Bird watcher releases book
BY ROGER SIDEMAN
In “The Ardent Birder,” a new book on bird watching, local expert Todd Newberry shares the wisdom of a lifelong birder, as enthusiasts are known, as well as an accomplished scientist and an extraordinary teacher.
The book is packed with valuable tips on how to become a better birder, as well as interesting stories and information about birds, but its real subject is the experience of being a birder.
In 50 short essays, Newberry addresses topics ranging from the practical (aiming binoculars) to the philosophical (do seagulls play?). Illustrated with delightful drawings by Gene Holtan, the essays are elegant and insightful meditations on the challenges and rewards of bird watching. He calls the book “a conversation between art and text.”
“When people go on vacation, they always gravitate towards water,” Newberry observed on a recent birding visit to the west branch of Struve Slough off Buena Vista Road. “Watsonville comes right up to the water’s edge. To have it so full of life is…” His sentence trailed off, as if the slough’s value is too great for words to tell.
Princeton- and Stanford-trained, Newberry is a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He focused on marine invertebrates as a researcher, but birding has been his lifelong pastime. A popular and influential teacher at UCSC (he won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1987), Newberry retired in 1994 but has found that birding continues to provide new opportunities to teach.
In his biology classes, Newberry said, he tried to teach students how to become “investigative reporters of nature.” Birders can do that, too, and Newberry explains in “The Ardent Birder” how to move beyond asking the basic question of “who are you?” when observing birds in the field.
One of the most entertaining and instructive essays in the book involves an imagined “interview” with some godwits on a mudflat. The exercise gives a hint of Newberry’s own remarkable skills as an investigative reporter of nature.
Newberry said he set out to write a book for intermediate birders, because there seemed to be good books already available for beginners and advanced birders. He calls advanced birders the “varsity” (professionals are “major leaguers”), and at one point the book was going to be about how to join the varsity. But in the end, Newberry produced a book that will appeal to all ardent birders regardless of their skills, and even non-birders are likely to enjoy many of the essays.
What makes someone an ardent birder? Newberry explains it in terms of an emotional attachment to nature that comes from experiencing those special moments when, as he puts it, “lightning strikes.”
For Newberry, lightning struck for the first time when he was a boy in boarding school and a meadowlark shot up from the ground at his feet. In the 55 years since, he said, he hasn’t spent a day around birds when some powerful and unpredictable event fails to come together.
“The thing that bonds us are those special moments,” he said. “It’s a private thing, but I think it’s something we all share.”
Since his retirement, Newberry has taught occasional courses on birds at UCSC. He also leads outings of the local bird club and guided visitors this month during the inaugural Monterey Bay Birding Festival.

Reprinted from the Register Pajaronian, http://www.register-pajaronian.com