Roger Tory Peterson was probably the best-known birder of the 20th Century and one of the true pioneers of contemporary nature education. The accomplishments of his illustrious career are ubiquitous, and you can’t pick up a field guide without paying homage to this great man. His artwork was also quite celebrated, his paintings gracing the halls of the Smithsonian more than once.
Peterson was also a fine writer, and Wild America, which he co-wrote with the British Naturalist James Fisher, is a touchstone for many writers and naturalists to this day. This narrative of a journey the two men took in search of birds is a vivid and important portrait of an era – the 1950s. Among his many attributes, Peterson is a grand story-teller, and the lively prose of Wild America has encouraged countless birders to take to the highways and back woods of North America in search of great birding adventures.
Later in life Peterson agreed to write a bi-monthly column for the magazine Bird Watcher’s Digest. This column appeared for the last 12 years of Peterson’s life, from 1984 to 1996. Bill Thompson, that magazine’s editor, has assembled these columns into a new book titled All Things Reconsidered. Here Peterson the story-teller holds court, recounting many adventures from a long and active life. There’s no new material here, it all appeared in the magazine, but it’s no less fun to read the stories again. Collected into one volume, it’s a marvelous window into 20th Century birding.
The tales are diverse. There are travel tales a-plenty. A successful career gave Peterson the means to travel around the world, and his tales from Kenya, the Pribilof Islands, Antarctica, and other locales are fun to read. Florida, Delaware Bay, and Cape May are also on the list (though I frown about his comment that, “Few places can be as birdless as the dunes at Cape May Point on an off day;” I know of plenty of places that are more birdless!). Peterson also marvels at the changes witnessed in his lifetime, ranging from the protection of formerly persecuted birds of prey at Hawk Mountain to the many aspects of birding, bird watching, ornithology – and he tries to define these often-overlapping terms. He pays homage to some of the greats of 20th Century birding and of conservation.
There are adventure tales, too. He writes of being capsized while photographing seabirds in the Gulf of Maine, but also of days watching migrants pass over Manhattan. Not all of the writing is from memory, as he also describes to readers the bird life observed around his chosen home of Old Lyme, Connecticut where he spent the last years of his life.
He leaves story-telling behind (well, not completely) in several essays focused on conservation. There are chapters about extinctions, introduced species, and ecotourism. We learn of his hopes for the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, an environmental education facility built in his childhood hometown. All Things Reconsidered does indeed encompass a wide sweep of thoughts about birds and birding, and it’s an enjoyable read just for that. But the book’s true value is that is provides a portrait of the senior Peterson through his own words. I never met the man, but reading these pages make me feel like I did. That, my friends, is a great gift.
Peterson, Roger Tory, Edited by Bill Thompson III. All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. 354 pages, $30.00 hardcover. ISBN-10: 0-618-75862-3; ISBN-13: 978-0-618-75862-3.
To order a copy of a title reviewed on the Birder’s Bookshelf, please call CMBO’s Northwood Center (609)884-2736 or the Center for Research & Education (609)861-0700.