What happens when fashion, natural history, conservation, and art collide?

In this episode of Bird Joy, we’re joined by New York City’s premier licensed professional taxidermist, Divya Anantharaman, an award-winning artist whose work spans museums, galleries, fashion houses, and natural history institutions. Divya specializes in birds, small mammals, and anatomic anomalies, blending scientific precision with emotional storytelling and symbolic design. Check out her work here.

Divya’s path wasn’t linear. She left the corporate fashion world to pursue her love of natural history, becoming the resident taxidermist at the Morbid Anatomy Museum and building a global following for her taxidermy, skeletal, and entomology displays, as well as jewelry and wearable art rooted in wonder.

Divya shares insights from her feature in the documentary Rearranging Skin, her book Stuffed Animals: A Modern Guide to Taxidermy, and her collaborations with institutions, artists, and conservation groups like NYC Bird Alliance and NYC Plover Project.

At its heart, this conversation explores the human-animal relationship, conservation, legacy, memory, and what becomes possible when science becomes art.

If you’ve ever felt the pull of curiosity toward feathers, form, history, or preservation, this episode is for you.

Science. Style. Wonder. And a whole lot of Bird Joy!

BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin

In Color Birding Club

In this episode, we sit down with Trentön Schulz-Franco, founder of the Special Bird Service Society in Canada. SBS is an outdoor community rooted in Victoria and Vancouver that is redefining what belonging in nature can look like. Special Bird Service centers Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour, as well as 2SLGBTQIA+ folks, creating intentional spaces where people feel safe, seen, and genuinely welcome outdoors.

Our conversation explores the difference between access and belonging, the personal journey that led Trentön to build SBS, and the responsibility outdoor leaders carry when guiding people on colonized land. We talk about healing, joy, storytelling, and the power of community-led spaces to transform our experience of nature. Trentön shares affirming moments from SBS gatherings, the challenges of growth, and what it takes to protect a community’s soul while expanding its reach.

This episode is a reminder that birding and outdoor culture can be places of care, accountability, and connection when community comes first. If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like to build a space where people truly belong, this conversation is for you.

BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin

In Color Birding Club

Today we’re joined by Vikas Bhatia (Vikas Wildlife) — wildlife filmmaker, photographer, and composer whose work blends sound and image into immersive stories from the Amazon to the Arctic.

We talk about what it means to make the environment a main character, how his background playing in bands shaped his editing rhythm, and the creative leap of composing original music for his wildlife films. Vikas shares field stories from extreme habitats, the patience required to capture animal behavior, and how he balances brand collaborations with his artistic voice.

We also dig into gear, risk, creative burnout, and advice for emerging storytellers trying to find their lane in a noisy, algorithm-driven world.

This episode is about storytelling as craft, adventure as discipline, and creating art that honors wild places.

BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin

In Color Birding Club