York, across through Canada, down the West Coast, and then back through the states all summer long. My dad, me, my mom, my sister, and the family cocker spaniel, all crammed into a little Volkswagen bus camper. Cross-country camping trip involves a lot of hours of driving, driving, driving. And not necessarily all the time with great scenery out the windows. Because there wasn’t room, one of the only books that my dad had, um, brought was a Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to the Birds. And to pass the time, ’cause it’s a lot of hours driving, I would flip through the book. And flipping through the pretty pictures and, like, thinking, ‘Ooh, look at that one. Ooh, look at that one.’ I was young, my brain was very plastic, uh, and so it absorbed things readily like a sponge so that by the time we hit the West Coast, you know, we stopped in a little rest station and, uh, this bird goes flying by as we’re there amongst the picnic tables, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap.  

(BLACK-BILLED MAGPIE CALLS) 

Christian Cooper: And I go, “Look, mom and dad! There goes a Black-billed Magpie.” They do a double take and look at me like, how the hell does he know that?! And I’m like, well, I remember it from the book!  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: And my dad – for which I will forever be grateful – ran with it and nurtured that interest in and started taking me to the Sunday-morning bird walks of the South Shore Audubon Society out on Long Island. And, uh, that’s where I got my feet wet and, uh, met my birding mentor there and started the ball rolling. 

Leanna First-Arai: Mmm. 

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Leanna First-Arai: Were you an ear birder from the beginning or … 

Christian Cooper: Oh God, no!  

Leanna First-Arai: How did sort of your sensory development unfold? 

Christian Cooper: Well, and that is the amazing thing about birding because it requires you to move outside of yourself.  

Leanna First-Arai: Hmm. 

Christian Cooper: Otherwise you’re not gonna see birds.  

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah.  

Christian Cooper: So, you know, you, you go out in the field and you’ve gotta be totally focused on your surroundings. And when you do that, for one thing, it’s, it’s really meditative.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: For another thing, whatever your woes are that are making you crazy, you know, am I gonna be able to pay the rent or whatever, has to fall away – at least for those few minutes. That’s incredibly powerful, being out in a natural environment and engaging with it. You develop all kinds of skills that you might not otherwise have. For example, for the songbirds, you’ve got to be able to respond to a particular kind of motion.  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: So you’re looking at a tree or a shrub, and what you’re looking for is this short, darting motion … 

(SFX/DARTING, LEAF FALLING) 

Christian Cooper: … but not the motion of a leaf in the wind or a leaf falling. It’s different. In terms of ear birding, that comes with time.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

(EASTERN TOWHEE SONG) 

Christian Cooper: Every time you hear a bird you don’t recognize, spend the time to track it down. And don’t stop until you see its mouth moving and its tail bobbing, because otherwise you could be faked out. You could think you’re looking at the right bird, but actually it’s another bird singing nearby. And when you do that, because you’ve spent all that time hearing that song over and over and over, you won’t forget it. It sticks in your brain.  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: So the next time you’re walking through the woods and you hear that song, you’ll flash back to that hour you spent crawling through the shrubs and the thorns trying to see the darn thing, and you’re like, oh, obviously drink your tea, that’s a Eastern Towhee, and you’ll just know.  

(EASTERN TOWHEE SONG) 

Leanna First-Arai: (chuckling) You’ll just know.  

Christian Cooper: Yeah! And you’ll develop a library in your head and you’ll build on it.  

(ROBIN SONG) 

Christian Cooper: You’ll hear, oh, that’s a Robin. Oh, now I know a Robin song. And then you’ll learn, oh, well, a Scarlet Tanager sounds like a Robin with a sore throat.  

(SCARLET TANAGER SONG) 

Christian Cooper: And now you know the Scarlet Tanager song. And it just, it grows, it grows. 

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Leanna First-Arai: Christian wanted to head to Alabama in particular because I know that in Extraordinary Birder you spend, um, one episode in Alabama.  

Christian Cooper: Mm-hmm. 

Leanna First-Arai: In your book, one thing that you write is, “Having visited Paris, danced until dawn in Buenos Aires, trysted in Sydney, trekked the Himalayas, safaried in Tanzania and sailed the Galapagos, if you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have ranked Alabama near the bottom of the list of where to go next.”  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Leanna First-Arai: Set us up a little bit to understand what you thought and felt about Alabama before heading there. 

Christian Cooper: I’m a northern boy. But, as African Americans, almost all of us, we have our roots in the South. And what we found is that my dad’s side of the family comes from Alabama. 

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm.  

Christian Cooper: And I … faced with the prospect of going down to the Deep South to go birding, first of all, northern reaction is, ‘Ooh, a Black person in the Deep South running around with binoculars, hmm, not a good, not a good look.’ Another reaction is, ‘My people left there for a reason. Why the heck would I want to go back?’ 

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm.  

Christian Cooper: So, you know, the, a lot of, um, assumptions on my part, uh, uh, some of them with good cause historically, and some of them maybe not. So when Alabama Audubon presented me with the opportunity to come down under their tender, uh, uh, uh, guidance to, uh, Alabama to bird, I was like, you know what? This is probably the most interesting and best chance I’ll get to see, you know, where my father’s people come from and what birds are down there. So I took them up on it and it was a revelatory experience in many respects.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge while I was in Selma. And that, you know, from the experience of, of someone whose two parents were very active in the Civil Rights movement, and I don’t think either of them had ever walked across that bridge, so I was kind of doing it with them and for them. 

(CLIFF SWALLOW CALLS) 

Christian Cooper: And at the same time I’m seeing Cliff Swallows flying around me that nest under that bridge, and I’m thinking to myself: you know what? It’s almost certain that Cliff Swallows were nesting on this bridge when all that horror went down on that bridge back in the Civil Rights day, on that Bloody Sunday. So to see these birds there and, and that connection through time, uh, it was just a very powerful experience, yeah.  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: Yeah. So Alabama was super interesting. I met some amazing people. I met Christopher Joe and the Joes of the Joe Farm. They run a cattle farm.  

(TV SHOW CLIP) 

Host Christian Cooper (on Extraordinary Birder, Ep. 6): But now it’s time to head out to Chris Joe’s Family Farm. We’re just a week away from the annual Black Belt Birding Festival, and I’mgetting a sneak peek at the main event, the Swallow-tailed Kite. 

Christian Cooper: It’s an African-American family who own this farm and have owned it for a couple generations and they still hold onto it. And for farmers, that’s hard! 

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah.  

Christian Cooper: But what they found out is that they could manage the cattle farm in a way that it also was good for birds. 

(TV SHOW CLIP) 

Chris Joe (on Extraordinary Birder, Ep. 6): Alright man, let’s go. 

Host Christian Cooper (on Extraordinary Birder, Ep. 6): While Chris’s family cuts the grass here so they’ll have hay to feed the cattle, mowing kicks up bugs into the air, which is basically liketelling the Kites that it’s time to eat.  

Christian Cooper (on Extraordinary Birder, Ep. 6): I’m ringing the dinner bell, scaring up all the bugs, grasshoppers.  

Chris Joe (on Extraordinary Birder, Ep. 6): Try to, try to keep a straight line there, chief, how about it?  

Christian Cooper (on Extraordinary Birder, Ep. 6): I don’t know what y’all call a straight line down here, but in New York, this is a straight line. (Laughing)  

Christian Cooper: And now what’s happened is birders are coming and paying to see the birds, to bird on their land. So it’s good for the birds ’cause they get more habitat, it’s good for the birders ’cause they get to see the birds and it, it’s good for the Joes because they get another revenue stream to help them hold onto the farm.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: I just thought that was win, win, win and it’s the kind of story I love, you know? 

Leanna First-Arai: Absolutely. 

Christian Cooper: So, so given the opportunity to sort of recreate that trip and that experience for the TV show, I jumped at it.  

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah.  

Christian Cooper: I was like, yeah, we’re going to Alabama for sure. 

Leanna First-Arai: For listeners who really wanna go for it, and may have never birded for a moment in their life, what is one thing that they can do today to journey towards becoming a birder and becoming more savvy about the world around them?   

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: Walk out your front door … 

(SFX/DOOR OPENS, BACKYARD BIRD SOUNDS) 

Christian Cooper: … and listen and look. They’re there. Pay attention and see what you find. If you’re homebound, look out your window. If you’re blind, listen instead of looking. There is no excuse. There is no reason why you can’t bird. Don’t have binoculars? Not a problem. You can use your naked eye. 

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm. 

Christian Cooper: There are also tools you can download to help you like Merlin. Full disclosure: I’m on Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s advisory board and they’re the ones who put out Merlin.  

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah. 

Christian Cooper: But, um, Merlin is absolutely amazing. What it does is you load the app on your phone, it’s absolutely free, and you can step out your back door and turn it on and it will analyze the sounds around you and tell you what birds are in your backyard.  

Leanna First-Arai: Okay. So it’s not cheating?  

Christian Cooper: No, no, no, no, no. Use it to help you learn.  

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm. 

Christian Cooper:But most important of all, get out there and enjoy it.  

(BACKYARD BIRD SOUNDS) 

Christian Cooper: Do not let lack of knowledge make you feel like, ‘Oh, I’m not a birder.’ Do you go out and look for birds with intention and do you enjoy it? Then you’re a birder. And the rest will come. The knowledge will come. The experiences will come. And the thing is, they’ll keep coming your whole life long. It never stops. I should add that there are libraries that loan out binoculars … 

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah. 

Christian Cooper: … so you may be able to get your hands on some to use. I have never bought a pair of binoculars in my life.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: All my binoculars have been either gifts or hand-me-downs.  

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm. 

Christian Cooper: It’s funny too because I had one old, battered pair that I was using forever when I was birding in Central Park and people would always look at me sideways. You know, it’s a little bit of a status thing, you know? ‘Oh, we’ve got the top of the line binoculars in the park,’ and then look at my old battered pair and they’re like, ‘Oh, how can you see anything through those?’ And I’mthinking to myself, ‘I see more birds than you do, so I don’t wanna hear about it.’  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: So, and then finally my dad gave me like the spanking brand new top-of-the-lines for my 50th birthday. That’s what I use to this day. Those were actually the binoculars I was wearing and using when I was in Central Park when that crazy incident went down.   

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Host: That “crazy incident” he’s referring to happened in 2020, years before Christian would publish his book or appear on National Geographic. Christian was birding in the Ramble, a woodland area popular with birders in Central Park, where dogs are required to be leashed. A white woman refused to leash her dog when Christian asked her to. Then she called the police, telling them an African-American man was threatening her life. The video of the incident, which Christian’s sister posted online, went viral, and Christian Cooper soon became a household name. 

Christian Cooper: You know, it would be stupid for me to try to deny that out of that incident, arguably really great stuff has happened – some of it for me personally, but more importantly in terms of bringing people to birding, particularly more Black people to birding. I mean, Black Birders Week got started directly out of that incident.  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: When I was a kid, I used to joke that, you know, I was one of the few Black birders, and you can count all of us in North America on the fingers on one hand. You know, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much! Now it’s different. It’s changing and that’s fantastic.  

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm.  

(BACKYARD BIRDS SOUNDS IN HERE) 

Leanna First-Arai: When we’re thinking about, kind of, the state of the climate and, and the biodiversity crisis that we’re in the midst of, how do you find peace amid the heartbreak? 

Christian Cooper: Well, the heartbreak is real.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: Any longtime birder is keenly aware of the loss of a third of the birds of North America since the seventies. That’s the time that just I have personally been birding. And I feel it. I remember the woodlot I used to walk through as a kid, and the birds I would see there. Those woodlots are empty now. That three-billion loss in North America, that one-third drop in the numbers of birds in North America, that’s our canary in the coal mine telling us to wake up and that we’re next if we don’t do something to fix things. 

Leanna First-Arai: Hmm. 

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: ‘Cause we can reverse this. Absolutely. I know that because I went out to, um, a place called Fresh Kills, which used to be the biggest garbage dump in the world.  

(LANDFILL SOUNDS) 

Christian Cooper: It’s on Staten Island and the only thing that loved it was the Gulls, ’cause there was lots of trash for them to eat. Eventually the people who lived on Staten Island said ‘Enough! This has to end.’ So they stopped making Fresh Kills a garbage dump, and they started ameliorating the site, capping the landscape and the toxins and all of that.  

(GRASSLAND BIRD SOUNDS) 

Christian Cooper: Now it’s a grassland, acres and acres of grassland in the middle of New York City that never used to be there before. And it has attracted endangered Sedge Wrens, Bobolinks, uh, Savannah Sparrows, Grasshopper Sparrows. This is in the middle of New York City.  

(GRASSLAND BIRD SOUNDS) 

Christian Cooper: I will put in a plug for every individual to do what they can with their own private space. Because if you own a yard, you can plant it with native species that can serve as a repository for biodiversity.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Christian Cooper: And you may think, ‘Oh, well, you know, it’s just a little strip of land.’ That’s fine, because you know what? You put all those little strips of land together? It’s a homegrown national park! I use that term deliberately because there’s an organization called Homegrown National Park that’s about exactly that. It is free, you can go online and find it. You know, it’s all just a whole bunch of people who have taken all or some of their land and they’ve planted native plants for their area and turned it into a reserve for biodiversity.  

(MUSIC OUT HERE) 

Christian Cooper: So, you know, stop waiting for government to solve our problems, ’cause especially now, it ain’t gonna happen.  

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah. 

Christian Cooper: We have to take matters into our own hands and we can. We can reverse this and we can bring the birds back. 

Leanna First-Arai: Appreciate that so much. And I think that reminder is one that I think we need to hear daily because sometimes it feels so dire, you know?  

Christian Cooper: Yeah. 

Leanna First-Arai: What a time to be alive, right, when it’s still possible to intervene. 

Christian Cooper: Yes.  

Leanna First-Arai: Christian, thank you so much for, really, for educating us about so many warblers and other kinds of birds that now many of us will, uh, be pushed to go out and witness ourselves. 

Christian Cooper: Excellent! That – if that alone happens, then mission accomplished. So pleasure to be here, Leanna.  

(MUSIC IN HERE) 

Host: That was Christian Cooper, author of “Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World,” and host of National Geographic’s “Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper.” One thing we didn’t get a chance to talk about is what Christian calls “The Seven Pleasures of Birding,” including one called “the unicorn effect.” You can see the whole list on our website at Broken Ground Podcast dot o-r-g. 

(MUSIC OUT HERE/THEME MUSIC IN) 

Host: That does it for this special Earth Day episode of Broken Ground. We’ll be back in your podcast feed in the fall, exploring a wholly different topic: data centers and their immense environmental impact. Broken Ground is a production of the Southern Environmental Law Center. It’s produced by Emily Richardson-Lorente, Ese Olumhense, Noa Greenspan, Jennie Daley, and me, Leanna First-Arai.  With special thanks to Ko Bragg, Sam Lenga, and Pria Mahadevan. Our theme music is by Eric Knutson.  If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love it if you’d write us a review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening. 

(THEME MUSIC OUT)