Corina Newsome, one of the organizers behind Black Birders Week, tells the story of how she fell in love with birding.
When you think of exciting outdoor activities, bird watching probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But in the words of today’s guest Corina Newsome, it’s like a treasure hunt. There is exhilaration in looking for movement through binoculars or listening for specific bird calls. There's also a sense of achievement that comes with identifying a specific bird and crossing it off your list. Corina isn’t your stereotypical birder. She’s a 27 year old Black woman from Philadelphia with a Master’s degree in Ornithology (the study of birds). Corina was one of the primary organizers behind Black Birders Week, a virtual event that took place in summer of 2020. In this episode, Corina tells us about how she fell in love with birds, the circumstances that inspired Black Birders Week and what it’s like being a Black woman in the outdoors. Read more about how she's helping more birders find their place.
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Corina Newsome:
He throws a blue jay up on the screen, and I literally was in class and I was like, "What is that?" And everybody looked at me and was like, "A blue jay." I had never in my life ... Because I'm like, "That's a parrot," is what that is to me when I look at that. You know what I'm saying? All those shades of blue, the white, the black. I'm like, "That bird can't be out here." Immediately after that class, Shelby, I went outside and they were everywhere. And that's when I realized simply me not being educated and not knowing has shielded me from seeing all of this incredible diversity, and I have been chasing birds ever since.
Shelby Stanger:
Birdwatching? I didn't get it at first. When I thought of birdwatching, I pictured old dudes dressed in khaki vests, zip off pants, and wide brim hats with some binoculars dangling from their neck, standing still and quiet on the side of the trail. But Corina Newsome, she showed me a whole different perspective. Corina is a 27-year-old Black woman from Pennsylvania with a master's degree in ornithology, which is the study of birds. She also has a ton of style. She's not the type to wear khaki vests in the field. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger:
Corina has been featured in National Geographic and the New Yorker Magazine. She's written articles for the National Audubon Society, and she acts as the Community Outreach Manager for Georgia Audubon. She started birdwatching in her early twenties, and she's always been an advocate for diversifying the field. I mean, birds are diverse. The people studying them should be too. That's why Corina was one of the main organizers behind Black Birders Week, a virtual event that connected Black people who are interested in birdwatching. Black Birders Week was such a success that the team already has plans for another event later this year, hopefully in person. But before we dive into how Black Birders Week came about, I wanted to know exactly how a girl from Philly fell in love with birds.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you get into the outdoors growing up in Philly?
Corina Newsome:
Yeah. I think TV and books and magazines were really my window to the outside natural world. So Philadelphia, compared to most cities, has probably more trees than somewhere like Manhattan in New York City, right? But it's pretty manicured in most places and it's not like a natural space. And so I wasn't exposed to very much wildlife, and I didn't know any wildlife professionals who could really inform me about native wildlife and native plants or anything like that. So all of my information was really coming from my National Geographic Magazines, and Zoboomafoo, and The Crocodile Hunter, right? So that's kind of how I ended up getting into it. And my mom and my grandma, my dad before he passed, very much nurtured that. Even though I wasn't really outside exploring so much, they were always giving me books, and my mom would, every now and then, she would take me and my sister, because we didn't have a car for most of our childhood, she would take us on the bus, and she would drive us out to the suburbs, out to oftentimes private lands, and we were walking around on people's forested areas and people's horse stables. In retrospect, it's like ... But we did it. She took us out every now and then to kind of get out of the city. But generally speaking, I didn't do a whole lot of outdoor exploration where I lived.
Shelby Stanger:
But that's cool that your mom did that for you guys.
Corina Newsome:
Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. She loved nature. She didn't really know a whole lot about it necessarily, but she loves nature.
Shelby Stanger:
As a woman growing up, I didn't even know there was an option to study science. No one around me studied science. So how did you get interested in science?
Corina Newsome:
I also didn't know any scientists personally at all. The scientists that I saw on TV were all white men, like Bill Nye the Science Guy, again, like I said, Crocodile Hunter. They were all white men, but my mom thankfully was incredibly empowering, and very much encouraged me to follow science. And so I would get so many books. So, so many books about science, about the natural world. So had it not been for her what I had been seeing would definitely have overwhelmed what I thought was possible, but she really encouraged me. Where the rubber really met the road was that even though I loved wildlife, I could not conceptualize ... I can conceptualize a veterinarian, right? I'm like, "Okay, people who like animals are veterinarians, and that's all I'm really exposed to, all that I really know exists." But when it comes to wildlife experts, that's kind of really where it hit me that that's a white man thing. But it wasn't conscious, and it wasn't until I was actually about to go to college and I was making choices about my career path, and I saw a Black woman zookeeper, and I was like, "Wait a second. I never even imagined that I could do something like this." And the way that me just seeing this Black woman do this work has shifted everything for me, that is the moment I realized how powerful the images I had seen my whole life were.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So as a kid, you must have been a straight A student and a go-getter.
Corina Newsome:
I was.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah. I could tell. You just seem like you crushed it, and you went for it, and you read books, and readers are leaders. So that's good for your mom for encouraging that. But the zookeeper, where was the zoo?
Corina Newsome:
Yeah. So the way it happened was, the moment I decided, "I'm going to be a veterinarian," I started volunteering at my local animal hospital at the age of 13 until I was 17 years old. I was like, "I'm doing this." And then on my fifth year of volunteering, I passed out in the middle of surgery. I had seen dozens and dozens of surgeries, but it just hit me one day. "I can't look at this anymore." And so I was panicked, because it was my senior year in high school, and I'm like, "I had a plan. I'm going to go to vet school, and then now I can't look at blood." And so it sent ripples throughout the universe, and people heard about my chaotic state of being because of that. And so someone from my church actually was like, "Hey, my sister works at the Philadelphia Zoo. Here's her number. I'm going to tell her to give you a call."
Shelby Stanger:
Wow.
Corina Newsome:
So literally, Shelby, it's so bad, because my response to him, instead of being excited, I had an attitude. In my head, I was like, "If she's Black, she probably works in concessions and she can't help me." That's literally what I thought. Again, a manifestation of what I had seen and thought Black people did when it came to wildlife. And so I literally called her. Thank god she didn't answer at that time. I called her phone. I left a voicemail with a palpable attitude. "Hi, this is Corina. I heard that you work at the zoo, so you can give me a call back. Bye." That bad. It was horrible. I remember it vividly. She calls me back. Turns out she was the lead carnivore keeper at the zoo, and I was so embarrassed, A, and B, just mind blown that a Black woman was doing that. And so that was the moment that I told you about, Shelby, where I was like, "Wait. This whole time ..." I couldn't even conceptualize that would be doing something like that, or that I could do something like that.
Shelby Stanger:
So the carnivore keeper's the one who keeps the cats, the tigers, the lions?
Corina Newsome:
Yup. Giant river otters. Yeah. That was actually the species that hooked me, but yeah, all kinds of stuff.
Shelby Stanger:
Wait, what was the species that hooked you?
Corina Newsome:
Giant river otters. They're six foot long otters that live in the Amazon, and they are the most dynamic, charismatic species on this planet. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
So you interned at the Philadelphia Zoo?
Corina Newsome:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
You took this internship.
Corina Newsome:
So she actually ended up getting me an internship, and she's the reason why I ever entered the field of wildlife science, because she hooked me up. I had no experience with education or conservation stuff. I knew nothing about that, except for what I had read in books. I had no experience. My first internship ever in the field of wildlife conservation was an environmental education and animal behavior internship. So my time was spent educating the public about the animals that they were seeing at the zoo and their conservation plights, and then also participating in behavior studies where I would stand at exhibits and be tracking certain behaviors for different research projects. And that changed my life.
Shelby Stanger:
After spending her time observing giant river otters, Corina had a plan. She was going to go to school and major in zoology, specialize in marine biology, and then make her way down the Amazon where those river otters live. But in her undergraduate program in zoo and wildlife biology, her plan took an unexpected turn.
Shelby Stanger:
So how does this segue into birds?
Corina Newsome:
So in my undergrad degree for zoology, well, it's zoo and wildlife biology, one of the required classes is called ornithology, which is the study of birds. And I had heard from older students that you had to memorize almost 200 birds by sight and 50 or 70 by sound. And I didn't even know that there was 150 birds in North America to learn, and I assumed they all looked the same and sounded the same. And I was like, "This is going to be the first class that I fail." So I get to the class just already expecting the worst, and my professor was so ... Before he even started talking about anything, there was just an energy on him about birds. It was just weird. I was like, "Why are you so excited?" Because I'd had him for other classes and he never was like this. He gets to talking, and ornithology was his specialty, though. He gets to talking about birds, and he's introducing us to some of the more common species. I went to school at Northeast Ohio. He throws a blue jay up on the screen, and I literally was in class, and I was like, "What is that?" And everybody looked at me and was like, "A blue jay." I'm like, "That bird can't be out here." Immediately after that class, Shelby, I went outside and they were everywhere. And that's when I realized simply me not being educated and not knowing has shielded me from seeing all of this incredible diversity, and I have been chasing birds ever since.
Shelby Stanger:
I feel like you need a tattoo with a blue jay somewhere on your body.
Corina Newsome:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. That's my first tattoo that I'm getting when this pandemic is over, is a blue jay feather.
Shelby Stanger:
A lot of people are like, "Birding?" You tell me what birding is. I would love to hear it from you.
Corina Newsome:
Listen, I think birding, I really think anywhere you go, but even in North America, birds, if you just learn about who's out there, you can see such a wide diversity of birds standing still outside, even in the middle of a city. Birding is essentially the celebration of diversity of birds, and the reason why it has absolutely exploded in the US and around the world, the activity of birding, simply because of how accessible it is. And you can be really hardcore, got 10 cameras, four binoculars, and all this other stuff. You can be that person, or you can have absolutely nothing, and just hear the birds and see the birds in viewable distance, and you will have a blast. It's like a treasure hunt that never ends. You will never see all the birds. There are people whose goal is to see every bird on the planet, but you will never see all the birds. Not only will you never see all the birds, you will never know everything about birds. They're just an endless, the best kind of pit of wonder. You know what I'm saying? You never know what you're going to see. Every time you find one, it's like a surprise, right? You never know what's going to be around the corner. And then on top of that, birds, biologically, are just the most miraculous things. Think about a hummingbird, right? They're about the size of a bug, basically. They weigh as much ... I think it's like a nickel. These little things will fly across the Gulf of Mexico, which is a 22-hour nonstop flight. And they don't soar. These are not birds that can just glide over the water. They are flapping constantly. And then you see a hummingbird just appear outside your window, and if you don't know about what that hummingbird can do, it may not spark that much interest. It's like, "Oh, it's a pretty bird." When you think about the fact that that bird showed up in your yard after flying 22 hours over open water, that hits different. You know what I'm saying? And birding is basically the act of learning as much as you can about species, and seeing as many species as you can. And it's the most hope giving, exciting, unifying even, activity. I feel like I'm going to tear up thinking about it.
Shelby Stanger:
If the National Bird Association doesn't hire you to be their spokesperson, they are absolutely crazy. You just made birding sound more exciting than surfing, than sex, and pretty much anything. This is awesome. So besides the blue jay, do you have a favorite bird?
Corina Newsome:
So blue jay is my all time favorite, both out of loyalty, and they're just incredibly smart. Real quick. They're in a family called Corvidae, which is blue jays, crows, magpies, ravens, and they are just incredible problem solvers. So they're always going to be the favorite. Under that, I would have to say ... I have favorite different kinds of birds. My favorite hawk, my favorite woodpecker, warbler, whatever. But I think the pileated woodpecker, which is the largest woodpecker in North America, about the size of a crow, a flaming red crest on its head, super loud bird, would be my second favorite, because I had a very emotional experience looking for this bird, and so it holds a special place in my heart. So I would say blue jay first, pileated woodpecker second.
Shelby Stanger:
Corina fell in love with learning about birds, like the blue jay and the pileated woodpecker. When it came to actually going out birding, though, she didn't always feel like she fit in. As a Black woman outdoors, Corina often felt uncomfortable or even unsafe at times, but she loved birding so much, Corina knew she had to get out there anyway. I love that you said birding is like a treasure hunt. You've made it sound so exciting, and you've changed what a birder looks like to me.
Corina Newsome:
That's actually important to me, because one of the things that kind of deterred me from wanting to join these really joyful groups of birders was that, well, first of all, they were all older and white, and I'm young and black. And I was like, "I am different in every possible way from these people." And they had money, and they were like, "Oh, let's go here and here." I'm like, "I don't know if I have gas to get there." You know what I mean? Just everything, right? And then they were wearing all these khaki, neutral colors. I'm just like, "That's ugly to me. I don't want to wear that." So I would show up with my hoops and my ... Not that I'm super fashionable, but how I would normally dress out in the street. And at first I was very self-conscious, and I was worried, because by this point, I was educated about birds, and I even studied birds in grad school. And I was like, "They're not going to believe that I have any sort of expertise, or they're not going to trust that I'm actually educated about this because of how I look." And then I was like, "You know what? No. We need to change what we think the experts look like and who the people who enjoy this activity look like." And so I continue to wear my hoops when I go birding, and everything that I would normally wear, and I will always do that.
Shelby Stanger:
Let's talk about this. So there's a New Yorker article that came out about you, which was beautifully written, but you talk about how different it is to be in nature as a Black woman. And I'd really love for you to kind of dive into that and how that impacts not only your research, but the habit of birding. I mean, this is 2021.
Corina Newsome:
Yeah. There's a lot of axes on which my Blackness intersects with my experience outside. So when it comes to what makes it challenging, I think that there's actually an element of more than a fear of safety, right? Because I'm in South Georgia, I'm from Pennsylvania, so there's a lot of just assumptions that I have about the place where I am. But more than any fear, there's this feeling of guilt, especially right now, because it's like, I'm a Black woman, and I'm someone who thinks very deeply and critically about, as most all Black people do, about the issues facing Black people and indigenous people, people of color, people from marginalized groups in many capacities in this country. And it's like, I'm out here looking for birds as my job. And one thing that I had mentioned in the article that you referenced was this past summer, it was my last field season for my graduate school work. I had two summer seasons down in South Georgia on the coast. Right before my field season, Ahmaud Arbery was shot literally down the street from my field site, along the edge of the same marsh that I studied for my seaside sparrow work. But I didn't even know about it. It didn't even hit the press until two months after the fact, which was all part of how awful and unjust this whole situation was. But I found out, and I was like, "I'm out here literally just looking for seaside sparrow nests, admiring the roseate spoonbills and the great egrets flying over me, just having a blast, enjoying the scenery, and literally I can see the place where this Black man was shot for being Black." And I was like, "What am I doing here? Why am I out here? There's so much urgent life and death situation issues that need to be addressed, and I'm out here with the birds." And so this overwhelming sense of guilt. And even again, yesterday, when we saw this insurrection, this terrorism on Capitol Hill that basically reminded us of how starkly different the lives of white people and the lives of Black people are valued in this country, right? It's like I'm sitting here spending time arranging, planning birding trips in Georgia. And meanwhile, people are dying to protest for their lives, right? So the emotional experience that I have as a Black woman in this space is that Black people don't have the luxury to do this, but what I have to remind myself and what a lot of people have been reminding me is that Black people actually have a space, have a place in the story of the natural world, even in North America. I was never taught about the history of Black people in the outdoors. The only history that I knew about is Black people being killed and murdered, which is why my whole family is constantly petrified for my safety, and they keep sending me things like knives and other weapons. That's the only narrative that I have about Black people in this space.
Corina Newsome:
But what I'm learning as I'm meeting new Black people, other Black people who are in this same work, and I've been learning, "Wow, there is more to the story of Black people in this space, and we actually do belong here. It's part of our joy. It's part of our healing. It's part of our existence. It's not something that's a distraction from what matters. We belong here too." And so I constantly have to reframe how I think about my work. Of course, everything that I do, even when it's about science, is centering the perspectives of people from these historically oppressed groups, Black people, indigenous people, people of color, LGBTQIA, people with disabilities, right? Centering those perspectives, and de-centering those who have been at the nexus of power and wealth. And that's important work that needs to be done, and so I constantly have to be reaffirmed by myself and by other people, Black people in this space, but that's really, I think, the most profound way that being a Black woman has impacted my experience in the outdoors.
Shelby Stanger:
Luckily, Corina found a community of other Black naturalists and scientists via Twitter. They formed a group chat called Black AF in STEM with over 100 members. When we come back, hear Corina talk about how the group mobilized after a fellow birdwatcher was at the center of a racist encounter last summer.
Shelby Stanger:
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Shelby Stanger:
On Memorial Day last year, fellow Black birder Christian Cooper was out birdwatching in New York City when he was harassed in Central Park by a white woman. After Cooper asked the woman to leash her dog, as they were an on-leash area of the park, the woman called the cops. She falsely claimed that Cooper was harassing her and that she feared for her life. Cooper filmed the interaction on his phone and the video went viral. On that same day, George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minnesota. His murder was the catalyst for the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that took place last summer. The incident with Christian Cooper hit Corina's community close to home. People in the Black AF in STEM group chat decided to organize.
Shelby Stanger:
Talk to me about Black Birder Week. How did it start, and what was the result? How did you get involved? It sounds so cool. And I've heard about it, so obviously it caught national attention.
Corina Newsome:
Yeah. It was really unexpected and for the most part unplanned. So basically it was just like any average day for Black people in the US, and in New York City, Christian Cooper, who is a Black man and a birder, and on the Board of New York City Audubon, just a well-respected, well-known birder, this situation happened to Christian Cooper where this woman, white woman, Amy Cooper, no relation, called the cops on him because he was telling her to leash her dog up, because she was letting him run around in a wildlife area. And called the cops and lied on him, said he was threatening her life and her dog's life, and he caught it on camera. He sent it to his sister, and his sister was the one who posted it. He, I don't think, would have ever posted that, ever. She posted it on Twitter, and of course we saw it right away, and it was in our group chat. And we're just like, "What?" And then later that day, George Floyd was killed by the police. And the two events together were just like, "This is Black in America. This is being Black while you're exploring outside. This is you being Black while you're doing literally anything else. You can just have someone lie on you and the cops might kill you." And so we were just processing this, and not that Christian has to be any sort of well-respected person or any sort of badass, anything. He deserves to live and he deserves to not be harassed no matter what, but him also being this person that we knew and respected so much, to see it happen to him was just like, "Sheesh, man." And so got in the group chat. One of my friends, Anna, was like, "We need to do something to celebrate Black birders." And then my friend Taiki who works for Audubon was like, "We should have a week for Black birders." And then people were like, "We should do this and that," and were just throwing ideas literally just into the group chat. And within two days, we had people who had made graphics. We had mapped out a whole week of engagement. We had advertised. I was literally just reaching out to random press, just like, "Hey, this is what we're doing. Are you interested?" Just shooting shots, right? And then it ended up catching wind, and press ended up responding, and, "Yeah, we'll take the story." Or ended up getting national attention and international people engaged. And I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. And the main point of it was, one, to celebrate and connect Black birders to each other, and just be like, "Yeah, this is Black joy while we're birding it outside," and just glory in that together. And to also kind of uplift our experiences, because a lot of times we're the only Black people, kind of like I mentioned before, the only Black people in our spaces. Thankfully we've connected via internet, but physically we're alone, and usually we're pretty shut down. So whenever we bring up these issues of race and white supremacy, god forbid, or any of these things, like social issues, we're shut down and told that we're being political. So we never really have gotten very far in our spaces, but together we can do that. We can override the barrier. You know what I'm saying? So to kind of uplift our stories and highlight it, this is not an isolated incident. None of them are. And then also to celebrate diversity, right? Like I said earlier, birding is literally the celebration of diversity, but all of y'all are white. How did that happen, right? And it's like, you have no interest in changing that. It's like you're perfectly content to go chasing birds around the country and world with your all-white group of friends, all the same age, all the same socioeconomic status, and you are comfortable. You shouldn't be comfortable. So kind of just highlighting why our love for diversity should expand beyond birds, into the people who are looking at them, too.
Shelby Stanger:
So Black Birder Week, it's really cool to hear that you were so involved with it. So what were the goals of it, and what was the turnout like? And when was it? I feel like it was in June.
Corina Newsome:
Yeah. So it was the first week in June, like May 31 to June 6. And so the goals that I had just mentioned, those three goals of celebrating Blackness in the outdoors, uplifting Black stories, and communicating the importance of diversity, those were the three goals of Black Birders Week, and the reaction or the response was so beyond what I could have ever imagined, right? So I was just happy to have a group chat of Black people who liked the outdoors. I was like, "I've reached the mountain top. That's as much as I'll get." I just knew, I was like, "I love this. This is enough." And then Black Birders Week hit, and it was like, "Wait, there are so many more of us than I could have ever imagined, from all ..." Black people, young, older, from the city, from the sticks, everything in between. It was like so many Black people were enjoying this activity that I never would have imagined, right? I remember the first day of Black Birders Week, which I think was hashtag #Blackinnature, and people just sharing images of themselves being Black AF in nature. And I was just sitting on my bed, scrolling through these pictures, just weeping. I was like, "I don't see this. I don't ever see this." So yeah. I was absolutely stunned. And to hear stories from people, like there's Dudley Edmondson, who's a well-known Black naturalist and birder, and photographer. He had tweeted during Black Birders Week, and was like, "In my 40 years of birding, I never thought I would get to see other people who looked like me." And, oh, I was undone. And then there was one young woman, a Muslim young woman who wears a hijab, and she's a biology teacher, and she does bird banding. And there was another woman who was participating, who also was a Muslim woman with a hijab, and they had both posted pictures holding birds, and they both were like, "I've never seen a woman in a hijab doing bird science in my life." And people having the opportunity to see themselves for the first time was just the most powerful outcome to me of all of Black Birders Week.
Shelby Stanger:
It's so cool. And it was an online movement, but was there any physical gatherings?
Corina Newsome:
No. No physical gathering at all.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow.
Corina Newsome:
All online. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
All online. That's so powerful. I can't wait for the time COVID is over and you can actually have this physical Black Birder Conference.
Corina Newsome:
Actually, there are some plans in the work for something like that, COVID willing, later this year. So we'll see how that ... Y'all will hear about it. If it's able to happen, and we got vaccines and stuff, y'all will definitely know about it.
Shelby Stanger:
Have you seen an increase in birding because of Black Birders Week?
Corina Newsome:
I would say that there is an increase in ... I've been isolated even since Black Birders Week, so I've not been around to see anything in real life, or I should say real life, in my physical surroundings. But I have seen an influx of young people who maybe had a curiosity, but never really entered into birding, start birding. And there was even a whole fundraiser to buy binoculars for Black people who want to go birding. And so hundreds and hundreds of Black people got binoculars and now go birding. You know what I'm saying? So there were some very tangible kind of outcomes when it comes to people's interest in and ability to go outside and explore. So yeah, there has definitely been an increase in people who are able to go and look at the birds.
Shelby Stanger:
Black Birders Week was a phenomenal success, with five days of livestreamed panels, events, and over one and a half million viewers. Now, Black AF in STEM isn't just a small group chat. It's become a social media movement aimed at building a community. Getting people involved in birding is such a huge part of Corina's personal mission. From helping to organize Black Birders Week, to her new job as the Community Engagement Manager for Georgia Audubon, Corina's goal is to study these awesome animals and to center conservation and equity in the birding community. Hearing Corina talk about her love for this work, it's inspiring. Her energy and passion is absolutely infectious. No one has ever gotten me as excited about birds the way Corina has.
Shelby Stanger:
So birding itself seems like an easier activity than, let's say, rock climbing, or going surfing, or biking, or even camping, because it doesn't seem like you need much equipment. But what do you recommend if someone wants to start birding? What do they need to get started?
Corina Newsome:
So you don't really need anything, right? Like I mentioned, you can stand outside and detect birds just with the naked eye, or with your ears, listening to their songs and calls. But if you really want to get into learning about the birds that you are seeing and hearing outside, there are a couple different things you can do. Some tools that are more accessible than others. So if you have a smartphone, there are apps you can download that are free. The Merlin Bird ID app is the most robust. It's a lot of data. It takes up a lot of space in your phone, but it's so much information about the birds you're seeing, and it's very user-friendly. It walks you through. So if you see a bird, it'll walk you through, "Okay, what color? What shape? Where are you?" And kind of narrow it down for you. Another app that does this, but it does not take up nearly as much space is the Audubon App, which I also use, because my poor phone hardly has enough space to function. So I have the Audubon App on my phone, and again, same thing. It GPSes where you are. "Okay. These are the birds in your area. What colors are you seeing?" "I'm seeing brown, black. It's this shape and about this big." You enter that in, and it pulls up some options with pictures, and you can say, "Oh yeah, that's it." And when you click on the bird, it's going to tell you all about the bird. So literally from your phone, if you have a smartphone, you can download the Audubon App and get identification and information about the species all in one spot. If you're interested in optics, so being able to increase the birds that you can see when you're outside, there are binoculars that costs thousands of dollars, right? And then there are binoculars that cost like $50 to $80. And there are some binoculars that I would say around $80 are probably the best kind of deal for the quality. And so if you go to, I believe Bushnell is the brand, Bushnell has got some waterproof or maybe water resistant binoculars for about $80. If you can afford that, I would recommend it, because it will completely open your world up, and you'll be able to see things you never thought would ever have been there. And so you can use that along with your free app on your phone. You could also get a hard copy field guide, like the OG [inaudible 00:00:32:04], and I always keep one on me too, because I like just having the physical pages, and turning through, and writing notes and all that. I'm hardcore, you know what I'm saying?
Shelby Stanger:
I imagine birding requires a level of patience and quiet that some people like me might not always have. Any advice on how to get into the mindset while birding? The patience thing. That's hard.
Corina Newsome:
It might not take as much patience as you think, right? When you picture birding, you picture someone standing in silence among trees or something. But in most places, if you've got some trees around, or even some grass or whatever, you walk outside, there's a bird waiting for you likely somewhere. You know what I mean? What it really takes, I think, is being still enough to notice. So it's not that you have to wait so long for a bird to appear as much as it is you have to stop moving. So what I would recommend is, when you go outside, get in the habit of being very still so that you can detect movement. Because that's the first step. So when I'm outside, even if I have my binoculars and all my stuff, the first way that I find a bird is by standing still so that I can see what's moving. And then boom, pull the binoculars up. And there's always something. I mean, pretty immediately. But it's a really good habit to get in the practice of just being still and kind of silencing your mind. So not only does it allow you to see birds, but it is a good practice for your soul, I think. It's a good practice for your mind. And so I would recommend just practicing that stillness, because it allows so many things to pop out in the world around you. It's like, when I'm moving around, a bird that could be right in front of me, I won't even see, because I'm doing too much. I'm doing the most. So just be still when you're outside. Give it 30 seconds of being still.
Shelby Stanger:
Which is so cool, because I'm talking to you and you are so animated. You are moving while we are talking, but yet you're a birder. So is birding really meditative for you, because it kind of forces you to sort of be more still?
Corina Newsome:
Absolutely. I think birding has saved me in many ways, because I move a lot. I'm high energy, and my mind is always racing, and I feel like I can't escape it, which can be somewhat frustrating. And so it really helps me, because it forces me to focus on something that's not the racing thoughts in my mind and not the next thing I have on my schedule, and not whatever else is stressing me. But I have something that I'm focusing on, so it's not just empty silence and empty space. It's like, "I'm still. I'm relaxing my mind, but it's for the purpose of detecting something." So I'm focused at the same time, and it's incredibly meditative. It's incredibly healing. And so one of the reasons why it's important that Black people are here is because, yes, there's a lot of trauma that is associated with being Black and being exposed to the system that we live in. But the outside is a place to heal, very much so, for anyone. You know what I'm saying? For whatever stressors a person experiences, birds have a very unique way of lifting burdens. So I highly recommend.
Shelby Stanger:
Thank you so much to Corina for coming on the show and sharing your passion and the story of Black Birders Week, and getting me personally so excited about birds. Your work has connected your fellow Black birders to a larger community, and it's inspired so many more people to get out there and try something new. I personally can't stop trying to identify every single bird outside my window. I've even ordered one of those bird books, and I'm getting some binoculars. So I'm one of those people now. I can't to watch Black Birders Week grow and expand over the coming years. To find out more about Black Birders Week 2021, check out @BlackAFinSTEM on Instagram. You can also follow Corina on her Instagram at @Hood__Naturalist.
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler, and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we appreciate when you subscribe, rate, and review this show wherever you listen. We read every single one of those reviews, and remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.