DELMAR

Late August isn’t the best time of year to go bird-watching, but Craig Thompson and his staff at the Five Rivers Environmental Education Center aren’t about to let Roger Tory Peterson’s 100th birthday go unnoticed.

“Prior to Roger Tory Peterson and his field guide, most people learned about birds by looking at dead museum specimens,” said Thompson, executive director at Five Rivers and president of the Audubon Society of the Capital Region. “When you went in the field, you had trouble identifying them because the darn things wouldn’t sit still. Peterson changed all that.”

A naturalist, ornithologist and illustrator, Peterson was born 100 years ago today in Jamestown and died in 1996, a month shy of his 88th birthday at his home in Old Lyme, Conn. His first book, “A Field Guide to the Birds,” was published in 1934 and in one week the 2,000 copies of that first edition were sold out.

Five editions and 74 years later, Peterson’s book is still selling, his Peterson Identification System as well as his illustrations making it the most successful series of nature guides ever published.

To commemorate Peterson’s centennial, Five Rivers will be offering a special program at 10 a.m. Saturday morning, “Birding with Crayons.” It is a family-friendly event, designed to get younger people involved in bird-watching and maybe even begin the process of developing another Roger Tory Peterson.

“Bird watching is typically thought of as an adult thing, but it’s something that’s accessible to young and old, and if we can get some parents to bring their kids and we take them out in the field with crayons and some colored pencils, we think we can attract some youngsters to birding,” said Thompson. “We think this will appeal to kids, but it’s also aimed at anyone interested in focusing on identifying birds in the field.”

The last weekend in August is a relatively quiet time for birders, according to Thompson, but Five Rivers’ 446 wooded acres and 12 miles of trails should reap some dividends.

“It’s kind of in between seasons because most of the breeding birds are all done and the migrations haven’t started yet,” he said. “But the American goldfinch is quite active in late August, and I’m sure we’ll see some other species.”

The event at Five Rivers is just one of many around the country that are commemorating Peterson’s 100th birthday, and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown is using the occasion to kick off a yearlong series of activities, beginning with an open house Saturday and Sunday.

Founded in 1985 and in its home at 311 Curtis St. in Jamestown since 1993, the Roger Tory Peterson Institute is an educational institution charged with preserving his lifetime body of work and making it available to the world for educational purposes.

“We’re very excited by all the events going on around the country, and we have plenty of events planned here, beginning with our open house and the 50 pieces of Roger’s original work we’ll have on display here, many which have never been seen before,” said Kathleen Crocker, coordinator of the Peterson Centennial at the institute. “We have some very large paintings; he called them painterly pieces that he did later in life because he wanted people to understand that he could do more than just the cryptic illustrations you see in the field guide. He was a dedicated artist.”

According to Julie Zickefoose, an author/illustrator from Whipple, Ohio, Peterson was also quite a talented artist.

“It’s kind of too bad we only know him from his field guide paintings,” said Zickefoose, who blogs about birds and other natural things at www.Juliezickefoose.com.

“In his field guides, he was great at bringing the birds to life and making them look less like schematic illustrations. People were blown away by his depiction of each bird, but the field guides kind of prevented him from using his real creativity. He was an incredibly versatile artist, who also painted great landscapes to go with his birds.”

Both Thompson, who worked for a while at the Peterson Institute, and Zickefoose knew Peterson personally.

“I cut my teeth as a buck naturalist back in the 1970s in Jamestown. So I got to know him a little bit,” said Thompson. “I met some of his boyhood friends and they would talk about him much more eloquently than he did. I think he would have preferred to be out in the woods left alone with a camera. He was almost awkward in social settings, but you could see the genius there.”

To Zickefoose, Peterson was a helpful, if somewhat quiet, fellow artist.

“Roger’s style was to speak with his eyes on the ground and with a very quiet voice,” she said. “You had to snuggle up next to him to hear him. Generally, there’d be a line of people waiting to talk to him at some public function, but if you knew him and he started talking to you, he would continue as if you were the only other one in the room. He was very focused, and if you happened to be the recipient of his stream of consciousness it was wonderful because he gave you his full attention.”

Peterson’s love of birds began in the seventh grade when one of his favorite teachers persuaded him to join the Junior Audubon Club.

“He went on an outdoor field trip to the town park with her, and the experience fired his imagination for the rest of his life,” said Thompson. “Who knows. Maybe our little program can do the same thing.”

Popular programs

Kitty Rusch, a staff person at Five Rivers, said that the birding programs at the Delmar facility are the most popular.

“About a quarter of the programs we do here are about birds, and I would say they are the most well-attended,” said Rusch, a Guilderland native. “They always seem to attract a large audience, and these kinds of programs work with children. Birds are the most accessible animals out there, and kids are naturally excited by the animals they can see.”

Rusch, who majors in art at the University at Albany, said she was always a casual bird-watcher growing up and can remember looking at Peterson’s field guide as a teenager.

“There are some good bird books out today, but the Peterson guide is still one of my favorites,” she said. “It’s very difficult to draw birds that look lifelike instead of two-dimensional. He made great strides in that department and made birding accessible to everyone.”

Bernie Grossman, president of the Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club, said there are a number of good field guides for birds out today, including the Sibley Guide to Birds and another published by National Geographic. But Peterson’s was the first.

“He really was the founder of modern bird-watching,” said Grossman, whose group has a Web site at www.hmbc.net.

“There are some very good new guides that are out, but if you talk to any birder, especially the older ones, they’re going to have a Peterson guide on their bookshelf. His birds are very realistic, and 20 years ago or so it was the only good bird guide available.”

“What Peterson did was to identify the diagnostic field marks that help us identify the bird in flight,” said Thompson. “That makes everyone a better birder. As for his artwork, it has withstood the test of time. It sells very well on the Internet these days, and I feel like he’s right up there with all the modern bird artists.”