Monica Bryand - Bird by Bird

New England poet Mary Oliver and St. Paul birder Monica Bryand share a love of birds. Monica - a fan of Oliver’s observant and poignant take on the natural world - often includes a poem by Oliver in her daily Facebook posts celebrating Minnesota birds. And while writing and birding are both solitary pursuits, Monica’s particular exuberance for the bird world sparks environmental advocacy and connection to community. She is a co-founder of Urban Bird Collective, a cohort of birders who share their skills – and build confidence and curiosity – among diverse birders, especially those who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) or LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Queer).

From her earliest days on the West Side of St. Paul, Monica has been both a city girl and a naturalist. “As a youngster, I loved animals,” she admits, “even snakes!” Her mother had a green thumb, so she grew up surrounded by “roses and different flowers, hummingbirds in the yard.” That upbringing in a residential neighborhood, in a bend in the Mississippi River – a major flyway for birds of North America - connected her to her surroundings, and to a lifetime of both environmental stewardship and friendships up and down her block.

St. Paul’s West Side, the Mississippi River, and downtown St. Paul

And like the poetry she so admires, Monica’s seemingly mundane, daily interactions with nature often induce wonder and a startling sense of joy. On her first birding excursion with a “real birder,” for example, Monica looked through a pair of binoculars and saw an undiscovered world of birds – so many birds! - in the greenery around her. She spotted a cedar waxwing, something she had not seen before. Astonished, she exclaimed: “You mean THAT has been there the whole time?”

That youthful joy and wonder still compels her, and Monica has been birding seriously now for over 20 years. An accountant by training, and non-profit leader by practice, Monica’s love of birding has flourished despite - and perhaps because of - the pressures of the professional world. No matter what job she has held, she says, “I had to bird!” During peak migration times, spring and fall, Monica says she plots her day, and her cycling route to and from work, to accommodate her birding habit. “My birding can start at 6 am. I can bird for 3 hours before other people even start work!” she admits. Her weekends and holidays are often spent traveling in an RV with her partner and dogs to bogs, waterways, forests and fields around Minnesota and the US seeking birds, and the thrill that finding them brings. She carries her camera everywhere (on her bike, in her kayak), to never miss a shot of a rare, or common, bird.

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Audubon Minnesota, a chapter of the national birding organization, harnessed Monica’s photographic skill and her penchant for sharing. To present climate change as a very real threat to bird populations in Minnesota, Audubon hired Monica in 2014 to photograph some of the 166 birds considered “Threatened” or “Endangered” in Minnesota due to climate change. Monica recounts Audubon’s interest: “They told me, ‘Get 50 pictures of 50 or so birds on the list and do a few presentations [to the public and Audubon chapters]. Will you do it?’” They offered a small stipend for the year, and Monica was delighted: “I got paid to do birding!” And though not a professional photographer or expert on climate change, “Audubon chose me,” she says. “They told me ‘You are the right one to do this.’ Audubon work can be very data-driven and technical. I presented it differently. I shared my photos and my stories about my travels to find and photograph the birds.” She personalized the experience for her audience, she threw her knowledge and her enthusiasm into the project.

7 years later, long after that stipend has been spent, Monica is still photographing the Climate-Threatened and Climate-Endangered birds, and still making presentations to the curious. “I got about 75 of the 166 birds early on,” she says. She has now captured 148 of the birds – only 18 to go! – and estimates she has shown her presentations to over 2000 Minnesotans. Time is of the essence, Monica warns: “The birds’ classifications are shifting,” as the planet warms, habitat disappears, and birds’ migration and nesting habits adjust. “One bird on Minnesota’s list is the Lapland longspur,” she offers, with a sigh. “I might never see it! It hasn’t been spotted any time recently.”

That shift is disheartening to Monica and demonstrates a lack of health on our planet. Equally disturbing to Monica is the relative lack of birders of color in the woods, and in our neighborhood parks. As a co-founder of Urban Bird Collective, Monica strives to get more people outdoors, to seek, and then speak for, the birds. “One of the reasons I created the Urban Birding Collective is that the Twin Cities is a great place to be outdoors,” she explains, “but not for everyone.”

She co-founded Urban Bird Collective in 2018 specifically to address the racial imbalance in birding. As a Latina, Monica says “I have always wanted more BIPOC and LGBTQ folks in the birding world, joining me on walks.” For her, the advantages of birding are obvious: “We know the benefits of taking down time, relaxing in nature. It lowers blood pressure! That doesn’t happen for BIPOC groups.”

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Safety, then, is the first step in getting more people into the physical aspect birding. “If you worry about your safety, that doesn’t help,” Monica observes. She points to a highly publicized 2020 event in New York City’s Central Park when a white woman called 911 on Christian Cooper, a black birder, telling the dispatcher, “A black man is threatening my life!” after he asked her to follow park rules and leash her dog. The overtly racist and widely-publicized episode exemplifies the inherent insecurity BIPOC folks often feel out in public. How does someone take up a new hobby in a place that doesn’t feel welcoming, and maybe even feels dangerous? “We lead walks and create safe space,” Monica says. “This is all about relationships, connecting with each other, meeting people where they are.”

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The Urban Bird Collective builds trust and relationships one bird walk, and one invitation to a new birder at a time. Monica and the Collective have the good of the birds at heart, and they have the backs of the birders they introduce to the activity. The people she introduces to birding come from all backgrounds, are of diverse perspectives. Monica hopes that strengthens the field and helps build the case for better environmental stewardship and care of our fellow human beings. With community, Urban Bird Collective celebrate both the tiny excitements in birding (spotting your first cedar waxwing) and the big wins (one more black, Latinx or LGTBQ family in the woods). “I see the interconnectedness of these many issues,” Monica observes, “The people birding with me are active in politics, nonprofit work, climate change. They are parents, partners. I love seeing them bring it all to bear.”

Poet Mary Oliver, too, has delighted in that same celebration of birds and the birders, writing: