BETTER LIVING THROUGH BIRDING

A celebration of the delights of watching birds.

On Memorial Day 2020, Cooper was bird-watching in Central Park when he asked a dog walker to comply with the park’s rules and leash her dog. Her angry response prompted him to video the interaction on his phone—including her call to the police claiming that “there’s an African American man threatening my life.” Posted by one of Cooper’s friends, the video ignited a “firestorm of attention.” That racist incident brackets the author’s engaging debut memoir chronicling his transformation from a nerdy kid on Long Island in the late 1960s, who confessed that he was gay only to one friend, into a Black, queer activist who revels in bird-watching. Cooper became a birder on nature walks with his father and during the family’s yearly summer camping trips to national parks. As they drove, he read Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds, surprising his parents when he could identify some of the species they encountered. Birding was an immediate pleasure. “One of the best things about birding,” he writes, “is how it pulls you out of your inner monologue and forces you to observe a larger world.” Feeling like a misfit in high school, Cooper found Harvard more welcoming. He discovered the Harvard Ornithological Club and the Gay Students Association, and he came out to his three roommates. The author recounts many remarkable bird sightings in his travels in Central Park and around the world, and he peppers the text with birding tips—e.g., don’t learn birdsongs from recordings but rather from attentive listening. As the author shows, birding was a constant amid personal tumult: affairs and a brief marriage; renewing his relationship with his difficult father; the deaths of his mother and grandmother; protesting racism and anti–LGBTQ+ violence; and introducing the first gay superhero when he wrote for Marvel Comics.

Candid reflections from an appealing guide to the birding life.