A Teacher Made A Difference

BirdNote^®

A Teacher Made the Difference for Adrian Dorst

Interviewed and written by Todd and Chris Peterson


    This is BirdNote!
    [Whimbrel and Black-bellied Plover calling]  
    Today, we’re on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, scanning the tideflats for shorebirds. We look across to Meares Island, near Tofino, an island covered in old-growth temperate rain forest. Some trees are probably 1,500 years old.
    Our guide, Adrian Dorst, first came here 40 years ago to survey the birds of the Pacific Rim National Park. His photographs helped conserve the Meares Island forest when it was up for logging.
    What is it about the people who want to be in the company of birds and other wild things? What gets them started? In Adrian’s case, he thinks back to an elementary school teacher he had in Ontario.
III T 5 8:55    “…Her name was Mrs. Kaufman and she had bird pictures on the wall of the classroom and I knew she took a real interest in birds, and so one day I came to school with a cardboard box, and I said, “I’ve got a wren in the box.” “Oooooh!” she said, “A wren, let me see!” and I opened the box and out flew a House Sparrow! [laughs] And so she gave me a small bird book, so I could learn my birds. Well, I became really interested and …a friend of mine… had the old Birds of North America I think it’s called, with the Fuertes plates… I think it’s from the 1920s and so I borrowed it … and I just got completely engrossed in all these plates, and I was hooked, that was it!”

    Who helped you take an interest in wildlife?
[Calls of Whimbrels and Black-bellied Plovers]
    See the book that enthralled Adrian Dorst, plus books he’s written -- and taken photographs for -- on our website, birdnote.org.
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Sounds of birds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Call of Whimbrel 137578 recorded by G.Vyn; call of Black-bellied Plover 43029 recorded by W.H. Gunn; ambient drawn from track 132981 M.J. Anderson.
Interview: Marantz III Track 5 and ambient recorded by C. Peterson.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org   September 2012  Narrator: Mary McCann

ID# dorsta-02-2012-09-06      dorsta-02

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Wikipedia offers this list of books illustrated by Louis Agassiz Fuertes:

• A-Birding on a Bronco, by Florence A. Merriam, 1896 (scanned)
• Citizen Bird by Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliot Coues. Macmillan Company, 1896 (1923 reprint)
• Song Birds and Water Fowl, by H E Parkhurst, 1897 (scanned)
• Bird Craft, by M. Osgood Wright, 1897 (1900 reprint)
• The Woodpeckers, by F H Eckstorm, 1901 (scanned)
• Second Book of Birds, by Olive Thorne Miller (pseudonym of Mrs. Harriet Mann Miller), 1901 (scanned)
• Birds of the Rockies, by Leander S. Keyser 1902 (scanned)
• Handbook of Birds of Western North America, by Frank Chapman, 1902 (1904 reprint)
• Upland Game Birds, by Edwyn Sandys and T S van Dyke, 1902 (scanned)
• Key to North American Birds by Elliot Coues, 1903 (scanned)
• Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, by Frank M. Chapman, 1904 (scanned)
• Birds of New York by Elon Howard Eaton, 1910 (scanned)
• Wild Animals of North America by Edward W. Nelson, 1918 9scanned)
• Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States by Edward Howe Forbush, 1925 (1927 edition)
• Artist and Naturalist in Ethiopia by Wilfred Hudson Osgood. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1936
• The Bird Life of Texas by Harry Church Oberholser. University of Texas Press, 1974