Photo courtesy BIPOC Birding Club
BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin Birdathon 2024 team in Lake Park, Milwaukee
BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin Birdathon 2024 team in Lake Park, Milwaukee
BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin creates an outdoor community for Black, Brown and Indigenous birdwatchers in the Madison and Milwaukee areas. The club is built on values of diversity, equity and inclusion, cultivating safe spaces where BIPOC folks and allies may connect over shared love for birds, hiking and fresh air. All ages and experience levels are welcome.
Jeff Galligan and Dexter Patterson are co-founders of BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin. Galligan has been a birder for decades, long bothered by the lack of diversity in birding. “I had been thinking about forming something related to getting people of color out birding for a while,” he explains. “With the confluence of the pandemic and its isolation along with the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and the Central Park incident with Christian Cooper I made the decision to reach out to Dexter Patterson in June of 2021. The rest has been history and we have not looked back since.”
On the club’s website reads their land acknowledgement, “It is with great respect that the BIPOC Birding Club acknowledges and celebrates the inherent sovereignty of Ho-Chunk Nation and the 11 indigenous First Nations within what is now referred to as the State of Wisconsin. The sacred ancestral land our events occur on is that of the Ho-Chunk People.”
Rita Flores Wiskowski is the club’s Milwaukee Area Coordinator. “It’s a healing and joyful thing to go birding and be outdoors,” she says. “We want to have a safe space for people of color to do that and feel comfortable, and we want more and more people to see that and be curious about birding and join us.”
Photo courtesy BIPOC Birding Club
Black Birders Week 2024 group photo
Black Birders Week 2024 group photo
BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin typically hosts one to three events a month between the Milwaukee and Madison areas. Trips have taken the crew to places like Cedarburg Bog, Wehr Nature Center, Havenwoods State Forest, UW-Madison Arboretum and International Crane Foundation. Some events have been more educational, focusing on raptors, waterfowl, native habitats or migration.
“As more people have heard about our club, they want us to come check out their areas,” Flores Wiskowski adds. “We have no shortage of places to go birding.”
It has been an exciting year for Wisconsin birding, as Flores Wiskowski attests about the club’s recent trip to Ottawa Lake in Eagle. “We went to go look for cerulean warblers and ended up getting eyes on a few of them - at least four. Then all of a sudden we hear my brother gasp, and he’s pointing to the ground at a bobwhite that had walked out of the woods. We all got fantastic looks at it and were so excited. Both birds were lifers for most of us.”
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Supporting organizations of BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin include Wisconsin Metro Audubon Society, Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance, Feminist Bird Club Wisconsin Chapter, Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin and Nocs Provisions. The club has additionally participated in the Great Wisconsin Birdathon, raising crucial money for Wisconsin’s bird conservation projects.
In collaboration with Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance and Feminist Bird Club Wisconsin Chapter, the club recently celebrated Black Birders Week in June with a bird walk at Fair Meadows in Rock County, the Bird Alliance’s newest sanctuary. “We had a wonderfully diverse group of 45 who celebrated with us,” Dr. Galligan recalls.
The BIPOC Birding Club also sponsors the Birding Backpacks Project, a program designed to make birding more accessible to Wisconsin children and families. A single birding backpack contains two pairs of binoculars (one for kids and one for adults), field guides (one in English and one in Spanish) and a guide detailing information on local parks, travel times and birds common to specific areas.
This project has so far been able to secure birding backpacks in ten Madison community centers and schools as well as a few in Milwaukee, Osceola and Platteville. “We anticipate that this will lead to the students served by these organizations being provided more birding opportunities,” Dr. Galligan contends.
In addition to continuing the BIPOC Birding Club’s monthly events, Dr. Galligan has written a grant for funds provided by the Natural Resources Foundation that will be used for kids’ birding trips. “It will cover the cost of at least transportation to an area that they may otherwise not be able to experience,” he elaborates.
The next BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin event is in Milwaukee on August 17. Then is Swift Night Out in Madison the week of September 7-14, for which the club is currently looking for volunteers.
Visit the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin website at bipocbirdingclub.org. Follow them on Instagram @bipocbirdingclubofwi.
