I want to enjoy birding with my partner, Joey. And I almost always do. He doesn’t complain about the mosquitoes or scroll on his phone because he’s bored. He’s quite engaged, eager to drive two hours to spot a vagrant eagle from Siberia or run to our window because I think I see a warbler. 

Joey shines when we’re in the field, scanning dense oak foliage for a tiny songbird. While I swivel my gaze aimlessly, he leverages his ears to pinpoint the bird’s location. “He’s foraging in those yellowish leaves, Dominic. Just past that bent twig—no, the one below that.” Because of Joey, I see countless birds I would otherwise miss. 

What complicates the joy of birding with Joey are other people. When we encounter other birders on a guided walk or a busy trail, they often remind us that, as a gay couple, we are an aberration.

One Saturday in June, we wake up with the sun for a bird walk at one of my favorite spots: the Wells Reserve. This coastal reserve in southern Maine boasts over 2,200 acres (910 hectares) of dunes, salt marshes, swamps, and meadows—a birder’s paradise. We drive 20 minutes up Route 1 and inhale a breakfast sandwich in the parking lot before meeting our guides. They’re a white man and woman in their early 60s, two officers of the county Audubon Society, whom I’ll call Deb and John. 

I’m excited to learn from them, and throughout the morning, we do. Deb tells me that to get a good look at the furtive common yellowthroat, I should look lower in the brush than I might expect. Not to be outdone, John helps Joey and me get a “lifer”—a bird that we’ve so far only admired in field guides.

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At the end of the walk, after other folks have gone home, John asks if we want to veer off to the meadow to see bobolinks. We nod ferociously. As we duck through a tunnel of invasive honeysuckle, he solemnly informs us that bobolinks have declined greatly with the clearing of the country’s tallgrass prairies for farming. They continue to nest here, he adds, at least for now. His words imbue this place, and this moment, with bittersweet significance.

John identifies them as soon as we reach the meadow. Five birds—all males—flutter busily above the tall grass, flashing the starkness of their black-and-white wings. Between displays, one lands on a towering stalk to survey his surroundings. I glimpse his pale yellow head patch and realize I’m not the only one rocking a blond buzz cut for summer.

Well-meaning people exhaust all other options for our relationship with each other—friends, cousins, bandmates—instead of simply asking us.

As I turn toward Joey to joke about our matching hairdos, I notice their songs, overlapping, glitchy, and arresting. It’s as though the bobolinks are pressing a dozen different buttons inside a bird control center: Beep, buzz, chenk, boop. John says his wife compares them to R2-D2, and I chuckle even though I’ve only watched half of one Star Wars movie. 

We bathe in their sounds for half an hour before reluctantly calling it a day. As we crunch onto the gravel parking lot and say our goodbyes, John asks me two questions: “You guys brothers? You come here a lot?”

I answer the second. “Yeah,” I sputter, “We do.” 

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We often get the brother thing, and it’s starting to wear on me. It’s a safe bet that when John and his wife go birding together, no one asks them if they’re siblings: we all know better than to disrespect a straight couple like that. When she’s unable to join him, he can talk about her to others without fearing their discomfort or hatred. It’s different for me and Joey. Well-meaning people exhaust all other options for our relationship with each other—friends, cousins, bandmates—instead of simply asking us. They tell us how wonderful it is to share the joy of birding with their loved ones, unable to see that we’re doing the same thing, right in front of them. 

Joey and I are far from alone in feeling like we don’t quite belong in spaces dedicated to enjoying nature. Like members of other marginalized groups, our interactions with nature reflect the long, exclusionary history of American conservation and outdoor recreation. Since the outset of the US environmental movement, nature has largely been protected for the benefit of the most privileged Americans, often at others’ expense. Nowhere is this more visible than in the push to establish national parks and other public lands.

During his presidency at the turn of the 20^th century, Theodore Roosevelt placed about 230 million acres (more than 930 square km) of land under public protection in the form of parks, forests, and monuments—but it came at a human cost. To justify establishing national parks and other protected sites on Indigenous lands, Roosevelt and others relied on the myth of wilderness as “uninhabited land”—even though every national park rests on land that was once inhabited by Native Americans. As attorney and legal scholar Isaac Kantor notes, the federal government forcibly removed tribes from the spaces that would become national parks, later erasing their treaty rights to hunt and fish there as they had for generations. The elimination of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands was all so that white visitors could enjoy “a showcase of uninhabited America, nature’s handiwork unspoiled,” he writes.

Since the outset of the US environmental movement, nature has largely been protected for the benefit of the most privileged Americans, often at others’ expense.

This vision for the country’s natural spaces was not as democratic as the term “public lands” implies. According to Catriona Sandilands and other Queer ecology scholars, the American wilderness was constructed with one group in mind: wealthy, straight white men. Nature became a place for men like Roosevelt to assert their hetero-masculinity through individualized activities—like hunting, fishing, and climbing—imbued with a sense of domination. Untainted by the Black, immigrant, and Queer people who lived in cities, they could be “real” men. Since then, much social progress has been made, yet participation in nature-focused activities remains fairly exclusive. 

To this day, a disproportionate majority of those who participate in outdoor recreation pursuits are white. Look no further than the harassment of Black birder Christian Cooper in New York City to understand why. On May 25, 2020, Cooper was birding in the Ramble area of Central Park when he asked a white woman to leash her dog—a reasonable request, given the leashing requirements in place to protect wildlife. The woman responded by calling the police on Cooper,  complaining about an “African-American man…threatening [her] and [her] dog.” The reaction of “Central Park Karen” to Cooper reminds us that, even still, Black people are often considered an affront to the pristine whiteness of America’s natural spaces.

Queer people also face persistent barriers to forming a meaningful relationship with nature. Traditional gender roles, combined with pervasive rhetoric that claims Queerness is inherently unnatural, continue to discourage us from enjoying all that nature has to offer. Though Joey and I have never been heckled or called slurs while out on a trail, our fellow birders almost always assume that we’re straight. In these moments, when they ask if we are siblings or friends, I’m faced with a choice—between a familiar yet shameful silence or the discomfort of vulnerability: coming out. Lately, I’ve been leaning into the latter.

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On a dreary morning this winter, Joey and I visit a wildlife refuge near the Philly airport in search of migrating waterfowl. Winter ducks are one of my greatest joys. Their striking plumage and quirky diving habits make even the coldest days bearable. From a wooden observation deck, we watch dozens of ruddy ducks mingle in the steely water. 

“That different-looking one is a horned grebe,” says a man behind us, as though we don’t already know. I thank him, and we chat about our favorite birding spots before he asks a familiar question. “Are you brothers?” 

I have my answer ready this time. “We’re together.” 

His cheeks flush. “You look so similar, I thought you must be twins.”

I glimpse the bobolink’s pale yellow head patch and realize I’m not the only one rocking a blond buzz cut for summer.

When we get home, I ask Joey to join me in our bathroom. We stare into our streaky mirror to assess our alleged resemblance. Joey, with his pale complexion and fuschia mullet. Me, with my black eyebrows and Italian-American mustache. We quickly decide that we do not look alike. I doubt Grebe Guy thought we were twins, either. I think he asserted our resemblance to mask his embarrassment at getting it wrong, or because he didn’t want to seem homophobic. I don’t know. I can’t know.

I’ve spent too much time brainstorming ways I can come across as more Queer. How can I get people to stop mischaracterizing our relationship? How can I get them to see us? I’ve come to realize that our visibility as Queer birders has little to do with how we present and everything to do with the lens through which others perceive us. Our relationship is like that secluded bobolink meadow or undercover grebe. If someone isn’t open to possibility, they almost certainly won’t see it.

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