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I came of birding age in the 60s, and, like many in my generation, Roger Tory Peterson was my hero. When I was 10 years old I sat, star-struck, across the
table from him at an Audubon Screen Tour dinner. Later, when I opened the new, blue cover of Peterson’s second edition of the Field Guide to the Western
Birds, I saw a beauty I had never seen before, or since. Always, when I dreamt of adventure, it was with Peterson and Fisher in their ride across Wild
America. So when I saw the cover of Elizabeth J. Rosenthal’s book, Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson, showing Peterson interrupted mid-sketch,
his hand poised over a Pratincole, his eyes turned on me, wary and fixed, I wanted to turn away, and not face the darker truths that this book was sure
to offer up.
Rosenthal approaches Peterson’s biography not as a birder - although after writing this book she could pass for one - but as a writer interested in telling
the story of a brilliant artist, a pioneer naturalist and environmentalist, and a man of exceptional genius. Her portrait begins with Peterson’s discovery of
the sleeping flicker that awakened his life-long love of birds, to his days with the Bronx Bird Club, to the success of his first book. The beginning
recounts a familiar story to many of us schooled in Peterson mythology, and she doesn’t add much to earlier accounts.
However, as Peterson matures, Rosenthal applies her extensive research to give us a new understanding of Peterson’s genius. By choosing her interviews well,
and including long quotes from these discussions, she is able to use the recollections of people who knew Peterson to paint her own portrait of this
complicated man. She finds someone at times petty, clinging to celebrity, but also generous and always marveling at the natural world. She finds a driven
man, painting and writing at all hours. But she also finds a man, even when his reputation was secure, doubting whether he was an artist, and tormented by
criticisms of his fourth edition of the Field Guide to the Eastern Birds. Her portrait of Peterson in his declining years, protected and cajoled by Virginia,
his third wife, brings to mind a declining Lear, in the company of Goneril and Regan.
But in trying to capture the whole man, including the pieces broken in pursuit of genius, Rosenthal never loses sight of his greatness. His art – painting,
photography, film and writing – brought birds and nature alive, and his field guides opened up the natural world to millions around the world. He was a
bridge between the birder world of the ABA and the conservation ethic of Audubon, using his knowledge of birds to address environmental problems. She
tells how Peterson used those Audubon Screen Tour dinners, not only to tell a small boy to keep watching birds, but to find out about some local conservation
problem, so that he could encourage the larger Screen Tour audience to take action.
Rosenthal came at this task with an intensity of her own, interviewing 112 people and including 314 citations in her chapter notes. The list of people
she talked to reads like a naturalist’s who’s who – Kenn Kaufman, David Allen Sibley, Peter Dunne, Frank Graham Jr., Edward O. Wilson. With so many
sources, I wish that Rosenthal had cross-referenced them in the text, but this is a small quibble.
Rosenthal includes a wonderful set of photographs chronicling Peterson’s career, travels and acquaintances, including Peterson with his beloved
King Penguins. In the final picture an older Peterson looks directly at the camera with sparkling eyes. She titles this photo, The Great Man. |
