Bird Reckoning
This past weekend, I went for my typical Saturday run through the desert suburbs of Riverside, California, along the edge of what counts as a mountain in this part of the world. I followed a narrow path between a construction site and the mountainside, sweating in the rare humidity of a tropical system that had found its way here from the Pacific (breaking an absolutely brutal heatwave that had pushed temperatures well into the hundreds the week before). As I huffed my way up an incline, I glanced up at a flicker of movement, in time to see an American kestrel leave his perch on a chain-link fence, then glide past a pad of freshly poured concrete, only to alight again on the fence downhill.
I’ve always had a soft spot for kestrels, an under-celebrated falcon, but I don’t know much about them. Lucky for me that last week's sighting coincided with the release of an online, interactive birding site by Audubon and a bevy of partners. On the site later, I learned that the American kestrel (Falco sparverius) is abundant in this part of California, will eat grasshoppers, and faces challenges from highways, where birds are struck by vehicles, and from suburban and commercial development. The site, which serves as a migration tracker for hundreds of species, is a beautiful tool, one that I imagine many people will enjoy. That’s because birding, of the many outdoor pursuits available these days, appeals to so many people, across so many divides. Birds are miraculous and commonplace at the same time, ever present, but a gift also. They grace us with song, fire our imagination with the miracle of flight, and ask little in return (except that we please, please keep our cats inside, that we warn them of glass panes whenever possible, and that we dim our city lights).
Audubon is a great resource for birders of all feathers, so it's good to see some of its chapters reckoning with the racist past of their namesake. As we report in the Autumn issue of the Journal, the Seattle chapter of the Audubon Society has voted to renounce the namesake all together. They cite as reasoning John James Audubon’s support of slavery, along with his appropriation of Indigenous and Black knowledge of birds. Other chapters have done the same, part of a broader trend of more inclusion in conservation.
This seems right to me. It’s important, I think, to ask what needs conserving — and what doesn’t. It’s especially important in a magazine such as ours, for readers who are part of a global community that cares about the environment and all the species it supports. If we are to build large, strong coalitions, we should not be afraid to ask ourselves tough questions. What are we doing for the kestrel? And for our neighbors? And for the people and creatures we’ll never know, never meet, never see?
What needs built, and what needs dismantled?
Brian Calvert
Associate Editor, Earth Island Journal
Image: Andrew Weitzel
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