Date: 10/23/24 12:59 pm From: Diana S <wildlifenorth100...> Subject: Re: [NHBirds] Tribute to Davis from Kenn Kaufman
Wow, that is beautiful.
My only interaction with Davis Finch was second hand - last spring- when
birders were looking at the Prothonotary Warbler in Exeter. A friend of his
was there and I told him about the Prothonotary. He said “Oh, my friend
Davis Finch will be so excited!”
I hope they both got to see the bird! I wish I had known him and gotten to
bird with him.
Diana Stephens
On Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 11:15 AM lori charron <lpcharron...> wrote:
> 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.
>>
>>
>> --
>> To Change your e-mail delivery settings (digest, daily, no mail) visit:
>> https://groups.google.com/group/nhbirds/subscribe?hl=en >> ---
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "NHBirds" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to nhbirds+<unsubscribe...>
>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nhbirds/<192b92a86e8.28a2.781b5e13d8e7f37d2965bf89a1e5e2c2...> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nhbirds/<192b92a86e8.28a2.781b5e13d8e7f37d2965bf89a1e5e2c2...>?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> .
>>
> --
> To Change your e-mail delivery settings (digest, daily, no mail) visit:
> https://groups.google.com/group/nhbirds/subscribe?hl=en > ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "NHBirds" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to nhbirds+<unsubscribe...>
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nhbirds/<CAJj3xwfrhGbqZgJOzD4gJf8DJn1_yM12yo8SngdE6y0rpHSb1A...> > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nhbirds/<CAJj3xwfrhGbqZgJOzD4gJf8DJn1_yM12yo8SngdE6y0rpHSb1A...>?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > .
>
