In May 2019, a biologist with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources made a monumental discovery: 20,000 Whimbrel (a threatened and rapidly declining migratory shorebird) were roosting together in a single flock on Deveaux Bank. On this treeless sandbar 20 miles south of Charleston, this spectacle—a flock representing half of the species’ entire Atlantic Flyway population—was hiding in plain sight, gathered each night during Spring migration.
An order of magnitude larger than any other known gathering of the species, the finding was unimaginable to scientists studying migratory shorebirds. But for Dr. J. Drew Lanham—born and based in South Carolina, a distinguished professor at Clemson University, and acclaimed author and poet—his perspective as a Black ornithologist in America shaped a wider view of the discovery, beyond its staggering ecology.
