Photo of the Day: From One Birdman to Another

Field Guide to the Birds (1934) led many naturalists to liken the achievement of its author, Roger Tory Peterson, to that of John James Audubon. That connection is underscored at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, NY.

On exhibit there, where I snapped this photo on my vacation in early August, was this facsimile of a four-volume edition of Audubon’s Double Elephant Portfolio of his Birds of America. More than 400 North American species—every one known at the time, in the 1830s—were depicted here, rendered in their natural habitat by the artist.

This leather-bound volume of a 1981 limited-press run, owned by Peterson, was donated to the Institute in 1997, one year after his death.

Photo of the Day: Pond, Roger Tory Peterson Institute, Jamestown NY

I took this photo of a man-made pond in the forest next to the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, NY, while on vacation in the area last month. In many ways, the pond, with its great assortment of aquatic insects, is a mini-laboratory for continuing the lifelong conservation efforts of Jamestown resident Peterson.

Photo of the Day: Entrance, Roger Tory Peterson Institute, Jamestown, NY

I took this photo, showing the entrance to the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, NY, on the same afternoon as the one I posted the other day of the institute's Main Reading Room.

Photo of the Day: Reading Room, Roger Tory Peterson Institute, Jamestown NY

Over this past weekend, in an early-afternoon break in the rain, I saw a large group of bird watchers along the Palisades in northern New Jersey. I’m sure that more than a few of them realize the huge debt they owe to Roger Tory Peterson. After all, back in 1934, the upstate New York native published Field Guide to the Birds, and over the next half century he expanded on this achievement with still more in-depth guides to birds and other wildlife. “In this century‚ no one has done more to promote an interest in living creatures than Roger Tory Peterson,” the environmental Paul Ehrlich has claimed.

The image accompanying this post is of the Main Reading Room at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, N.Y. I took this photo while on vacation a month ago at the nearby Chautauqua Institution. 

The entire building was designed by the famous architectural firm Robert A.M. Stern, but, as a former librarian—and a continuing, inveterate library patron—I was especially drawn to this room. The combination of the light brown wood and the warm sunshine pouring through the windows gives the room the kind of inviting, natural feeling that Peterson would have valued.