Date: 10/23/24 4:37 am From: 'Steve Mirick' via NHBirds <nhbirds...> Subject: [NHBirds] Tribute to Davis from Kenn Kaufman
From Kenn Kaufman's facebook today..
I was saddened to learn that expert field ornithologist Davis W. Finch had
passed away at the age of 87. Although we had spent many weeks together
back in the 1980s, I can’t say that I knew him well—but frankly, I think
few people ever did.
Davis always struck me as an enigmatic and deeply private person. He was a
legendary birder who showed little interest in being legendary. He had an
extraordinary level of knowledge but he never flaunted it—never hinted at
it, unless you asked him a question, and then he could answer with
astonishingly precise detail. He wrote beautifully (including a decade of
remarkable reports for the Northeast Maritime Region of Audubon Field Notes
/ American Birds) but he didn’t seem too compelled to write for
publication. He studied intensely, it seemed, just for the pleasure of
knowing things. When I was getting to know him I was an ambitious kid in my
20s, eager to build a reputation, and even as I admired Davis, I found his
reticence puzzling.
Davis Finch was already recognized as a top expert on New England birds by
the early 1970s, when he and Will Russell founded a small tour company
named Northeast Birding. That company became Wings Inc. when Rich Stallcup,
from California, joined as the third partner. During the early 1980s I had
the honor of co-leading Wings tours with Davis to places as diverse as
eastern Quebec, southern Arizona, the edge of Hudson Bay at Churchill, and
our Grand Alaska tour, sweeping from Glacier Bay to Barrow. His skill at
finding and identifying birds was remarkable. I’ll never forget one morning
in New Brunswick when we had a group out looking at Savannah Sparrows in a
marshy coastal area. Rain was approaching and people were nervously
watching the sky, but Davis had wandered away quietly to the side, and
after several minutes he electrified us with a loud whisper: “I think I
have a Little Stint!” He did—a first for the province, and one of the few
North American records of this sandpiper at that time. We watched it for an
hour, and no one minded the rain.
By the late 1980s Davis Finch had begun to focus on birds of the American
tropics, and I was no longer working for Wings. I seldom saw him after
that, not even on my own tropical trips. I would hear rumors from other
tropical birders that he had tracked down this rare bird or that one, that
he had discovered surprising new facts or range extensions, but he didn’t
seem inclined to publish these findings, although he did deposit more than
1500 sound recordings of tropical birds in the Macaulay Library collection.
In recent years I knew Davis Finch was back in New England, readily sharing
his knowledge with anyone who asked, but still quietly, and I seldom heard
anything about him. And now he’s gone. I can picture him walking slowly
away from us, looking all around but not looking back, his endless
curiosity now focused on whatever lies beyond the horizon.
