Who knew a stag do could be so life-changing?” So asks Ollie Olanipekun — a man who must be in the extreme minority of having come out of a pre-wedding weekender with his world altered for the better. Loading into a minibus after two days’ quadbiking and rafting in a forest for his brother’s stag, he spotted an owl, “and, for a split second, I’m sure I caught its eye.” He went home, grabbed a pair of binoculars from his parents’ house, “and from then on, I was fascinated by birds.”
Olanipekun charts this love affair in Outsiders — a memoir-cum-call-to-action for would-be naturalists written with Nadeem Perera. The pair are better known as the brains behind Flock Together — a birdwatching collective for people of colour that, since it was set up during lockdown, has amassed 20,000 followers on Instagram, a Gucci campaign, a 15-track EP and book deal, and chapters in New York and Tokyo.
