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Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson

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Finally, the most informative and honest account of the life of a man who galvanized the bird-watching revolution with his great art work. Peterson bird books are available for most of the world now, and this was the shy fellow who did them. I was part of the crowd who followed him even before he published his first book, on the birds of eastern North America. In retrospect, I realize it is not the most happy thing to become so very famous, but he weathered the life of a celebrity as well as he possibly could. This should be in every bird-watcher's library!

This is an accurate and vital portrait of Roger Tory Peterson. The author brings the visionary artist/conservationist back to life: She interviewed over 100 surviving colleagues and proteges, so the book is full of excellent quotes and great stories. She also quotes extensively from RTP's writings. The result feels alive, not dry or academic. It is a remarkable form of biography, and is also carefully accurate in my experience. One gets a sense of how environmental education and conservation were done: The field guides; the DDT story; restoration of endangered birds such as the Peregrine Falcon (and RTP's similar vision for the California Condor); and great land conservation campaigns such as the Coto Donana in Spain; are all carefully and colorfully documented. This is great reading, and it is an engaging book for students too.

Roger Tory Peterson is the most famous birdwatcher in history. 2008 is the 100th anniversary of his birth, and what better way to celebrate it than by learning more about the man himself?

After reading this book, you will not only find out much about Peterson's life and accomplishments, but you will come to know the man personally. The biographer conducted extensive interviews with his relatives, friends, and disciples (or in some cases their spouses or children). Their voice, often in the form of direct quotes, permeates the book. This was a very effective technique, and contributed much to the reader's growing sense of familiarity with Peterson.

Instead of being organized in a stricly chronological order, Rosenthal instead organizes much of the book by topic. When Peterson's life started branching out in many directions, they are focused on seperately. Thus, there are chapters on conservation efforts, travels, the continuing saga of the field guides, and the people that he influenced. With the exception of that last one, which seemed very incongruously placed, the story still flows in a very understandable fashion. This organization, instead of being confusing, actually helped keep me engaged and interested.

Overall, Birdwatcher is a well-written and enjoyable look at the life of the most famous birder in history. After reading this biography, I certainly know much more about Roger Tory Peterson's life and accomplishments. But what's more, I feel like I got to know the man himself. If you would like to do the same, this book is a great way to do so.

Rosenthal has produced an extremely readable and fascinating book about the life of a giant in the field of ornithology. Roger Tory Peterson is perhaps one of the most influential and most important figures in the world of birds. His name is just as recognizable as other giants, like Seton, Nuttall, Audubon, or Darwin. Upon the publication of his first bird field guide in 1934, with his famous field mark system, the public began to embrace birds, and for the first time, bird observation became an accessible pastime for the average person. Peterson's voluminous publishing efforts resulted in possibly the biggest ripple effect in wildlife conservation. Birds and wildlife became a tangible topic for the public to process, as well as a source of inspiration for generations of ecologists and biologists.

Rosenthal's book is divided into five parts spanning 19 chapters: Fledgling, Intercontinental Migration, Paradoxical Homo Sapiens, Conservation Stories, and Inspiring Flights. Near the center of the book is a collection of photo plates (color and B&W) focusing on Peterson and his close friends. The book is written such that Peterson becomes a living, breathing soul through the voices and comments of more than 100 interviewees who knew and loved Peterson. The diligent research conducted by Rosenthal illustrates a highly accurate and personal journey into the life of the "Great Man." Peterson was multi-faceted: he was an artist, photographer, writer, filmmaker, and scientist. But more than just birds interested him; he loved to talk about moths and butterflies and could think in terms of the bigger ecological picture. Rosenthal eloquently communicates just how important and influential Peterson was. He touched many lives, and enough cannot be said how he affected many naturalists and biologists, like Rachel Carson, Kenn Kaufman, David Sibley, and Scott Weidensaul.

Perhaps the biggest theme in the book is Peterson's constant interest in conservation. Nearly everything he wrote came from a conservation standpoint. Birds cannot survive without an intact ecosystem and are indicators of an unhealthy environment. Peterson could tell that something was wrong when the Ospreys quit producing viable eggs or when particular moth species stopped visiting his studio window. Birds are also a form of time. The appearance of a bird indicates a particular season and the absence of a bird where it should be opened the idea that not all is well. Peterson wanted his astute observation skills taught and passed along to future generations. As Peterson wrote in 1975:

Birds are far more than cardinals and jays to brighten the garden, ducks and grouse to fill the sportsman's bag, or warblers and rare shorebirds to be ticked off on the bird watcher's checklist. They are indicators of the environment - a sort of "ecological litmus paper." Because of their high rate of metabolism and furious pace of living, they reflect subtle changes in the environment rather quickly; they warn us of things out of balance. They send out signals when there is a deterioration of the ecosystem. It is inevitable that the intelligent person who watches birds (or mammals or fish or butterflies) becomes environmentally conscious. [Peterson 1975]

Rosenthal also delved into Peterson's personal life and his relationships with various people. His wives and children all had their unique influence on him and how he interacted with the world. Although Peterson may have been a difficult man to live with, he drew people to him for conversation and companionship; he was a good friend. All questions were fair game for lengthy discussions on the natural world. Peterson took many trips to distant places, which were great sources of inspiration and certainly allowed him to feel at ease in the element he loved the most: nature as nature should be.

Rosenthal's book is excellent. For anyone interested in nature, birding, or natural history, "Birdwatcher" is a must-read. Never before has the life of Roger Tory Peterson been so well documented, and as you read the book, you will undoubtedly come to realize that you knew Roger all along, at least in spirit, since everything is connected: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe" (Muir 1911).

Muir, J. 1911. My First Summer in the Sierra. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass.

Peterson, R. T. 1975. Man's Role in Nature. The American Biology Teacher 37(2):90-93.

When Elizabeth J. Rosenthal sat down to write a biography, she certainly did not skimp on the research nor flit over any details. This is probably one of the most concise, in-depth and well researched books of this particular genre I have ever read. Roger Tory Peterson of course will forever have his name liked to birds and birding. Before Peterson, life for the average birder was a grim and frustrating affair. This one man revolutionized the hobby of "bird watching" and opened up an entire new world for millions of people. As this wonderful work so well points out though, his contributions to science and in particular conservation are almost beyond measure.

Ms Rosenthal has traced and documented the life and work of one of America's greatest (if not the greatest) naturalist, and as any good biography, her work starts with the development of the man and gives us a blow by blow account of his entire life; not only his professional, but also his personal. I seriously doubt if there will be any work addressing the Great Man's life that will be the equal of this.

But surprisingly, despite the care and attention to minutia the author has given to Dr. Peterson's life, she has given us so much more with this work. By its reading, the reader will receive a very good overview of the conservation effort in this country, a wonderful history of birding, inside glimpses in the life of many species of birds, a very readable travel log and an insiders look into the politics of organizations such as the Audubon Society, Conservations Agencies, and a plethora of other conservation organizations to which Peterson gave so much and so greatly influenced. We also receive some very nice peeks into the lives of many of his scientific and artistic contemporaries. I was particularly interested in the area dealing with the fight over the use of the horrid pesticide DDT and his work with the author of Silent Spring. It is fascinating that the mindless greed, corruption and ignorance that these earlier pioneers faced in saving so much of what is valuable to us as a society, are alive and well, and with us even to this day. Go figure.

Rosenthal has given us a very readable work here. She has not, as other reviewers have pointed out, presented Peterson's story in strict chronological order, but has rather broken it down into areas to which he was concerned and the different stages of his development. This will at first take the reader off guard, but as soon as you realize what she is doing, you will find it works quite well. The text is smooth and it is well footnoted. I can, with some confidence, make the statement that this work is well researched due to the fact that I happen to have been, and am aware, of many of the facts she presents. I was unable to find one miss on her part. Even when the author presents facts in a way that are "her opinion," she is quite justified in doing so and pretty well justifies her findings and observations.

Another area that I was gratified the author addressed was the importance of the impact that Roger Tory Peterson had on world wide conservation and how his numerous field guides are not restricted to just the United States alone and not just restricted to birds. Peterson was a naturalist's naturalist and his knowledge casted a wide net over the wonderful natural world around us. It is good that she pointed out and given him credit for this. He was, in my opinion, one of the best artists and illustrators of his era... bar none.

The question could be asked that would anyone other than those interested in birds and birding enjoy this work? My answer would be an enthusiastic yes. Anyone with an ounce of curiosity outside their mundane little self made world will read this work with absolute relish. It is simply overflowing with facts and interesting stories; not just about Peterson, but the many, many other men of science, artists, photographers, writers and just regular men and women who were a part of his life.

On a personal note: I first became interested in the natural world at a very young age. With me it was snakes and birds and beetles. Snakes and their ilk were not a problem as I had the wonderful books by Raymond Ditmars to use for identification purposes. I found birding extremely frustrating and birds extremely difficult to identify until my parents gave me my first copy of Peterson's guide. That field guide literally changed my life. Now as to beetles...well, I am still frustrated, but hey, two out of three is not bad! I now have several large shelves filled with bird books and when birding I carry with me at least four different field guides. These are very good guides and range from Sibley, National Geographic to Audubon and a whole slew of specialty volumes, depending on what I am looking for on a particular trip, but despite these wonderful books, I find myself constantly reaching for my old reliable Peterson's. I received great joy from reading about the man who has given me so much joy in my life.

I do highly recommend this work. It is beyond doubt one of the better biographies I have read.

A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America
Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (Peterson Field Guide Series)

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

Although I don't think my time was wasted with this book, I was disappointed. In my view, the goal of an author is to research the material, then write the book in an informative and entertaining fashion. This author did the research, but often failed in the second function, choosing instead to simply quote the people she interviewed to convey the information. This would have been fine either in moderation, or if the quotes were well considered and written by the sources. Instead, they are just informal spoken "sound bites", and often left me puzzled as to why they were included at all. Here is an example from someone who participated in a birding outing with RTP: "I remember a blue and white Ford station wagon." I searched in vain for any importance or relationship this might have to the rest of the story, but it seemed to be just page filler. Page after page of this book are filled with trivial quotes, often filling more page space than the author's own words.

The second aspect I found overwrought was the emphasis on Peterson's star status and adulation by his fans. The author includes so many quotes that can be summarized as "Peterson was my hero, and I got started birding by buying his book" that, after a while, I cried out "I get the point, already!" A few dozen of these anecdotes would have been adequate to illustrate his impact on the avocation of birding, which was undeniably huge.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of information in this book, and it did motivate me to follow some of the threads of which I'd been unaware about Peterson's life and career. Just don't mistake this book for literature.

Based upon interviews with hundreds of Roger Tory Peterson's family, friends and associates, and supported by pertinent excerpts of his and others' writings, Elizabeth J. Rosenthal chose an interesting approach to his biography. The result is a balanced and highly readable history of Roger's central role in building the hobby, sport and science of birding into an essential part of the environmental movement.

Parallel narratives with various themes overlap deliberately, avoiding the problems with a chronological approach which may cause the reader to repeatedly refer back to earlier periods in the life of the subject, in an attempt to piece together people and events. While Peterson's birth, on August 28, 1908 is recorded on the third page, and his death, in 1996, on penultimate page 389, this is not a serial recitation of events. Rather, in nineteen chapters, the author takes us through six selected aspects of his path to fame, revealing not only his great strengths and achievements, but also his weaknesses and failures.

A truant paperboy from Jamestown, NY, twelve year old Roger had an "epiphany," when an apparently lifeless flicker burst into flight at his touch: "Ever since then, birds have seemed to me the most vivid expression of life." Ernest Thompson Seton's Little Savages book inspired the boy Roger to develop a system to identify ducks, and eventually other birds, by their "uniforms," or distinctive plumage characteristics. As a young naturalist at the new Chewonki, Maine Audubon Camp, he introduced this concept to his students. It was to become famous as the "Peterson System" of bird recognition.

In 1936 he married Mildred Washington, who was a camper at Chewonki, but their relationship was strained and lasted only about five years. We follow his early career as educator and bird artist, and in 1937, as author of the groundbreaking A Field Guide to the Birds, through its second revision, in 1939. In 1942 and employed by the National Audubon Society, Peterson viewed the last Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Louisiana's Singer Tract.

He was drafted into the US Army and married Barbara Coulter, who was to become the most important figure in Roger's life. Barbara learned her birds from the "old Chester Reed guide" that was always on the windowsill of her family's breakfast room. In the Army, Roger conducted a flawed study of DDT which concluded that it is not harmful to birds. Eventually, he joined the science-based campaign to ban the pesticide. He supported Rachel Carson during her long and contentious war with the chemical companies and land grant universities who fought the DDT ban. There followed an extremely productive period of writing, most notably his authorship of Birds Over America, that showcased the beauty of birds as well as his prose. He authored or collaborated on the acclaimed series of Peterson Field Guides, and traveled the world as the most recognizable naturalist of his time.

In the meantime, as Roger expanded his horizons, Barbara Peterson evolved into his general manager. When he co-authored the immensely popular Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, a British ornithologist named James Fisher was editor. They developed a 20 year friendship, embarking in 1953 on the famous hundred day trip around North America from Newfoundland to Alaska via Mexico, to be chronicled in their book Wild America. James's death at a young age devastated Roger.

Often overlooked by casual birders, Peterson's contributions to the cause of bird and habitat conservation are extensively covered in this biography. Besides his work in North America on the decline of the Osprey, Peregrine Falcon and Bald Eagle due to DDT, he was an imposing force for species preservation at home and abroad. From his bully pulpit, he educated the public and lawmakers about endangered species and the causes of their decline, and effectively lobbied for funding of conservation programs. In Spain, he fought to spare the huge Coto Doñana from agricultural and commercial development. Although the struggle continues to this day, Peterson had a central role in obtaining public support and funds for the Coto's preservation. Likewise for Lake Nakuro in Kenya, especially famous for its millions of flamingos, and Midway Atoll, where Peterson helped thwart a plan to exterminate its entire population of Laysan Albatrosses. And so on: Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, the Galapagos Islands, and the Antartic--in each case Roger was instrumental in changing the tide against development and exploitation.

We gain insights into Roger Tory Peterson's personal traits-- his enormous intellect and excellent memory, his shyness, detachment from family life, his absentmindedness and dependence on others to meet many of his personal needs. Yet, he was dissatisfied with his painting career, wishing to devote more time and effort into "painterly" works rather than "illustrations." In his later years he appeared to be competitive with and jealous of the younger field guide authors, and was severely stung when the new crop of birders insensitively criticized and even ridiculed the fourth (1980) revision of his Field Guide.

After years of emotional estrangement, his marriage to Barbara ended amicably in a 1977 divorce, probably because Virginia Westervelt, who subsequently married him, supplied some of the nurturing and adulation which he craved. Virginia exercised great control over Roger's schedule, deciding who could make appointments with him, and when, to the great distress of his family.

Roger was "shortsighted," and some said he was obsessed and wanted to talk and think only about birds. Yet, this greatest weakness was also the source of his strength-- an ability to focus on his subject. And the truth is that Peterson was an extremely well-rounded naturalist, having a great interest in the entire natural world: flowers and insects, and especially ecology. The book details the several times when he neglected his own health and safety in pursuit of birds, the most famous incident being his near-drowning and rescue by the Coast Guard off the coast of Maine.

Roger Tory Peterson's most enduring legacy was the inspiration he provided to a whole new generation of birders. Rosenthal devotes an entire chapter to thumbnail sketches of Peterson's "Worldwide Progeny," who owe so much to their mentor. All are names familiar to serious birders. The book includes fourteen pages of photographs of Roger and his friends and associates through the years, and a list of all the people interviewed by Rosenthal. There are also extensive chapter notes and suggestions for further reading. A very useful feature is the fourteen page index that permits quick cross-reference to people and events.
= = = = = = = =Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson

I grew up with the Peterson Field Guide to birds firmly in hand. After sixty years of avid birding it is still my old standby with several editions on the shelf. In the 1980's I had the pleasure of meeting RTP at a fundraiser in Albany, NY for his RTP Institute in his hometown, Jamestown, New York. I timidly approached him with my tattered field guide hoping he would sign it for me, which he did. He looked at it and then looked at me with those piercing blue eyes. He was quite cordial while I stood embarrassed and holding the ill treated volume. This feeling lingered for years until I read this wonderful book, Birdwatcher. I learned that Peterson enjoyed seeing his stained and well used field guides. What a relief to know that my hero had recognized how much I loved birds, and actually used his book. He also encouraged young birders which he did during my brief time with him. This great man was treated realistically and with respect in Birdwatcher. Anyone should enjoy this well written and informative biography of our greatest birder and environmentalist.

Would I have enjoyed this had I not been a committed Birdwatcher? Probably not.
Unilke Ken Kaufman's masterpiece, "The Kingbird Highway". Or lesser but still stimulating reads, "The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession" or "To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession" are still written with a general reader in mind. This biography is has neither the flare or the flow to make it interesting to the general reader.
Still, to those of us who love K.K., Pete Dunn and Scott W., it is a joy to read the bio of the Old Man.