{"id":30618,"date":"2016-11-16T13:31:05","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T18:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cgs\/?page_id=30618"},"modified":"2017-09-01T11:53:21","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T15:53:21","slug":"bird-man","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cgs\/news\/collegian-archives\/collegian-winter-2017\/bird-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Davis has faced down charging rhinos and deadly snakes in pursuit of his lifelong passion<\/h2>\n

By Julie Butters<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to high-risk activities, bird-watching doesn\u2019t usually make it to the top of the list. But Professor Emeritus William \u201cTed\u201d E. Davis, Jr., has faced peril more than once while observing birds for research or pleasure.<\/p>\n

In 1965, Davis (GRS\u201966), who was 29, and his father were stalking grassland birds in Tanzania when their vehicle was charged by a black rhinoceros. (\u201cWe had a very good driver and he raced away from it,\u201d he says.) But the scariest confrontation happened in Australia in 1990. He was a visiting research fellow at University of New England (Australia), collecting foraging data about thornbills. While out driving one day, he spotted an eastern brown\u2014a five-foot-long creature said to be the world\u2019s second most venomous snake, and one that is known to attack humans\u2014slithering onto the dirt road ahead of him. \u201cI hit the brakes, but I got so close to him that I lost sight of him,\u201d he recalls. Davis peered out the window and suddenly found himself eye to eye with the snake, which had reared like a cobra. Fortunately, he\u2019d rolled up the window seconds earlier; the reptile retreated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always heard that when people get terrified, they get this horrible cramp in the pit of their stomach,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the first and only time I\u2019ve had that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since retiring from BU in 2003, Davis has devoted most of his time to bird research. His lifelong interest in ornithology has taken him to more than 50 countries\u2014sometimes accompanied by his wife, a biologist\u2014and he\u2019s seen more than 4,000 species of birds in the wild. (There are roughly 10,000 species in the world.) Despite all the traveling, he\u2019s found time to publish histories of American and Australian ornithology\u2014including Contributions to the History of Australasian Ornithology<\/a><\/em> (published in an ongoing series by the Nuttall Ornithological Club) and Alexander Wilson: The Scot Who Founded American Ornithology<\/a><\/em> (Belknap Press, 2013)\u2014while his research on Australian birds has contributed to policy discussions about bird conservation. Old professorial habits, it seems, die hard.<\/p>\n

Davis\u2019 journey to ornithology\u2014and encountering nature\u2019s scariest customers\u2014began when he was growing up in Quincy, Illinois, and then Brookline, Massachusetts, in the 1930s and \u201940s. His father, a doctor and self-taught naturalist, \u201cused to put me on his knee and read me stories by the great natural history adventurers of that era, particularly William Beebe<\/a> and Carl E. Akeley<\/a>,\u201d he says. Davis accompanied his father on bird-watching rambles in the Boston area and attended meetings of Mass Audubon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a sporting element to [bird-watching]. You never know what you\u2019re going to find.\u201d\u2014Ted Davis<\/div>\n

Despite his interest in birds, Davis didn\u2019t initially consider a career in ornithology. A favorite high school teacher \u201cmade geology come alive for me,\u201d persuading him to pursue that field of science. He received his PhD in geology at BU in 1966 and became a professor of natural sciences at CGS. But Davis continued to read about and watch birds as a hobby\u2014one that took up more of his time until it supplanted geology as a professional interest. Apprenticing with ornithologists at the Manomet Bird Observatory (now Manomet<\/a>) in Plymouth, Massachusetts, helped him complete the transition.<\/p>\n

Davis says he enjoys studying birds because they are beautiful, and because the \u201cincredible variety and complexity\u201d of the creatures and their habitats means \u201cthere\u2019s always something new to find out\u201d about them. For example, he says, a wet winter in Australia will bring out different social behavior in birds than a dry one: \u201cAfter a wet winter, many species will immediately settle down to nest, but after a dry one they may not nest at all.\u201d He also enjoys the aspect of surprise in bird-watching. \u201cThere\u2019s a sporting element to it,\u201d he says. \u201cYou never know what you\u2019re going to find. Sometimes it\u2019s just a matter of luck, so you have to keep your eyes and ears open.\u201d At Kenya\u2019s Lake Nakuru, he saw more than two million flamingos; on South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island, he walked among 100,000 king penguins.<\/p>\n

Taking up ornithology as a second career didn\u2019t prevent Davis from becoming a leader in the field. He\u2019s the former president of the Association of Field Ornithologists<\/a>, the Wilson Ornithological Society<\/a>, and the Nuttall Ornithological Club<\/a>, North America\u2019s oldest ornithological organization.<\/p>\n

These days, Davis does most of his research in Australia, largely because the continent\u2019s dearth of ornithologists has left a lot of work to be done, especially in the field of foraging ecology. He and his longtime colleague, Australian ornithologist Harry Recher, observe birds in the field to study how different species forage for food in various ecosystems. Their published findings are a valuable resource for conservation societies, governmental agencies, and politicians involved in bird protection policy. For example, he and Recher have learned that setting aside small reserves of land for bird protection isn\u2019t particularly helpful in Australia, because many species are nomadic.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to have an ecosystem-wide or even a continent-wide approach to conservation,\u201d he says. The duo has been advocating for a conservation plan for the entire Great Western Woodlands\u2014which, at nearly 62,000 square miles, is \u201cprobably the largest intact woodland still left in Australia,\u201d according to Davis\u2014but progress has been slowed by conflicts with mining companies and other interests.<\/p>\n

Working in far-flung locales exposes Davis to other kinds of challenges\u2014including encountering leeches, scorpions, and huge spiders (sometimes discovered in the shower). \u201cIt gets your adrenaline flowing,\u201d says Davis. Still, he has no desire to see another eastern brown and, whenever he travels Down Under, he always<\/em> taps out his shoes before putting them on, \u201cbecause you never know what\u2019s crawled in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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