Roger Tory Peterson | New England’s Gifts

Few people in their lifetimes achieve worldwide influence. Fewer still have an impact that will endure for generations yet to come. Roger Tory Peterson is one of that latter group—a true rara avis.

Starting with his own love of birds and of the natural world in which they belong, Roger became a transmitter of this feeling to countless other human beings. I had the great good fortune of being one of the early ones. He was then teaching art and natural history at the Rivers School in Brookline, Massachusetts, while also working on his first field guide; I was a sixth- and seventh-grader whom he introduced to birdwatching and to whom he gave drawing and painting lessons. I learned from him things about the link between vision and communication that have stayed with me ever since.

Roger Tory Peterson has taught an ever-expanding classroom about much more than birds. He has made his fellow human beings aware of the ecosystem that we and other creatures inhabit together. What he has also taught us about the use of our senses, the role of our imaginations, and the love of beauty in all its forms will long be at the heart of his reverberating influence.

—“Rara Avis,” by Elliott Richardson, September 1995