How Birds Bring Us Back
Video Transcript
[00:00:00] Zee: Birding is for black folks, and birding is also for everyone, including folks with disabilities.
[00:00:07] Moses: Birds are everywhere. I cannot think of a day, even days, where I haven't like left my room where I've like not seen a bird. They really paint a bigger picture. When you think about ecosystem health, if there are no birds present in an area, probably the ecosystem isn't doing so well.
[00:00:23] Roslyn: If you know what a bird is, you're a birder. It's not an exclusive club. It's really if you just have the curiosity. And eagerness to learn more than your birder.
[00:00:32] Zee: This is not about how many birds you can count or the names of them. It's really to enjoy and to be in community with and to bounce off each other's joy.
[00:00:43] Roslyn: Hello, my name is Roslyn Rivas. My pronouns are she/her, and I am a wildlife biologist. I grew up in the Bronx, in New York City. City right next to the Bronx Zoo slash Botanical Gardens. I will not accept any pigeon slander. So I grew up going there all the time, every other weekend when I was a kid, and that really was my origin story.
[00:01:02] Roslyn: That really was the thing that fostered my love for nature and animals. So I always grew up knowing I wanted to be in the wildlife biology field, so I was always known as the animal girl. I had my animal encyclopedia with me everywhere I went, and I remember also keeping this kind of little observation chart of all the birds that I would see outside my window.
[00:01:23] Roslyn: Taking note of how they looked, what their behavior was, what they were doing. And I remember seeing Cardinals and Blue Jays and thinking, oh my God, this is the most exotic thing I've ever seen. When I started working at National Audubon, and that's when I started, I guess, professionally birding.
[00:01:40] Roslyn: So then that's where I saw so much. I mean, hawks, other birds of prey, northern flickers, woodpeckers, spirals of all kinds. So it was incredible.
[00:01:47] Zee: Hello, everyone. My name is Zee, my pronouns are they/them. I'm trans queer. I am Afro-indigenous to Kuskatan, now known as El Salvador. I am a nature lover. I'm a birder. I love working with community, and I am a community organizer with the LA Got Worker Center.
[00:02:07] Zee: This was maybe one and a half years into the pandemic. I signed up for this wild LA book club. I didn't know what I was signing up for. And there was, uh, day Scott, who is an ornithologist and a wildlife photographer, and that was my first time seeing a black woman learning about birds. It would really touch me to see a black person talk about this because I've never seen a black person or a black woman talk about birding as a career and to study the study of birds.
[00:02:38] Zee: I was amazed. And I didn't even know birding was a thing. I didn't know it had a name to it.
[00:02:43] Moses: So my name is Moses Aubrey. I use he/him pronouns, and I'm just a naturalist in birder at heart. I love being outdoors. I love photographing and filming all and everything. There's so many incredible species interactions and just an abundance of biodiversity in Los Angeles.
[00:02:59] Moses: [00:03:00] So as a child, I was always interested in nature, but I didn't really have a good understanding of the birds. But April of 2020, in between practicing for my senior recital, I walked outside and saw a house Finch, which is a red bird. And I was just like, oh my God, there's a red bird in LA. No way. I had photography gear.
[00:03:18] Moses: So I dusted it off and like got a picture to show my parents and siblings that there were red birds in LA 'cause they were like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And then that led me down a rabbit hole to learn about all of the birds that called like South Central Home.
[00:03:33] Zee: I wanna say that's like one of my superpowers.
[00:03:35] Zee: I'm hypersensitive. And so that hypersensitivity has allowed me to explore and really be vocal about people's needs, and consider people's needs, because they also deserve to be in outdoor spaces. It was my niece. It was my first time taking her birding and her first time using binoculars. So I took her to Bolsa Chica.
[00:03:54] Zee: She saw this seagull. It was like hovering, hovering, hovering, and then dropped the clam. Think about it. Look. [00:04:00] The clam just dropped on the ground, and it cracked open. It's doing this so that it'll make it easier for them to eat the food inside of the clam. She was like, what? And so for me, that was amazing too.
[00:04:11] Zee: 'cause I was observing this seagull behavior. Dropping the clam, being able to be, be a part of that process because I didn’t have the answer, but now we know. You wouldn't read about that in a book, but you would learn about that through observation.
[00:04:22] Moses: Learning about the biodiversity in birds that live here gives me a better sense of home.
[00:04:27] Moses: And also like the ecosystems that also call LA home. And also doing things like participating in community science projects to learn about birds. Whether that's like through iNaturalist or eBird or a local project to like the West Coast, like Project Phoenix. There's so many ways that people can help.
[00:04:45] Moses: By providing scientists and researchers with valuable information that will help them learn about species abundance or the diversity of life that's here. One of the coolest things that I've seen birds do is sometimes walking in the lawn, in the bowl at Kenneth Hahn, Barn swallows will follow you.
[00:05:03] Moses: And the reason why they're following you is because as you're walking in the grass, you're kicking up bugs and so they're aware of this, so they'll circle you and kind of benefit from you walking in the field, and it's just a crazy interaction.
[00:05:15] Roslyn: I love being in groups like that because I think birding is more than just seeing and hearing birds.
[00:05:21] Roslyn: It's really just like a community. Bonding experience. One moment that really was such an affirming moment for me in the birding space was during an event I attended with Outdoor Afro. I was so happy to see a group that was specifically celebrating black folks, and it being in nature. And that was, I was like, well, that's me.
[00:05:44] Roslyn: Like I'm, I'm here. So as an Afro-Latina queer woman, I feel so emboldened to be outside, especially at a time like this. Just be there. Experience what a great blue Heron is, or just like this new tree species. So I, yeah, I love it. I get, I love being a part of that experience.
[00:06:02] Moses: So behind us is the Inglewood oil field, which Kenneth Hahns is a massive park along with all the Baldwin Hills, but the entirety of the Inglewood oil field is even larger.
[00:06:11] Moses: At a thousand acres and annually, that oil field pumps out anywhere from two and a half million to three million barrels of oil annually, which is crazy. And it also has negative environmental impacts, like leaching out carcinogens. I would just love to live in a world where there aren't large urban oil fields around, like this is a, an eyesore and it would be great if Kenneth Hahn's State recreation area expanded and took over the oil field and this area was just a public space accessible to everyone and not necessarily private land.
[00:06:42] Zee: Black folks have always been connected to nature, but there's been an intentional disconnection that's something to acknowledge and be aware of. Now, the city and the county has provided sanitation jobs for LA black workers through their Ready-to-Work program. And while sanitation is a start and thinking of like every career can be a climate career, I do think it's important to be able to allow and bring forth black folks in other leadership roles.
[00:07:11] Zee: I think we need to challenge that more to open up more careers around our mental education conservation, and it's like land stewardship. It would be nice to have folks work more within trees and plant native plants. That's one of my visions of the future.
[00:07:25] Moses: So sometimes I would come to the bowl at Kenneth Hahns and hear Great Horned Owls, and one particular day I saw one fly up into a palm tree, and I was just like, ‘Wait, is it living there?’
[00:07:37] Moses: And then I came back a couple of times later on that week. And I noticed that that great horn owl was there just living its best life in that palm tree. It was pretty well camouflaged, but not the most well camouflaged. I set up my camera looking for this owl, and people would ask, ‘What are you looking for?’
[00:07:55] Moses: And I would tell them, and some of them were like completely mind blown if they were owls living their lives here in Kenneth Hahn. And I think it was really cool because, when I told that story about this owl that was living here, others felt inspired to tell me their stories. So it was like really cool way to connect with people and hear their stories about wildlife.
[00:08:14] Roslyn: Birds come in so many different sizes and shapes and colors, so I feel like they are true icons of the queer community also, and just like of life, of all our communities together. You could see woodpecker-like evidence of woodpeckers pecking all the way up the branches.
[00:08:29] Moses: I think birding has taught me to be mindful, because more often than not, you'll hear birds before you see them.
[00:08:34] Moses: So it's really important to kind of just have your ears open and utilize all of your senses, and I think that's something that we don't necessarily do in day-to-day life. So being more situationally aware, thinking about the time of year that it may be, and also just like relaxing and realizing that, you know, you're looking for birds.
[00:08:56] Moses: There's nothing stressful about that. It's just been a really grounding activity and a great way to be mindful
[00:09:02] Zee: Birding can happen through a scope with binoculars. It can happen only hearing or just also observing. I think it's another language to be really tapped into is a language of awareness. I think we, we come, we come as, as black folks, we have we come from from ancestors, storytellers, like land stewards.
[00:09:19] Zee: And so just being able to have this opportunity to share about my work and. Hearing about the amazing work that y'all are doing within the community, for nature, for the birds. I think that's inspiring, and I hope more folks get to see this film are also inspired to take action within their communities and activate them and inoculate them.
[00:09:40] Zee: The inoculation of, I think of it like grown food and it's adding nutrients to the soil, and so adding those nutrients into the community so that more things can flourish.
