by Nancy L.C. Steele
January 2022
The first ornithologist I ever met was Dr. Luis Baptista. I was enrolled in freshman biology at Occidental College. The class had a rotating cast of professors who would drop in for a few weeks to teach their specialty. Dr. Baptista taught animal behavior and was an ornithologist who studied birds. I remember him as a tall, skinny, excitable man. He had that geeky enthusiasm common to so many scientists. You either loved him or rolled your eyes.
Dr. Baptista was universally loved. His enthusiasm was infectious. He kept birds in his office and could whistle just about any bird song. His field of study was bird vocalizations and dialects. He learned that, for example, the song of a white-crowned sparrow differed slightly based on where they were raised. Rather than songs being hard-wired in the brain, birds learn their songs from their parents.
I only realized later how fortunate I was to have known Dr. Baptista. He left Occidental the same year I graduated. When he was tapped to be the Curator of Birds and Chairman of the Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences, he was moving back to the place where he had started. He emigrated from Macau as a young man, taking a job as a curatorial assistant at Cal Academy.
Why am I writing about Dr. Baptista? He planted a seed in me that took a long time to sprout. I went to Occidental to become a marine biologist and I studied fish. Later, I became interested in insects. But while I had a bird guidebook and checked off the occasional bird, it wasn’t until I came to the Verde Valley that birding really captured me.
I had had nothing but bad experiences with birds in childhood. When I was growing up in Phoenix, baby birds would fall from their nests and, despite our juvenile attempts, quickly die. My brothers tried to trap birds, rarely succeeding. My mother told me not to touch a dead bird that I found for fear of catching a disease. Throughout many a spring, a nesting mockingbird would dive at my cat, causing it to jump and run for cover.
For a vacation in Costa Rica I bought some good binoculars. Finally, I understood one of my big problems with birds. I couldn’t see them! I discovered that I needed the right tools to actually see the details of birds.
When I moved to the Verde Valley, I discovered something else. I had never really paid attention to birds or studied them. Inspired by the abundance of colorful birds here, I downloaded the Merlin birding app, which promised to tell me what bird I was seeing in five questions. That first April, I signed up for five bird walks in four days at the Verde Valley Birding & Nature Festival. I listened and asked questions. I kept going on field trips with birders. I downloaded a few more birding apps (I think I have five on my cell phone) and learned more birds. My walks started getting interrupted by flashes of color or bird song. Who was that?
In 2020 and 2021, I made even more strides in learning about birds. Birding is an activity I could do all through COVID. And then, the best invention ever! In June 2021, Merlin offered sound ID! Now, all those bird songs that were not much more than noise to me were revealed. I could take a walk and record bird songs. Merlin would tell me who was singing. This was revolutionary.
I like to think Dr. Baptista would have been in the thick of development of sound ID, had he lived longer than the 58 short years he was on this earth. I also like to think he would have been pleased that a former student of his had finally been bitten by the birding bug. But Dr. Baptista died in 2000. According to his New York Times obituary, he was working with a barn owl when he collapsed.
I owe my newfound love of birds to the Verde Valley Birding & Nature Festival. When I moved here, little did I know that I was moving to a birding and birder hot spot. It’s hard to escape the birds! The Festival was, of course, cancelled in 2020. In 2021, we experimented with a hybrid bird festival and the birders came back.
For 2022, we are, COVID-willing, going back to an in-person festival with workshops and bird walks. I invite you to join us. Registration opens on February 1st. For donors to Friends of the Verde River, early bird registration opens January 29th. You can learn more at verderiver.org. And don’t hesitate to ask anyone wearing binoculars “what bird is that?” Birders like to share their world with you, I have discovered.
