Birding to Change the World, by Trish O’Kane
Ecco, 2024
368 pages, paperback
ABA Sales–Buteo Books 15359
Five months after Hurricane Katrina obliterated Trish O’Kane’s new home and upended the life she was about to embark on as a journalism instructor at Loyola University, she heard a metallic clicking in the yard. In the midst of the devastation and numbness of what she calls “her A.K. (after Katrina) life,” O’Kane detected a Northern Cardinal. The bird’s “metallic clicking meant that there was something beautiful, something wild, something alive in the hurricane-trashed yard. And suddenly that bird seemed like the most precious being on earth, like the first animal descending the plank from Noah’s Ark. I wanted to run outside and hug it.”
Spark bird origin stories are a staple of the birding memoir genre, but never have I encountered one that registered such urgency. If the quote reads as if the cardinal brought O’Kane back to life, it’s because that is exactly what happened. Birding to Change the World is the exquisitely written story of how Trish O’Kane’s discovery of birds radically transformed her life, altered her career path, and turned her into an accidental, yet passionate, environmental activist. More than anything, the book is an ode to the birds and people who saved her.
It wasn’t until she found herself standing in her former home, amidst “several inches of muck that sucked on our rubber boots,” that she pondered the fact that her house stood on a wetland and she had played an active role in contributing to the toxins that poisoned the water around her. “I swore to that water, to all the creatures who lived in it, and to all the waters of the earth that I was never again going to live in a way that poisoned the water. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I pledged to learn how to live on this earth without destroying it.” The memoir is a testament to how she makes good on her promise.
Part of the life change precipitated by Hurricane Katrina involved leaving behind a career in human rights journalism and moving to Madison, Wisconsin, to pursue a Ph.D. in environmental science, where she enrolls in an ornithology class and hones her observational antennae in a new way: “I had never learned in a way that required all my senses, including a sense of wonder and love.” The world comes alive for O’Kane through her engagement with birds, which takes place largely outside her doorstep, at Warner Park, an enormous urban wilderness that also happens to be home to 134 bird species. Spending hours documenting the park’s flora and fauna brought her solace, and when her ornithology professor likens birding to detective work, she’s hooked: “Birdwatching is like investigative journalism. You observe, you listen, you take good notes, you piece together clues.”
In addition to helping her puzzle through bird identification, O’Kane’s journalism background also gave her the tools to become a fantastic, if unintentional, community organizer and environmental activist. When she realizes that her beloved urban wilderness is threatened by a city restructuring plan, she launches into action and invites a cohort of fellow local nature lovers to join Wild Warner, her new environmental activist collective. Not only does the group become the subject of her doctoral dissertation, but Wild Warner also manages to successfully fight the city on redevelopment plans, convince legislators to move a fireworks display due to its toxic effects on the local wildlife, and ultimately preserve the park as a wild oasis.
Birding to Change the World is an inspiring lesson in activism and learning to play the long game to fight to preserve natural spaces by bringing together a vibrant, interdisciplinary, and multi-generational community. O’Kane doesn’t just play lip service to the idea that nature protection and social justice go hand-in-hand; her approach to environmental activism puts the theory into action. To ensure that Warner Park will have future stewards, O’Kane establishes a birding program for lower-income neighborhood children, which she calls Nature Explorers. Initially nervous about working with children, she adopts a “co-exploring” teaching method and deliberately connects inner city students with undergraduate mentors. O’Kane’s program not only introduces children to the beauty and wonder of urban nature but also ensures that by falling in love with the flora and fauna around them, they’ll be more likely to protect it. The program continues to thrive, now in a new iteration at the University of Vermont, where O’Kane currently teaches.
No small part of the joy of reading this book about the rewards—and requisite dogged determination—of local activism, is, of course, the writing itself. Even when describing municipal legislative feuds, the prose whisks us along. Yet it is in the descriptions of the birds that O’Kane’s voice truly shines. The neighborhood Gray Catbird appears as a “vocal acrobat [who] punctuates his vamping and riffing with a signature meowl,” while the Chestnut-sided Warbler is “an eye-popping Broadway show of a bird [who] looked as if he were wearing a black Mardi Gras mask topped by a bright yellow beret.” Unabashedly enraptured by the avian marvels she shares her urban spaces with, O’Kane’s book shows us how we can—and need to—get to know our local birds, learn from them, and protect them.
Above all, O’Kane’s memoir gives us a taste of her remarkable teaching: empathetic, rigorous, and deeply rooted in care for this imperiled world of ours. And to her skeptical students (and readers) who might not immediately see the joy in birding a frozen marsh in punishing winter temperatures, her answer is simple: “Just stick with it. One morning something will suddenly shift, and your life will never be the same.”
Julia Zarankin is a writer and lecturer to lifelong learners. She is the author of Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder, and her writing about birds and conservation has appeared in Audubon, Canadian Geographic, Sierra Club Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. Julia lives in Toronto, where she is trying desperately to get a better handle on shorebirds and is currently hard at work on a novel.
