My Early Encounter with Roger Tory Peterson: Learning from a Master

by Peter Alden

Many of us get inspiration from watching and learning from the best. A master artist, athlete, or inventor can ignite a determination to pursue an interest or profession. Who doesn’t admire and want to emulate the performance of the golf master, the movie actor, or the works of Michaelangelo?

In the world of birdwatching, Roger Tory Peterson was the renowned master of the day. Peterson was the pioneering American naturalist, ornithologist, and artist whose work transformed birdwatching into a popular and accessible hobby.

For Peter Alden, Peterson was a major influence on his career as an author and ornithologist. With the Peterson field guide at his side, a young Peter Alden traversed the outdoors of New England in pursuit of birds. Read Peter's story below.

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I grew up and lived in Concord, Massachusetts, a famous town in many ways. Concord was known for the revolutionary war efforts and all the great writers who lived here, including Henry David Thoreau. The fact that Henry, our town hero, was an early avid bird watcher meant a lot to me and still does to this day.

Peter Alden, left, and the neighborhood bird club

Growing up, I remember we had a window bird feeder visible while we dined. Chickadees, nuthatches, jays and sparrows were frequent visitors. Later, when flocks of colorful Evening Grosbeaks and bright red cardinals joined, I was hooked. I got my younger brother David interested in birds. And then we had some other friends in town who lived not too far from us, Eddie Wooden and his brother Bobby. We said, “Hey, we're starting a Bird Club.” We were seven and nine years old.

We started doing trips together here in Concord by foot and bicycle. We would go to neighboring towns in Sudbury and Wayland. Every week we would bicycle around nearby towns. I kept track, and I started writing down, like an accountant, every trip I took with the date, the hours, and the birds we saw.

During this generation, Roger Tory Peterson was the number one bird watcher at the time. An artist and author, he inspired so many people into birds. Roger did the very first popular Field Guide to identifying birds. He wrote Birds of the Eastern United States back in the early 1930s through Houghton Mifflin in Boston. It was an instant success. He had later editions of the guide, columns in Audubon magazine, and did the National Wildlife Federation stamps. He was in charge of selecting species to be drawn for the stamps every Christmas which you’d get in a booklet. Roger was the top, most- popular naturalist of his day.

When I was a freshman in high school, I heard that Roger Tory Peterson was giving a lecture in Boston. It was mid-November and he was to narrate an Audubon "screen tour". Early nature movies were shown by naturalist film-makers traveling all over the country before color TV and the internet

My dad knew I wanted to go so he took me in on the train. We arrived in Back Bay and went over to John Hancock Hall. We settled in to the crowded auditorium. I listened intently to Roger Peterson give a mesmerizing talk on Wild Europe or something like that.

“Mr. Peterson, would you sign my book?”

After the lecture, people came up and had him sign their copy of his books. I stood in line, hoping to get an autograph from my hero. At the time there weren't too many young people into birds, so he stopped when he got to me. When I said, “Mr. Peterson, would you sign my book?” he said, “Wow, look at that book!” It was covered with mud and the pages were dog-eared. It looked like it had been through a trash compactor. He opened it up and there were dead mosquitos with blood everywhere in it. He was so thrilled to meet somebody who was really using his book in the field that he asked me all sorts of questions about rare birds I've been seeing, where I go birding, and stuff like that. It felt really good to have him give me so much time while there were a whole bunch of people in line behind me, hoping to catch the next train to somewhere. I was so thrilled to get his signature on my book and to meet him in person.

“Young man, may I see if you can identify some of the birds in my paintings?”

It was only a few months later that I met Roger Tory Peterson again. This time I saw him when I was in line to take a train from Boston to Providence. I was headed to Block Island to meet local birders for an annual early October field event. “May I join you?” I asked him. All I wanted to do was talk about birds. And so he said, “Yes, come over” and ushered me to his section of the train. He was happy to have someone to talk to about birds.

Roger noticed that I had a copy of his just published book, Birds of Texas, tucked under my arm. He said, “Young man, may I see if you can identify some of the birds in my paintings?” And so he we went through 300 different birds, including many western and southern species. He covered up the opposite page and put his hand below, and then he quizzed me for the 44 miles to Providence. I aced every single one of them except for a couple of sparrows. I knew so many in part because I was soon headed to the American west. The book was much better than the previous Western Field Guide, which was all in black and white.

I stayed in touch with Roger and was invited to fact check his new guides to Mexican Birds and Western Birds. After he helped me get a job with Lindblad Travel, we co-led an Alaska land tour retracing his "Wild America" book. Later we were co-lecturers on a long cruise from Cape Town to Tristan, South Georgia and Antarctica. I was involved with trying to get Roger an Honorary Degree from Harvard, but he passed away before it happened. In its place I worked with Dr E.O. Wilson for the Roger Tory Peterson Memorial Lecture series sponsored by the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Honoring Roger were invited speakers such as Sir David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Richard Leakey, Jared Diamond and Peter Matthiessen.