Groundbreaking Marvel Editor Christian Cooper Would Now Like to Show You Some Birds

I feel like birds are a good introduction to nature because birds are literally everywhere. 

No, you are absolutely right. It doesn’t matter if you are on the ocean, in the city, on a farm, in the woods – it doesn’t matter what part of the globe – there are birds. They are the group of creatures with the single greatest mobility on the planet. There’s no part of the globe that isn’t touched by the atmosphere. Some places have land, some places have water, but it all has air. And there are even birds that go under the water, like penguins, gannets, and alcids.

Also, birds communicate through the same means that we do. Common pets like dogs and cats are mainly about their nose but we human beings are primarily about sight and sound. That’s what (birds) are about too. They come in all these incredible colors and patterns which we can appreciate the same way they do. And the songbirds give us incredible music. 

The first season of Extraordinary Birder features episodes primarily in North America and some American islands. Was that an attempt to expose American audiences to the natural world in their own backyards?

They’re all domestic, yes: New York, Palm Springs, Washington, D.C., Alabama, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. That was for COVID and budget reasons. But “domestic” includes Puerto Rico and Hawaii, which is why you can’t even say just North America because Hawaii is a completely different faunal region.

But it’s true that so many people don’t know what’s going on right above their heads. Perfect example: I live in the middle of Manhattan in a very urban setting. I remember one day going up to my roof and there’s a red-tailed hawk sitting two roofs over. That red-tailed hawk was getting buzzed by a pair of American kestrels. It was like tag team wrestling. Suddenly the kestrels stopped and I hear “cack cack cack cack cack cack cack” like a machine gun almost. This peregrine falcon comes swooping in and he starts dive bombing the red-tailed hawk! Meanwhile the kestrels now are just sitting on a telephone pole like “we’re not getting involved in this.” This raptor war was going on here in the middle of Manhattan and people don’t know it.