Photo: Red-winged Blackbird, Lauren Puckett/Audubon Photography Awards
Ajani Simmons
I broke my camera photographing Bald Eagles at Conowingo Dam.
It was the kind of moment that should have felt devastating, and for a while, it did. I stepped back from birding. I forgot, temporarily, everything I had taught myself. But slowing down gave me something unexpected: a reminder that birding was never really about the equipment. Not the camera. Not even the binoculars. It's about being there with the birds, and for the birds.
When I was ready to come back, I didn't go chasing something rare. I went to Huntley Meadows for one bird, a bird that doesn't always make seasoned birders' hearts race, but it inspires me. I needed to hear the shrill call of the male Red-winged Blackbird (one of the first bird calls I ever learned), and I'm not embarrassed to say, still one of my favorites. The moment I heard it, something in me reset. That call was my call to action.
Red-winged Blackbird. Photo: Ajani Simmons
Spring has a way of doing that. The equinox is a reminder that things begin again. Birds feel it before we do, returning, singing, coming back to the spaces they need. And that's exactly what I want us to think about this May during spring migration and the local nesting season: who gets to be in those spaces with them?
As a new board member and Master Naturalist who still considers himself a baby birder compared to many of you, and as a Black man in conservation spaces that don't always reflect people who look like me, I think about this constantly. Birding, at its best, isn't about finding the rarest bird on the list. It's about community. It's about creating spaces where people actually feel like they belong — for all of us, alongside diverse birds and ecosystems.
I am laser-focused on this as part of NVBA's Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Conservation only works if everyone is invested in it: every color, every age, every identity, every ability. We cannot protect what people don't feel connected to. And people cannot connect to spaces where they don't feel they belong.
My path forward is simple:
Meet people where they are.
Make this less intimidating.
Have real conversations.
Get people outside.
Hold onto a concept I carry with me from South African Ubuntu philosophy -- "I am because we are. We are because the Earth is."
The Red-winged Blackbird doesn't know it inspired me that day at Huntley Meadows. It was just doing what it does. It sings loudly, fights for its space and finds joy in the season. I think we can take a lesson from that.
This spring, I hope you'll join me and bring someone new with you.