Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 19, 1990 TAG: 9006190065
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: NEWPORT BEACH, CALIF. LENGTH: Long
The young guy, whose name tag read Orange County Department of Environmental Field Study, explained that, soon, a busload of schoolchildren would arrive. Giggling and gasping, they would explore the black ooze with their fingers and therein learn about the delicate web of life in the salt marsh.
The old birder's eyes sparked with interest. He asked more questions. The 33-year-old instructor answered in the patient, slightly condescending manner of a hip high school teacher explaining rock 'n' roll to a dottering aunt.
The old birder listened intently. Then, when the young man indicated that he had better get back to the important work of teaching children the wonders of nature, the old birder's wife introduced him: "This is Roger Tory Peterson."
The young naturalist's legs buckled. His face flashed the expression of a garage band guitarist who had instructed B.B. King in the blues.
"It's a wonderful pleasure to meet you," he blurted. "I have your field guide back in my car. My copy is so worn out! It's been rained on. I've used it as a pillow. . . . I've been using your books, forever!"
"Not forever," Peterson said, smiling. "It's only been around for 56 years."
"I knew he was a birder," the young man was heard muttering a few minutes later. "But not the birder."
Recently, word got out that there had been scattered sightings of Peterson in Southern California. Birders flocked to bookstores where the 81-year-old painter and author signed copies of the new third edition of his classic guide "Western Birds."
Peterson published his first field guide to birds in 1934. Based on a simple identification procedure using birds' "field marks," the system revolutionized bird-watching, and the Peterson series expanded to include guides to wildflowers, butterflies and other flora and fauna, 60 titles in all.
Over the next decades, birding grew increasingly popular in the United States and something of a national obsession in Great Britain.
"In England," Peterson said, in his gentle whisper of a voice, "a rare River Warbler showed up in an oat field. So many birders arrived they trampled the farmer's crop. He had to turn a manure spreader on them."
Although he had never been there before, Roger Tory Peterson seemed at home in the Back Bay. It is, after all, a sort of unofficial monument to his life's work, a place where humanity and other life forms have reached a fragile truce in the ongoing struggle for living space.
Not that Peterson is a tree-thumping environmentalist. He has met four presidents without preaching to any, he said.
But in his "Birder's Handbook," population crusader Paul Ehrlich writes, "In this century, no one has done more to promote an interest in living creatures than Roger Tory Peterson."
The current Audubon magazine suggests that Peterson and "Silent Spring" author Rachel Carson "are the two people most responsible for creating the modern environmental movement in America. Peterson's achievement was to teach Americans, who were losing touch with the wild world, to take another look and see it clearly. . . . Seeing led to understanding, and understanding to caring about both birds and their habitats."
A few years ago, Peterson had cataracts removed; he now has an implant in one eye, a hard lens in the other. Even with his omnipresent binoculars and his cameras' long Telephoto lenses, quick focusing is difficult.
"My ears are excellent for my age," he says. "My eyes give me an argument."
But even casual observation of Peterson shows a rare intensity of perception. A slight tilt of his head focuses attention on things that dozens of joggers and hikers and bicyclists flash past: A snowy egret high-stepping through the shallow water; the great egret, leaning forward, extending its long crooked neck, and jabbing an awesomely effective yellow bill into the mud.
"Both these birds were in trouble in the late 1880s," Peterson said. Back then, ladies' hats adorned with egret feathers were fashionable. Blasting at flocks with powerful scatter shot, poachers killed the birds by the thousands.
"The whole Audubon movement started to protect them," Peterson said, his eyes sweeping the landscape as he talked. "The birds have recovered marvelously.
"Birding can be a sport, a science, a hobby. To some, it's a sort of game. To others, an art, an ethic or therapy.
"A priest in the Rio Grande Valley told me that it can also be a religious experience. I said `That's because the only other creatures with wings are angels.' "
These days Peterson gets the most pleasure from simply watching and listening to birds - common as well as rare - and trying to understand the way they live and the dynamics of bird populations.
The new guide, featuring paintings of 1,000 birds, took him more than six years to complete, he said. His wife researched and edited 441 maps depicting the birds' range of habitat.
The Petersons live in Old Lyme, Conn., sharing a 70-acre spread with deer, opossum, foxes and a coyote. There are 152 species of bird on the property, and the butterfly garden Virginia planted has attracted 33 species of butterflies.
But he's not home all that much, often traveling five months out of the year. This fall, he plans trips to Brazil and New Zealand. He plans to return to Antarctica soon, a continent he has visited at least 16 times, the home of his favorite bird and the inspiration for his birder nickname: "King Penguin."
But on this morning, Peterson was perfectly content watching avocets and swallows and the rare clapper rail.
When the busload of children arrived, he watched them as intently as he had watched the strutting egrets.
"Ten, 11, 12 - that's the critical age to get them involved in nature," he said.
That's about the age Peterson joined a Junior Audubon club in Jamestown, N.Y., paying a dime for a booklet of bird outlines. He colored them in, and later began sketching birds in margins of his history books.
But the real transformation occurred when he and a friend hiked across the railroad to Swede Hill and came upon a big bunch of brown feathers in a field. "I reached out and touched it. I thought it was dead. But it looked up, startled, alive."
The bird was a flicker, a kind of woodpecker, and its vital stare left a lifelong impression on Peterson's young psyche.
That, Peterson said, was at 9:30 a.m., April 8, 1920.
"Since then birds have seemed to symbolize being alive. They're a very vivid symbol of life for me," he said, as behind him, the Orange County naturalist looked into the eyes of his young audience and spoke passionately about the wonders of nature.
by CNB