Black Birders Week, the national push to encourage Black people to stake their space in nature, science, and public green spaces, will take place again this year from May 24 through May 30.
Black Birders Week 2026 is organized nationally by Black AF In STEM. In New York City, the NYC Bird Alliance is one of the major local organizations hosting free events in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. Black AF In STEM identifies Black Birders Week as one of its signature initiatives; the week is fiscally sponsored by the equity-in-education nonprofit Amplify the Future.
The annual event was launched in late spring 2020 in response to the notorious attempt by a white woman named Amy Cooper to sic the NYPD on Black birder Christian Cooper after he asked her to leash her dog in Central Park. Black AF In STEM and its partner organizations say the week was created because Black birders, scientists, and naturalists have also been periodically threatened while simply trying to enjoy nature and realized that something positive had to be done to counter this.
Everyone should feel welcome in green spaces, and that is a major reason NYC Bird Alliance supports Black Birders Week, says Tasha Naula, the group’s public programs manager. “We host over 300 programs in all five boroughs throughout the year, and we do so in smaller community parks. But I think part of our public programs’ mission,” said Naula, “which is one of our core values, is to make sure they’re as accessible as possible for all New Yorkers.”
She said the organization works to remove the practical and psychological barriers that keep many New Yorkers from trying birding in the first place by offering free programming, encouraging registration rather than requiring it for most outings, and having guides who keep binoculars on hand for anyone who wants to participate in bird-watching events.
(Credit: Black AF in STEM Collective) Credit: Black AF in STEM Collective
The first Black Birders Week took place in 2020, during the country’s COVID-19 lockdown, while protests against anti-Black violence were increasing. It was mostly virtual, featured hashtags, online panels, and utilized social media. By 2022, more in-person walks and gatherings began to take place. Now, in 2026, Black AF In STEM organizers say many local groups have developed the capacity and trust in their own communities to run events with less direct oversight from the national planning team.
This year’s New York City programming, as posted on the NYC Bird Alliance schedule, includes events like beginner birding and a sunset outing at Shirley Chisholm State Park in Brooklyn; a walk at Evergreens Cemetery on the Queens-Brooklyn border with the Evergreens Cemetery Preservation Fund; an introduction to birding in Morningside Park with the West Harlem Art Fund; a Birds & Brews gathering at Marsha P. Johnson State Park in Brooklyn; a northern-end walk in Riverside Park with Riverside Park Conservancy; and an outing in the Bronx River Forest with Bronx River Alliance.
The NYC Bird Alliance says all of its Black Birders Week events are free, with registration encouraged and only one event requiring advance sign-up. Black Birders Week participants receive guides and binoculars and learn to identify species, slow down, and observe.
For 2026, Black AF In STEM says the week’s theme is “Flyways & Freedom: Advocacy, Action, and the Future,” with Laridae — gulls, skimmers, noddies, and terns — serving as the bird family of the year. On its face, that might sound unusual in a city where gulls are often dismissed as background noise, but the choice is deliberate.
“We’re looking at migration patterns and how effective conservation needs to consider both how birds migrate and how human migration affects that,” Black AF In STEM 2026 planning team member Ade Ben-Sal told the AmNews. “And not just the movement of humans themselves, but also the political and social restrictions on that movement and how that also affects both humans and birds.”
The “Flyways & Freedom” theme draws a line between migration routes, ecological survival, and the politics of movement: who gets to move safely, who is stopped, who is displaced, and who is welcomed. For people of African descent, that idea also looks at the African diaspora and how migration is not an abstraction. It is a reference to history, survival, rupture, adaptation, forced movement, chosen movement, and the work of making home across borders and coastlines. Ben-Sal said gulls and their relatives are useful not only because they are familiar and underestimated, but because they physically connect shorelines and continents in ways that mirror a broader Black global story.
“They’re very resourceful, and there’s a good variety of them that are sort of pan-oceanic, if you will. So people in different parts of Europe and West Africa will have seen them, or we’ll see the same species as we’re seeing here in the Americas, and then some species migrate up and down the coast of each hemisphere. So it’s sort of connecting Black folks across much of our diaspora globally.”