“Know your range.”

“Silence lets the oppression grow…”

Harriet Tubman – Harriet Tubman, an Unsung Naturalist, Used Owl Calls as a Signal on the Underground Railroad

“Understand the power of exclusion.”

Inclusion is protest.”

“Equity is a hard bird to find.”

“Listen intently to the stories of others.” “Listen intently to the stories of others, just as you would strain, in the dim dawn hours, to discern the lisps of migratory birds overhead.”

“Discomfort is growth.”

J. Drew Lanham is an author, poet, professor, and bird adorer living in Seneca, South Carolina. He is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and Sparrow Envy: Poems. His essays have appeared in Best American Essays, Vanity Fair, Oxford American, Terrain, Newsweek, and elsewhere. – Orion Magazine, https://orionmagazine.org/article/9-rules-for-the-woke-birdwatcher/