>> Three years after a white woman called the police on him and Central Park.

He attacked her.

Bird enthusiast, Christian Cooper is making headlines, this time on his own terms.

How the viral encounter led to his new show on National Geographic, where he shared some of the unexpected lessons from a life spent looking up as MetroFocus starts right now.

♪ >> This is MetroFocus with Rafael Pi Roman, and Jenna Flanagan.

MetroFocus is made possible by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

The Peter G Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg and by Jody and John Arnhold.

Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn foundation.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen.

>> Good evening and welcome to MetroFocus.

Lifelong bird enthusiast Christian Cooper was forced into the national spotlight when a white woman called the police on him and Central Park, falsely claiming he attacked her.

Though it garnered plenty of media attention, Christian put that incident behind him to focus on his true passion, and the entire reason he was even in Central Park in the first place that day.

Birding.

His love for birds has taken him around the world, and is now the subject of his new book, better living through birding, notes from a black man in the natural world.

The focus of a new TV series he is hosting for National Geographic titled "extraordinary birder with Christian Cooper".

Joining me now is author, television personality, and vice president of New York city Audubon that works for the protection of wild birds in the five boroughs, Christian Cooper.

Chris: Thanks I'm glad to be here.

Jenna: So many people -- OK, you know what that is an excellent place to start in all of the reading I did, it was made clear to me that there is a difference between birding and birdwatching.

Can you explain what that is?

Chris: I grew up saying birdwatcher and birdwatching but when you're out there, you are relying on your ears as much as your eyes, particularly if you are a birder like me.

I'm an ear birder.

My ears are bringing me information that I use almost more than my eyesight.

When you think about it, there are plenty, maybe not plenty, but people who engage with birds worldwide.

They solely Lou -- he was there years.

That came up in my show, we were in Puerto Rico and one of the burgers there that analyze the sounds of what birds came back in the forest they restored, he is blind, he relies on sound.

He puts me to shame.

Jenna: How did this grow to become your passion?

We are not of the current generation of kids.

When I think of them, I think of digital everything, locked into a phone.

How did you become passionate about the natural world, as a young person?

Christian: First of all, I am 60 years old.

Not that generation at all.

But, how did I get locked in?

When I was growing up, my dad was a science teacher.

Nature was big in our household.

With me, for whatever reason, it took the form of birds.

When you think about birds, they are engaging.

They communicate the same way we do.

We use site and sound is our primary senses, unlike our pets.

Cats and dogs use their nose, a lot.

We don't.

We use it, but it is not our primary sense.

Birds communicate the same way we do, primarily through sight and sounds.

We can appreciate their colors and patterns, the sounds they make, the songs of the songbirds, all of that is something we can really get into.

So, I think that is why I got roped into birding.

It's a wonderful way to get outside of myself, and get outside.

Jenna: So much of birding, again, you talked about how, because it is not just watching, your listening, picking up on other clues.

How much of it involves just waiting around?

Is there a complete orchestra of birds around us that perhaps, because we have gotten accustomed to them being there, we don't pay as much attention?

Christian: Patients is definitely a virtue when you are birding.

There will be times when there's not much going on.

And you have to reset yourself, and slow yourself down, and take in the world a bit more, and a bit more slowly.

There are times when you're looking for a particular bird who is a bird that sculpts through the underbrush -- skulks through the underbrush and is very hard to see.

That happens with a bird called the morning warbler.

It's in the tail end of its migration in New York City.

It's so hard to see.

One was reported in Tom skin square park.

A couple, two weeks ago.

There's hardly any underbrush but I had to stare at these little shrubs for an hour before I saw it.

Patience is a virtue.

You tune into things then you start to realize, there is a lot going on that I never knew.

People walk to the city all the time and never realized how much bird life is going on around them.

Jenna: That is one of the episodes of your show that is focused solely on the birds of New York City.

So, first of all, how many varieties of wild birds are either in or coming through New York City.

Again, we tend to think of the one bird for New York.

[Laughter] Christian: Well, in Central Park, I believe it is roughly about 200 different species recorded.

Central Park is special it is called the migrant trap.

When birds are migrating, they pass over New York City, they see Central Park, this emerald swath of green in the sea of concrete and the funnel in because it is a place for them to rest and refuel.

The only place, really, to rest and refuel.

Maybe a few other little places.

It concentrates the birds and makes it one of the prime birding spots in all of the world, really.

So, Central Park has a whole bunch of birds.

New York City has birds.

Even in places outside of central work -- Park.

My neighborhood has red tailed hawks and American casseroles, our -- American casseroles.

The favorite sport is to harass the much larger red tailed hawks on a daily basis.

They just love divebomb the red tails.

That is going on over people's heads most people don't realize it.

Jenna: They sound like true New Yorkers.

Christian: The red tails are serious New Yorkers they have grown up surrounded by people you go up to the Hudson Valley and you can't get within 200 yards of a red tail before it flies off.

In the city, you can be five feet away and the red tail is sitting there, like, yeah?

So?

Total New York attitude.

There used to people.

Jenna: Well, speaking of New York attitude, because there is the one species of bird, pigeon, that we all associate with New York.

I will say I have heard derogatory terms for this particular type of bird, but, one of the things that I have learned from your show is that pigeons are smarter than what we give them credit for being.

When I heard that I thought, well I'm pretty sure I have pigeons using the subway.

[Laughter] Christian: I will tell you this, I used to be one of those people who only had derogatory things to say about pigeons.

Then I started going into the New York City public schools, many years ago, to get the kids outdoors and looking at birds.

In their neighborhoods, sometimes the only bird around is the pigeon.

And when you really start to tune into them and pay attention, and learn about their biology, their fascinating.

For one thing, they are not truly wild.

They are feral.

They were brought, domesticated birds, and they got loose.

And they started interbreeding.

Now because people bread them first, people bread them into fancy for -- forms.

We made some of them white, some of them nearly all-black, some red.

Then they started interbreeding.

Now we have all these other patterns and colors, but we still get some of those all whites and all Blacks.

They have an average back to that original form.

Nobody knows why.

It's fascinating to look at them, watch their mating behavior, when the males puff up there next, and stick out their chests and droop their tails, and try to save hey baby, come on over.

It's fun to watch.

Jenna: It feels very, very New York.

[Laughter] Christian: in the words of Spike Lee, they are saying please, baby, please baby.

[Laughter] Jenna: With that, bringing instinct into the conversation, I want to go back to when you mentioned Central Park being a migratory stop, like an O'Hare airport, where everyone seems to have a layover.

More importantly, I have also heard over the years that there is a problem with words migrating -- birds migrating through New York.

We have so many tall buildings with glass windows which can be disorienting, birds can slam into.

Does that get addressed, or is that an ongoing problem?

Christian: It is an ongoing problem, but boy has it been addressed.

I'm going to thump my chest a bit for the New York City Audubon, which I am a board member.

It played an instrumental part in getting legislation through the city Council that requires in new construction of buildings that they use what is called, bird safe glass.

That's glass that to your eye looks normal, at least at a casual inspection, but the birds see it.

Instead of seeing a reflection that they think is more sky, and thinking they can keep going, they see a solid barrier, where we Jesse glass.

That allows them to avoid the collision's.

Perfect example of that, in one of the best citizens of the city, the Jacob Javits Center, which used to be one of the biggest bird killers because it had all of that glass and sat in the middle of the Hudson.

They retrofitted with bird safe glass.

Now, their collisions are way down to almost nil.

They have a green roof on top of the center.

We visited that green roof in the New York City episode.

They have gulls nesting on the green roof.

A gull I was hoping to measure decided it did not like me holding it.

It got hold of my face with its peak.

I can tell you how much that hurt.

Jenna: Oh my God.

Christian: In the name of science, sacrifices must be made.

It's pretty amazing that we got that legislation passed.

That helped a lot.

We still have more work to do.

We have an effort called lights out New York, to reduce the light pollution that disorient the birds, to turn off lights that are not necessary during migration.

There is more work to be doing.

New York City Audubon is on top of that.

Jenna: That is fascinating to know.

Speaking of the length you will go through for science, and for birds, there is also an episode that takes you to the top of the George Washington Bridge, which sounds -- Christian: That is the same episode.

That was one of the coolest things ever.

They closed off the lane of the George Washington Bridge during rush hour, so we can have access.

Jenna: Wow.

Christian: Every motorist is going, what?

So we could have access to an elevator to take us to the top of one of the towers.

When you step off -- first of all there is this drop, you look down and there is the Hudson, how many hundreds of feet below you, that you are seeing through this flimsy grate.

Then you've got the superstructure of the bridge zooming around you, girders like a Fritz Lane movie of an industrial wasteland.

Then you have this -- because the Peregrine Falcons rest on that bridge.

We checked on the nest and the health of the young.

The mother is not having it.

She is zooming through those girders at us, screaming her head off.

Those girders are amplifying the sound.

You are looking out, looking down at the Hudson, out on the city, how many feet high, this bird zooming around.

It was incredible.

It was an amazing experience.

I hope that gets communicated in the show.

It was pretty awesome.

Jenna: It sounds terrifying, even just to hear it.

I get the heebie-jeebies taking the bridge period.

There was a purpose.

You guys were taking measurements and banding the birds.

Christian: New York City has the highest concentration of Peregrine Falcons of any city in the world, why?

Because our skyscrapers simulate the cliff faces that they normally nest on in the wild.

Our bridges and skyscrapers are the perfect nesting sites.

Our pigeons offer the perfect food supply.

So, the Peregrine Falcons are thriving here in New York City.

We want to keep tabs of them.

There was a point when the Peregrine falcon in the East Coast of the United States was extinct.

There were no breeding birds left in the East Coast, because of DDT and the effect on the birds biology.

That has changed.

Serious scientific efforts by amazing people brought the bird back.

Now they are thriving in New York City.

We want to make sure that they continue to thrive.

Thereby -- there are biologists who go up there and check on the young, and measure them, check on their health, tag them.

That is what I got to tag along.

Jenna: One more question about the New York City birds.

Every so often, we get one or two, or maybe one bird that becomes a celebrity in of itself in the city.

There was the infamous Central Park duck.

There been hocks that have nested -- hawks that have nested.

Is it important for New Yorkers to understand or appreciate the wide variety, or is it OK that sometimes we just get fixated on this one animal, because wow?

Christian: It is fine to get fixated, because it is a gateway to the other animals, to the other birds.

Through that bird you may start to look around and think, oh, I did not realize this was possible in New York City.

I look at the ones that are not wild that become celebrity birds.

Right now it is Flocko, the Eurasian Eagle owl that has escaped from the Central Park zoo.

Cool to look at.

He is huge.

But I like my birds, the native birds, the wild birds we have here.

Flocko gets people engaged, gets people interested in birds.

When they see him, we will have you looking at I was that are similar to Flocko, but they are native.

It's a great way to get people involved.

Jenna: Speaking of native birds, which would be an odd way to segue, considering our human issues with people coming from other places, all birds are native to somewhere.

You travel the globe to see birds and their native habitats.

Are there any specific parts of the globe that you've been to that have been -- that have set out to your memory -- that have stood out to you in your memory?

Christian: A fellow member of mine has gone to Ecuador a few times.

He sent me an email saying, yeah, my friend down there in Ecuador knows where there is an active harpy eagle's nest that is accessible.

The harpy eagle is the largest Eagle in the world.

People look at it and think it is a person dressed up in a suit, because it is that big, and that powerful and crazy looking.

It has this crest of feathers on its head.

It's always occupying this larger-than-life position in my opinion.

If you know where there is an active nest, you are guaranteed to get to the bird.

This was in the middle of the pandemic.

We were not supposed to go anywhere.

I dropped everything, booked a flight to Ecuador.

We drove out there, a pair of expensive hiking boots that got ruined, we sink into the muck, to our ankles.

The bugs were everywhere.

I did not care.

I got me a harpy eagle.

This female was huge.

I have a video of her, where you see this huge bird, with this crest of feathers looking at you.

She does this.

And you see this massive wing unfold, and she pulls it back in.

It was just, it was awesome.

Plus, you go to Ecuador.

You get the most hummingbirds, like Insein hummingbirds.

Jenna: That's right.

Christian: Hummingbirds are the glory of the Americans -- America's.

They don't exist in the old world.

No hummingbirds.

They are strictly in the Americas.

North America, the Caribbean, Central America, South America.

There biology is incredible.

The things they do is amazing.

They are incredibly feisty.

They will check you out if they come into your territory.

Ecuador has an incredible variety.

It's so much fun to look at them.

Ecuador is high on my list.

Jenna: Is there any indication how climate changes affecting the birds?

I've been staying inside the past few days just to avoid the air quality which is so bad.

For the birds, does that matter?

Is it something affecting that world as well?

Christian: I can't answer definitively.

I don't know.

We all know the story about the canary in the coal mine.

There is a reason why that expression persists.

These to take canaries down into the coal mines because they would keel over before the people would.

That would be an indication that the air had gone bad.

It worries me greatly.

The situation worries me greatly, with all the smoke.

It worries me that so much of Canada is on fire.

That is a habitat where a lot of our migrants raise their young, in the summertime.

How is this going to impact, already fragile populations?

In the bigger picture, global warming is kicking the planet's ass.

Birds are a good indicator of how badly things are going.

In my lifetime since I started burning as a kid, we have lost about one third of all the entire population of living birds in North America, one third of them are just gone.

Global warming is one of the contributing factors to that.

You go to Hawaii, we did an episode and I knew things were bad in Hawaii, I just didn't know how bad.

Three out of four of their native birds are already extinct, gone.

It is getting worse because the problem there, the biggest problem is mosquito borne illnesses that the native Hawaiian birds have no resistance to.

The native birds still persist at higher altitudes where it is cool and the mosquitoes have not got up there.

Global warming keeps raising the temperature.

Mosquitoes keep getting higher and higher.

There's only so much real estate left in Hawaii, almost -- only so much you can go up.

They are fighting against the clock to save the birds.

The people doing that fight, they are the extraordinary birders.

They are doing heroic work.

Anything we can do to support them, we should.

Climate change, its effect on our planet, birds are a tremendous indicator of how extreme that is.

We have seen it in our own lifetimes.

We have seen birds we have only seen in the South that now read regularly in our area, as far north as Maine, because the climate has changed enough.

Climate change is real.

We need to do everything we can to ameliorate the effects.

We cannot stop it.

We can slow it down.

Maybe if we are smart, we can come up with something that will reverse it.

We have to do everything we can.

Otherwise we will live with this all the time, the smoke, the clouds.

Jenna: Definitely something to keep in mind.

I just also want to bring up, I mentioned in the intro that you are Vice President of New York City autobahn, I know the group is in the process of changing its name, can he tell me a bit more about the organization and why the rebrand?

Christian: Sure.

For a long time, the name just was synonymous with words.

-- birds.

Nothing more or less than birds in protecting the habitat.

The issue is that in more recent years, it has become more widely known, what John James Audubon, the societies named after him, and what he did in his life, he owned slaves, he desecrated the graves of indigenous people without regard for what that meant.

So, because of that, and because birding has become an overwhelmingly white activity, we are trying to reach out to people of color, to people of all kinds.

The United States, especially New York City is no longer a majority white place.

We've got to get everybody involved in birding and emotionally connected to the birds if we want to save the birds.

As that legacy of John James Audubon, that dark past, becomes more widely known, it becomes an impediment to a strong and the people we have to draw in, if we are going to save the birds.

That's why we decided, ultimately, to change the name.

There is a lot of ways to feel about it, on both sides.

But I like to come down on this, everybody agrees that what John James Audubon did with slaves and indigenous people is reprehensible.

No matter how they feel on the name, everybody, no matter how they feel on the name is devoted to the protection of birds under habitat.

Those are two points of agreement.

No matter which side you fall on that name debate, my attitude is, we can still keep working together towards our common goal.

We have two points of agreement.

Jenna: That is the note will leave it on.

Christian, I have to see your passion for birding and for our feathered neighbors is absolutely contagious and infectious.

[Laughter] It is even making me want to spend time -- well, not while the smoke is here -- but sometime outside.

Christian: Just look out your window.

Jenna: Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for your book.

And of course for this Nacchio series -- National Geographic series.

>> Thanks for tuning in for MetroFocus.

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>> MetroFocus made possible by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation.

The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund.

Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

And by Jody and John Arnhold.

Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn foundation.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen.