This May, the sky over Chollas Lake
Park carries more than birds — it carries history. WorldBeat Cultural Center, in
partnership with SoCal Bird Nerds and the San Diego Bird Alliance, is hosting a free
guided community bird walk on Saturday, May 30, from 9 to 11 a.m., as part of Black
Birders Week 2026.
The event is open to everyone, requires no prior experience, and welcomes families,
birdwatchers of all levels including those with no experience, and the community of Chollas
Lake.
Black Birders Week, founded in 2020, was built to celebrate and amplify the voices of Black naturalists,
scientists, and outdoor enthusiasts across North America. This
year's theme — Flyways and Freedom: Advocacy,
Action, and the Future — invites us to sit with some uncomfortable questions
together: Why can a bird cross a border that a person can't?
Why are the same systems that fragment bird habitats also fragmenting our neighborhoods? Birds
move because they have to — their whole existence is an act of faith, following paths
laid down by ancestors across skies and continents. The flyways they travel across
North, Central, and South America mirror the journeys of Black and Indigenous
peoples throughout the diaspora, from the Afro-Brazilian communities of the Amazon
to the Afro-Caribbean traditions of the islands to the freedom seekers of the
American South.
Each region of the Americas holds its own Black community with its own heroes, its own relationship to
the land, and its own knowledge of the natural world. This year's theme isn't
about having all the answers — it's about building the support systems brave enough to ask the right questions,
together.
Chollas Lake Park is itself a place of refuge for the community — for birds and
for people. Tucked into a neighborhood that knows what it means to be
underestimated, the lake draws dozens of species throughout the
year and provides one of the rare pockets of green space in a part of San Diego that deserves far more.
WorldBeat brings its Mindful Birding
Initiative to this landscape, an approach rooted in the
understanding that bird watching is not a hobby reserved for a
certain kind of person. At the heart of this
tradition is the story of Harriet Tubman, who
used her deep knowledge of bird calls and the natural world to navigate the
Underground Railroad. Through WorldBeat's ongoing Harriet Tubman Bird
Walk series, developed in collaboration with Cornell Lab of Ornithology's
Celebrate Urban Birds Project, birdwatching becomes an act of
remembrance and reclamation — a way to reconnect BIPOC families with outdoor
spaces that have always belonged to them.
The walk takes place at Chollas Lake Park, 6350 College Grove Drive, San
Diego 92115 — meet at the gazebo near the park office by the fishing dock. The
paths are flat, paved, making them accessible for walkers and strollers.
Restrooms, drinking water, and free parking are available on site, and the park
is accessible via the MTS Trolley Orange Line at Euclid Avenue and Bus Route 955.
Binoculars will be provided. The event is entirely free and family-friendly.
