Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 15, 1993 TAG: 9302130212
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STRAT DOUTHAT ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: OLD LYME, CONN. LENGTH: Medium
SINCE 1934, HE'S BEEN AMERICA'S GUIDE TO BIRD WATCHING
HE KNOWS the calls of practically every bird in North America. Ever since a flicker he thought was dead exploded to life in his 11-year-old hands, he's been stuck on birds and so have his readers. Meet Roger Tory Peterson at age 84.Although Roger Tory Peterson's innovative field guides are credited with revolutionizing the art of bird-watching, the famed illustrator says he has no secret recipe when it comes to entertaining the feathered friends he draws so well.
"I'm pretty unimaginative, really," he says. "Sunflower seeds, cracked corn, suet and a little peanut butter once in a while. That's about it."
However, the birds flitting about Peterson's yard didn't seem to have any complaints on this particular day.
They were busily pecking away as the lanky, white-haired naturalist sat on a couch in his studio, observing the yard through one of two large picture windows in the room.
From one window, a black-capped chickadee could be seen carefully selecting a sunflower seed in a feeder suspended between two trees. On the other side of the yard, a red-bellied woodpecker clung to a tree trunk, while a small army of tufted titmice darted through the tangled branches of a huge, winged euonymus.
Virginia Peterson smiled fondly as her husband watched the titmice capering in the shrub.
"Roger likes to have birds around him, whenever possible," she said. "He tends to get bored otherwise."
This has been the case for some 70 years, dating back to when Peterson was a seventh-grader in Jamestown, N.Y. "My teacher, Blanche Hornbeck, got me interested in drawing birds," he recalls.
He soon was drawing, and later, photographing, every bird in sight. In the classroom, when no models were available, he would draw birds from memory on the margins of his school books.
Now, seven decades later, Peterson still photographs and draws birds. On this day he has a canvas of Atlantic puffins on his easel.
Despite his age, Peterson still puts in long hours in the studio, but says he finds he must get out into the field every so often or he gets stale.
"I can recognize the calls of practically every bird in North America," he said. "There are some in Africa I don't know, though."
Peterson has been to East Africa 10 times and has lined his studio with exotic tribal masks acquired on these trips. He plans to return to Africa again, early this year.
"I've birded all over the world," he says, shrugging. "I've been to Antarctica 17 times and four times to Australia. It's reached the point where I don't consider the United States to be travel, unless I go to Alaska."
He glanced again at the birds in his yard. "We really should use more imagination when feeding birds," he said. "In Africa, they put out boiled rice, which brings in a whole raft of birds, including cuckoos and vultures."
Peterson's breakthrough came in 1934, with the publication of his field guide to the birds of the Eastern United States. It was the first field guide to contain a schematic arrangement of birds, and detailed illustrations that contained tiny arrows pointing to primary identifying features.
Although the concept seems obvious, the book was considered revolutionary when it came out.
Since then, he says, his various field guides - which include studies of birds throughout most of the world, and of butterflies, beetles and, wildflowers, as well - have sold 15 million copies.
Virginia Peterson does the elegant, detailed maps in her husband's field guides. The maps are based on careful studies of published reports and visual sightings by birders. She says the range maps are particularly difficult to pin down because the ranges of many birds tend to change constantly.
"For instance," says Peterson, "I can remember when you never saw a tufted titmouse east of the Hudson River. On the other hand, in recent years the loggerhead shrike has virtually disappeared from the Northeast."
Peterson has seen bird-watching become enormously popular during his lifetime. He says he's gratified by the role he has played in this phenomenon.
"Nowadays," he says, "some people even try to make birding a competitive sport, vying with each other to see who can spot the most species."
Although he says he doesn't engage in this type of birding, Peterson recently issued a series of cards, patterned after the commercial baseball cards popular with collectors. Peterson's cards portray birds from one of his field guides, plus a biographical sketch of the bird, and a range map.
Houghton Mifflin also has just released a large-format retrospective of Peterson's field guide drawings. He's admittedly quite proud of the book, and of his perceived place in history, as being a sort of latter-day John James Audubon.