THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 30, 1996 TAG: 9609280006
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: 54 lines
The man who taught thousands of us how to tell a pine siskin from a house finch - and other winged details galore - is gone. But despite his death in Old Lyme, Conn., a few weeks ago, Roger Tory Peterson hasn't stopped teaching. He'll be with us for a long time through the jampacked little field guides he turned out in his busy lifetime.
In fact, right at the end he was in the midst of an update of his manual on the birds of the Eastern United States, still doing all the text and meticulous color illustrations himself.
His 46 bird and nature books, granted, were not the opulent productions of an Audubon. And other authorities have, in recent years, followed his lead and assembled guides similar to those with which Peterson pioneered his breakthrough to a vast population of nonscholars who just liked birds.
But his is the name that will be most - and most fondly - remembered by all that bird-watching population, grown even larger because of the windows to the wild world that he opened with his precise skills. And he won regard, too, among the scientific professionals, having received many honors, both in recognition of his expertise and for his huge contribution to the environmental movement. He made dedicated nature lovers of countless people who might otherwise have been only casually concerned, as noted in a warm, informed tribute by his friend, John Leo, a contributing editor of U.S. News & World Report.
In any one of his books, the scope of his research is obvious and hard to believe. This translated, for one thing, into accurate, careful paintings of all the hundreds of species in a particular area, with males neatly differentiated from females, with immature and adult feathering noted, and with hints for on-the-wing identification. But he went far beyond all that, replicating songs and calls syllable by syllable, providing page after page of maps to indicate seasonal ranges and migration patterns, and showing the patterns of kinship among species.
Peterson did not make his mark as some pretentious tree-hugger or as lofty scholar. He was of the same simple stuff as the back-porch bird enthusiast, with a genuine liking for the creatures he studied and the talent for gathering and passing on useful information.
He was essentially a practical man. He saw a need for tight, readable packages of bird information, with good pictures, assembled in books small enough to be carried into the field (or kept on the kitchen table). So he wrote (and illustrated) just such guides.
I found something (among other information) to support this down-to-earth image in that aforementioned tribute by John Leo. Although Leo acclaims the Peterson expertise over and over again, the only descriptives we see are ``birder'' and ``bird-watcher.''
``Ornithologist'' is a conspicuous no-show. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk. by CNB