ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 30, 1996 TAG: 9608300007
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG
SOURCE: ALISON FREEHLING NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS
At one time or another, birds tend to pop up in Mitchell Byrd's stories.
Take the tale of the pesky telemarketer who recently called Byrd, a retired biology professor at the College of William and Mary, looking to sell him magazine subscriptions.
Byrd told her he had too much serious reading to do. The telemarketer challenged him to say what book he had open at that very moment.
``The Evolution of the Carotid Artery in the Southern African Ground Hornbill,'' Byrd told her. The telemarketer hung up.
``She said the connection had gotten bad,'' Byrd said, smiling.
At 68, Mitchell Byrd has fashioned a career - and a life - around the study of birds, specifically those nesting along Virginia's rivers.
His crusade is for a bald eagle population increasingly threatened by shoreline development. State wildlife experts call Byrd one of the key players in efforts to preserve land for the majestic birds, and a formidable opponent to anyone who would do otherwise. ``He's unstoppable,'' said Keith Cline, a biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries who specializes in birds and has worked with Byrd on eagle surveys for 19 years.
``He's got this wonderful, dry sense of humor, but he's very serious at the same time. He knows there are more and more conflicts now, and he's not going to turn down anyone who asks for help.''
Byrd hasn't been to a movie since 1967, when he paid 50 cents to see ``Dr. Zhivago.'' He doesn't watch much television, except for the news and the Discovery Channel.
Ask him what his other interests are, besides birds, and he pauses. ``Hiking,'' he finally says.
``He's so intense, he sometimes forgets what he's doing,'' said Rhonda Hardesty, a graduate student in biology at W&M who studied under Byrd as an undergraduate.
``He'll be carrying a bird under his arm when he's trying to tag it, like an umbrella, and he's talking and all of a sudden it will be biting him in the stomach. We're constantly picking on him.''
Byrd earned three biology degrees from Virginia Tech, the last a doctorate received in 1954. His career was sidetracked shortly afterward, when he was drafted into the Army and sent to the biological warfare center in Frederick, Md. There, he worked on developing bubonic plague as a weapon, a job he ``hated, because it was all about destruction and not preservation.''
On his own and through his Center for Conservation Biology, Byrd has worked with almost every species of bird found in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
During the 1970s, he helped build towers to serve as nesting grounds for some 240 peregrine falcon chicks being reintroduced to the area. Pesticide poisoning had killed nearly all of those birds in Virginia, but now there are 17 pairs nesting in the state.
Byrd estimates he has put tags on more than 3,500 ospreys, using special wire traps with a mouse inside. When the black-and-white birds of prey land on the wire and swipe at the mouse, their feet become tangled.
``I've seen him dive after a mouse that somehow got out,'' Hardesty said. ``Of course, it bit him, but he wasn't about to let a good mouse go.''
Byrd has removed countless eggs from osprey nests to take them to states where the osprey population is faltering.
A mother osprey once flew at his head, knocking his hat 20 feet downstream and leaving his face bloodied. Most times, though, the birds circle near but leave him alone.
``They don't usually mind,'' Byrd said. ``We only take one egg out of nests of three. I don't think these birds count too well.''
Part of the problem Byrd faces with bald eagles is good news: the growing number of eagles in the area. Poisoning from DDT and other pesticides killed huge numbers of them in the 1950s and 1960s.
DDT was banned in 1972, and the eagle population has increased steadily since the late 1970s. In 1977, there were 32 nesting pairs in Virginia and 66 pairs in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Today, there are about 185 nesting pairs in Virginia and 400 pairs around the bay, Byrd said.
The James River supports the largest summer eagle population in the Eastern United States - some 300 eagles, including birds that fly in from the Northeast and Southeast, Byrd said.
But development is eating up more and more shoreline, and 1.7million more people are projected to move into the Chesapeake Bay watershed over the next 20 years. ``We probably lose a few nesting areas every year,'' Cline said, ``and it's not going to get better.''
If Byrd has anything to say about it, it won't get worse: ``I can see the incredible loss of habitat. Given the trends, most suitable habitats will be gone not tomorrow, or the next day, but soon. In many respects, we've passed the point of no return - but that doesn't mean we stop fighting.''
Most of the problem, Byrd said, can be blamed on unregulated residential growth. He knows he can do little about that, other than speak before local governing bodies when he disapproves of a project.
He spends many a day on James River in his small, white motorboat, carrying binoculars -``Eagle Optics,'' the label reads - and checking on nests. Last year, the state hired him to map the location of eagle nests on some 2,500 miles of shoreline in the Chesapeake Bay watershed by boat.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. ``In many respects, we've passed the point of noby CNBreturn - but that doesn't mean we stop fighting,'' Mitchell Byrd
says of save birds' habitats.