For the pbs newshour, I'm
Stephanie sy.
Geoff: Drew Lanham refers to
himself as a
rare bird.
He's an ornithologist,
naturalist and writer.
He views conservation efforts as
a blending of rigorous science
and having a vision of the
broader world.
Lanham is among the new class of
Macarthur fellows, often called
the genius award.
Jeffrey brown traveled to south
Carolina recently to meet him,
for our arts and culture series,
canvas.
Jeffrey: A winter morning walk
in South Carolina's congeree
national park, outside the
capital city of Columbia.
The largest tract of old growth
bottomland hardwood forest in
this region of the country.
This is woodpecker destruction,
or what?
>> This is woodpecker buffet.
It's not the busiest time of
year for spotting birds, but if
you know what to look and listen
for -- and drew Lanham does,
there's plenty going on.
Even if sometimes he can be
fooled himself.
A moment of birding comedy: A
call from his dentist!
>> Well no, I wish that was a
real bird.
That's unfortunately my phone.
[Laughter]
Jeffrey Lanham often wanders
: This boardwalk for hours, open
to surprise.
>> The thing is that every time
I come here, the light's
different, you know, the trees
are different.
Jeffrey the water's different.
: Drew: The water's different.
But having the time to sort of
wander slowly allows you to see
things that you didn't see the
last time.
Jeffrey: Lanham traces his love
of the natural world to his
childhood on a farm in south
Carolina.
And his understanding of human
nature to his grandmother's
stories of growing up in the Jim
Crowe south.
He wrote of all of this in a
2016 memoir, the homeplace.
Birds were and are his
continuing passion
he travels around the U.S.
And to other parts of the globe
to study firsthand how they
behave.
His greatest wish, then and now:
To be a bird.
>> To see that bird soaring, to
see a vulture soaring or to hear
a bird singing.
To see a bird flying from point
a to point B so effortlessly, I
wanted that.
Jeffrey: First you wanted to be
a bird.
Then you wanted to study birds.
But there was no pathway to do
it at first?
>> No it wasn't a thing, right?
, Ask ten people and nine of
them are going to say, what?
Oh, an orthodontist?
No, an ornithologist!
And quite frankly, once people
learned what an ornithologist
was, then they said, well,
that's not what black kids do.
Jeffrey: It would take years,
after first being pushed to
study engineering, at which he
excelled but didn't love, for
Lanham to fulfill his calling.
But he did, eventually earning 3
degrees including a ph.d in
forest resources from Clemson
university, where he's now
taught wildlife science for 28
years.
He's learned the sights and
sounds of the trees and animals
around him, which this day
included a number of hermit
thrushes.
But he also learned, and
teaches, that sometimes you have
to put the binoculars down, to
really see.
>> Sometimes as birdwatchers we
become so focused on that bird,
on that one bird, and we want to
see it ultra close.
And that's fine.
Jeffrey that's the mission in
: Some sense.
>> Yeah, that's the mission in
some sense.
But then when you put the
binoculars down and sort of zoom
out and see that bird in the
context of place and begin to
understand habitat and begin to,
so this morning, looking at that
tiny kinglit, then we can zoom
back a little bi and we see
that it's in holly and it's
foraging in the holly.
But then we zoom back and we see
this wonderful wooded wetland
landscape, right?
We see this swamp.
And then when we see the swamp
you begin to think about all
these other things.
And the kinglet is still there,
the kinglet hasn't gone
anywhere.
Jeffrey and these other things
: Include human history.
>> These things include human
history.
Jeffrey: Indigenous people
moving through the forest,
enslaved people seeking safety
and our own present day lives.
All impacted by and impacting
this landscape.
>> Were I the sparrow
brown-backed skittish and small
Jeffrey: Lanham uses the tools
of science to work for and
preach conservation.
But he also uses poetry,
including the title poem from
his 2021 book, sparrow envy,
identifying with a small brown
bird-- often overlooked.
>> I would find great joy
in the mist-sodden morning
sing humble pleas
from the highest weeds
and plead
for the gray days to stay
Jeffrey: It's a humble moment in
the life of a fairly humble
>> The understated beauty of
brownness, right?
You know, these are birds that
are often passed by.
I envy those birds in part
because they continue to sing,
they continue to be who they
are.
For a black person, for a black
man who is often overlooked and
dismissed in this society, to
find common ground, I think, for
me is part of life's mission.
Jeffrey: In his own life,
Lanham, a bassoonist who takes a
wooden flute into the woods, has
lived with the complexities of
color in a world where "Birding
while black" is a thing.
He says, for example, he had to
drop an early dissertation
project because the area he was
conducting research in was home
to a supremacist group who let
him know he was not welcome.
A piece in his book is titled, 9
rules for the black birder'.
>> If someone calls and says,
drew, there are evening
grosbeaks that have appeared
suddenly this winter in a
particular neighborhood, you
really should go see those
birds.
Well, depending on the
neighborhood, I'm not going to
go alone.
And so that's real, Jeff.
That's something I have to think
about.
And so while I'm watching the
birds, I'm also watching to see
who's watching me.
Jeffrey: Lanham laments that too
many young students of color
still never learn they have the
opportunity to do the kind of
work he does.
Educators and the scientific
community, he thinks, need to do
better.
And he makes a wider call to all
of us to leave places like this
better than we found them.
>> That's all conservation is.
And leaving it better than you
found it means you have to have
some degree of care and love for
people you don't even know.
Wow, what a concept.
That means you're going to have
to think outside of yourself.
You're going to have to take
your binoculars down and see a
broader vision and a broader
world.
Jeffrey: Vision both very small