Vogue: Meet The London Birdwatching Collective Founded By And For People Of Colour

We just saw a news report about this group of London birdwatchers and loved it. They are an incredibly cool group of people.

Back at the end of June, as the strictest lockdown restrictions in London were beginning to ease, there was one thing, above all others, that Ollie Olanipekun and Nadeem Perera were itching to do: go birdwatching. “So much of the appeal of what we do is the escapism, and we’ve never needed that more than the past six months,” says Olanipekun. As birds (or, at least, birdwatchers) of a feather who bonded online over a mutual passion for this relatively esoteric outdoors activity, it wasn’t just about the chance to return to nature, whip out the binoculars, and tick another rare sighting off their list. It would also mean a tentative step back into the pre-pandemic social lives so many of us have struggled to ease back into. As Perera puts it: “It’s really just the perfect Sunday out.”

This outing was the first of a series that is now taking place regularly under the name Flock Together. A birdwatching club for people of colour, it’s quickly become a weekly highlight for its members, many of whom were entirely new to the hobby. “We really wanted to break away from that traditional image we’ve all seen of middle-aged white people wearing khaki,” Olanipekun adds. “That’s great, and that’s worked great for them, but we want to make it more accessible – and bring some style and panache to it.” With the help of Instagram, the group has quickly swelled to include over a hundred participants in London and counting. “The response has been insane,” Olanipekun adds modestly. “We definitely didn’t think it would generate that level of interest.”

The group has gained attention further afield too, as their growing international audience has prompted the next chapter of the Flock Together story. A satellite group is launching this week in Toronto, while other offshoots are currently being set up in cities as far-flung as Tokyo, Amsterdam, and Accra. “We see this as being in every city in the world,” Olanipekun says. “That’s the goal.” For both founders, it’s about making birdwatching accessible to as many people as possible, especially those who live in urban centres and don’t always grow up with the opportunity to engage with nature in a meaningful way. “We don’t want it to be a novelty thing, we want it to be a normal thing, a viable option for any young person of colour growing up,” Perera adds.

Appropriately, the idea itself was first sparked by an Instagram DM, with the pair only meeting for the first time while scouting for their first walk in June. Perera, who works as a youth sports coach in East London, was talking to a parent after a session who mentioned that Olanipekun’s impressive work in the advertising industry might be of interest. After noticing a series of posts about birds Olanipekun had seen during outdoor walks in London, Perera reached out. “I responded and told him exactly which bird he was looking at,” says Perera. “Then I get a message back saying, ‘Bro, how do you know all this stuff?’ I told him I was an avid birdwatcher and he told me about his idea of starting a birdwatching club, and that I’d be the perfect guy to do it with. So I just said, let’s do it.” Within a few weeks, the project was up and running.

As far as the origin of their ornithological expertise, the duo have very different backstories. “At the age of 15 or 16, I was in quite a turbulent period of my life and I found myself on my own a lot,” Perera explains, adding that his knowledge largely comes through a copy of the Collins Bird Guide that he still owns. “I would spend a lot of time exploring parks and nature reserves, and one day I was sitting on this bench when a bird landed right in front of me, and I was just in awe of it. It was a green woodpecker, and I’d never seen one outside of cartoons, so I went back home to grab my camera. I photographed this bird, then I saw another bird, then it became another bird and before I knew it, I was heading out looking for these birds regularly.”

“My knowledge is not as extensive as Nadeem’s, but I’ve had a love for birds for seven years now,” Olanipekun says. “I’ve used it as an opportunity to gain perspective away from my stressful job.” That the pair come from two ends of the spectrum when it comes to birdwatching helps to make the club feel accessible for newcomers and experts alike. No experience is necessary for those considering joining, and a growing network of brand partners have stepped in to provide clothing and equipment to those unable to access it otherwise. “The barrier to entry is absolutely minimal,” Olanipekun continues. “We provide everything, and the binocular donations and all of the equipment donations go to people who actually really need it.”

Changing the fact that people of colour are hugely underrepresented not just in birdwatching, but in outdoor leisure activities more generally, was a priority from the beginning. The recent story of Christian Cooper – the Black birdwatcher whose walk in Central Park went viral when he filmed a white woman’s threats to call the police on him after he politely asked her to leash her dog – was just another reminder of the racism still present within these contexts. “Ollie and I have had this interest in birds for a very long time, so Flock Together doesn’t relate to that one incident,” says Perera. “But together, it is a result of a lifelong experience of living in an institutionally racist country.”

“To birdwatch, you go into what is typically a white space,” he continues. “As a single person of colour, that can be quite a daunting prospect. There have been many times where I’ve been in the countryside and after I’ve been on a hike, I would like to go to the pub. But sometimes I think, should I actually walk into this pub? Will I be accepted in this pub? Will I be abused when I go to this pub? By us being together and going into typically white spaces, we find strength and unity and the courage from each other to normalise our presence in these spaces.”

It’s also served as a space for healing at a time when the Western world is reckoning with the structural racism that affects the daily lives of people of colour in the US and beyond. “When me and Nadeem first met up and discussed what we wanted it to be, we knew our community needed support more than ever,” says Olanipekun. “When we go on these walks, you look left and you look right and you know everyone there has gone through the same experiences as you have, especially after the last three months.” Perera agrees: “We all love socialising in pubs, but a lot of the time we use drink as a crutch or something to mask. With Flock Together, there’s none of that masking. It really is a free safe space for everyone to come together. Straight away everyone is speaking like, ‘Oh, you do that? I do this. Cool, let me help you here. This is what I can do for you.’ That is something that I don’t think many of us in that space are afforded, and there’s so much talent.”

Alongside these community values, the pair are introducing new pillars to the Flock Together philosophy, all of which have been longstanding priorities for them – including, but not limited to, widening access to mental health services for people of colour, and environmentalism. The former is being spearheaded by two members of the group who work as a doctor and a psychotherapist, and both are offering free sessions as part of the initiative. (Perera notes that birdwatching checks every box when it comes to healthy coping strategies for a range of mental health problems.) The latter, meanwhile, is being achieved by the data banks the group is amassing of ornithological activity in the areas they frequent, with the hope that they can be used to halt construction plans in green spaces around London.

Even as the project continues to rapidly expand, both Olanipekun and Perera are making sure they don’t lose sight of what made them fall in love with birdwatching in the first place. For Olanipekun, that pleasure is simple. “I’ve always been into the rare, and finding things that other people haven’t found. There’s a part of that in every human being. It’s a bit like Pokémon: Gotta catch ’em all!” For Perera, meanwhile, it’s the satisfaction of finding a group with which he can share something that has brought him so much joy for many years prior. “In our society, one is often judged and finds their value in their capacity for output and ability to produce,” he explains. “We’re all familiar with the concept of people putting in equal amounts of work and not necessarily getting the same output for whatever reason. In nature, this way of working doesn't exist, it's about your ability to maintain and be yourself. You come as you are and you’re required to be nothing more than that.” During challenging times, what could be more rewarding?

Article: Meet The London Birdwatching Collective Founded By And For People Of Colour