Two passions — birds and Black-rights — merged

Like most people, Christian Cooper (shown here) didn’t expect to have the world’s attention.
But when he did, he was ready. “If all these people are going to shove microphones and cameras in my face, I’m going to use it to say what I think (is) important,” he told the Television Critics Association.
At the top of that list are … well, birds and race relations.
The two merged one day in Central Park, indirectly leading to “Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper.” The show debuts at 10 p.m. Saturday (June 17) on the Nat Geo Wild cable channel, then reaches Disney+ on Wednesday (June 21).
All of this began three years ago, when Cooper was bird-watching in the park and asked a woman to leash her dog. A video recording showed her saying: “I’m calling the cops …. I’m gonna tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life.”
She did, was arrested for making a false police report, and was fired from her high-ranking financial job. Cooper didn’t join efforts to punish her further, writing that “it’s a mistake to focus on this one individual. The important thing the incident highlights is the long-standing, deep-seated racial bias against us black and brown folks.”
And the next important thing, he says, is to get people interested in birding. “That’s really what has been a trajectory through my whole life, getting people to get out there, regardless of … your skin color, regardless of your sexual orientation, regardless of your ability or disability.”
(Cooper, who is gay, has been an LGBT activist and created pioneering gay comic-book characters.)
Starting is simple, he said. “Step outside your door or to your window. That’s really all it takes. It’s great to have binoculars, but you don’t even have to have those …. Put a bird-feeder out, or just look at what’s in your yard.”
His own start came a half-century ago, when he was about 10 and took a woodworking class.
“I have no wood-shop skills whatsoever, to this day. But I had to build either a footstool or a bird feeder. And happily, I built the bird feeder, put it up, filled it with seed and kept wondering what all the crows with red on their wings were. I though I discovered a new species of crow. I was all excited.”
His father (a biology teacher) and mother (also a teacher) were obliging, even when his birding mentor told him to build a trench and create a small stream. “My parents, I’m sure, were thrilled to have their backyard dug up like this.” But it worked; birds came “to bathe, to refuel, to drink. I would sit there for hours at my window and just watch the birds come in.”
As an adult, he wrote for comics, edited health publications and kept birdwatching. “It’s been a lifelong passion and I know how it has enriched my life.”
Then came the day in Central Park. It was the same day George Floyd was killed; people viewed the two events – one subtle, one lethal – to illustrate ongoing racism.
Cooper has gone on to write a memoir, write an online comic book and now host a birding show.
It can be helpful to be backed by National Geographic, Mariana van Zeller told the TCA. “Working for Nat Geo helps tremendously …. I am armed with an internationally recognized and trusted name.”
She needs that when dealing with druglords and gun-runners. Cooper’s birds are less intimidating, but, he said, “I had a lot of anxiety about going to Alabama.”
He went there for the show and walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of the 1965 confrontation of police and civil-rights walkers.
“Nesting underneath that bridge were cliff swallows,” Cooper said. “And I was thinking: Cliff swallows (were here) when all that violence happened, when Black people were beaten down.”
It was a confluence of his two passions, birds and equality. So was that Central Park day, three years ago, when he accidentally became famous.