CBH Talk | Birding New York: Migration, Community, and Conservation

Each spring, New York City becomes a vital stopover for millions of migrating birds, transforming parks, shorelines, and even city streets into sites of discovery. In this special program inspired by the book Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds, writer and birder Ryan Goldberg brings together a group of passionate observers, conservationists, and storytellers for a birds' eye view of our concrete city.

Goldberg is joined by Indigo Goodson-Fields, a Brooklyn-based writer and poet whose forthcoming anthology Essential Birding centers the voices and experiences of Black birders across the United States; Dennis Hrehowsik, president of the Brooklyn Bird Club and a beloved local bird walk leader known for his commitment to accessibility and community; and Chris Allieri, founder and executive director of the NYC Plover Project, whose work to protect endangered shorebirds has helped reshape conservation efforts along the city’s coastlines.

Together, they will consider birding as both practice and perspective, in the ways that it connects people to place, to each other, and to the natural world embedded within the city. From neighborhood bird walks to grassroots conservation, this conversation invites audiences to see New York anew during the height of spring migration, and to reflect on what it means to pay attention to the winged life around us.

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Participants

Ryan Goldberg is an award-winning independent journalist and the author of Bird City: Adventures in New York's Urban Wilds. He has written for The New York Times, Texas Monthly, The Intercept, ProPublica, National Geographic, and Popular Science, among many other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, which is where he began birding in 2016.

 

 

Indigo Goodson-Fields is a writer, poet, and birder based in Brooklyn. Her forthcoming book, entitled Essential Birding is an anthology about the importance of birding in the lives of Black birders across the U.S. and will be published by OR Books in fall 2026.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dennis Hrehowsik is the current president of the Brooklyn Bird Club and a longtime NYC bird walk leader known for his generosity as a teacher and community builder. He is also the associate director of the Digital Print Lab at Powerhouse Arts, where his career in the arts reflects the same values that guide his birding work: accessibility, shared learning, and connection to place.

 

 

 

 

Chris Allieri is the founder and executive director of the NYC Plover Project, a nationally-recognized, award-winning non-profit organization working to protect Piping Plovers and other imperiled shorebirds in New York City. The organization’s work has received acknowledgments including the George and Helen Hartzog Volunteer Group of the Year Award from the National Park Service, Thomas W. Keesee Jr. Conservation Award from the National Audubon Society, and the Natural History Award from the Linnaean Society of New York. His forthcoming book, Plover, tracking the story of the Piping Plover from the Great Plains, to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Coast and the fight to protect them, will be published by Timber Press.