written for The New York Times
IN the mid-1950’s, Roger Tory Peterson moved to a quiet hill in Old Lyme, where, until he died in 1996, he worked intensely on the bird guides for which he was famous.
Last spring, after Mr. Peterson’s wife, Virginia, died, an ornithologist visited the more than 60 acres where the Petersons had lived. He was stunned at how many birds he saw. It wasn’t just that the Petersons put out feeders.
“Even calibrating for that, there was just a plenitude that was the upper 10 percent of the scale,” said Pete Dunne, vice president for natural history information at the New Jersey Audubon Society.
He said it was almost as if the birds knew they had sympathetic hosts when they stopped to find berries, rest or court.
Read the rest at The New York Times website by clicking here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/03/nyregion/trying-to-save-a-refuge-for-b…
About This Article
When I covered Old Lyme for The Day, the newspaper in New London where I worked for several years, I met Roger Tory Peterson once, a few years before he died. I approached this one with the understanding of how important Peterson’s land was to his work life. This article was published by The New York Times on February 3, 2002, and currently appears in its entirety on their website at the following address: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/03/nyregion/trying-to-save-a-refuge-for-b….
