Date: 10/23/24 8:15 am From: lori charron <lpcharron...> Subject: Re: [NHBirds] Tribute to Davis from Kenn Kaufman
Wow beautiful tribute
Lori
On Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 7:37 AM 'Steve Mirick' via NHBirds <
<nhbirds...> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
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