OBITUARIES
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:
Roger Tory Peterson, 87, whose
field guides made birdwatching accessible to
millions, died July 28 at his home in Old
Lyme, Connecticut. Born in Jamestown,
New York, where he later founded the Roger
Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History,
Peterson became obsessed with birds at age 11
when his teacher, Blanche Hornbeck, started a
Junior Audubon Club. The prevailing method
of ornithology was then to shoot birds and
study their corpses. Objecting, Peterson saved
his earnings as a newspaper boy to buy a camera,
then demonstrated the advantages of photographing
birds instead. As color photography
had not yet been developed, Peterson
took up painting and drawing to fully illustrate
his discoveries. Publishers insisted his
first pocket-sized Field Guide to the Birds
would flop, but Houghton-Mifflin finally took
a chance on it in 1934. The initial guide covered
only birds native to the eastern United
States. Peterson soon produced a companion
guide covering birds of the western U.S. The
two guides have now sold more than seven
million copies in four editions. Peterson was
working on new updates at his death. In all,
Peterson authored or edited nearly 50 books––
and, though he considered himself chiefly a
painter, did pioneering field research on the
effects of the pesticide DDT for the U.S. Air
Force, late in World War II, which contributed
to the 1972 U.S. ban on DDT. The
ban is credited with saving many birds from
extinction. A longtime supporter of Friends of
Animals, Peterson lent his influence to campaigns
against hunting, trapping, and especially
the killing of feral mute swans, whom
he argued were no threat to native bird life.