Bird-watcher wrongfully accused in Central Park video gets a bird-watching TV show

Christian Cooper watches distant shorebirds at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge in California. The National Geographic channel has announced that Cooper will host a series called "Extraordinary Birder". Cooper was in the spotlight after a woman in New York City's Central Park called the police and falsely accused him of threatening her in May 2020. (Jon Kroll/National Geographic)

Jon Kroll / Jon Kroll

Christian Cooper, the bird-watching Black man who was the target of false accusations during an encounter in New York City’s Central Park in 2020, has a new TV show airing on National Geographic.

The channel announced this week that Cooper, a lifelong bird-watcher, will host a series called “Extraordinary Birder.” In the series, Cooper will take viewers into the “wild, wonderful and unpredictable world of birds,” according to National Geographic.

“Whether braving stormy seas in Alaska for puffins, trekking into rainforests in Puerto Rico for parrots, or scaling a bridge in Manhattan for a peregrine falcon, he does whatever it takes to learn about these extraordinary feathered creatures and show us the remarkable world in the sky above,” the network said in a statement.