This Week, We Are Going to the Birds

Everyone is a bird-watcher these days. It is hard not to be, with snowy plovers showing up on the endangered species list and gnatcatchers falling off.

Little birdies wield some major clout. They have been known to inspire fear and loathing in real estate developers, and a feeling of protectiveness in small children and the Department of the Interior.

And long before environmentalists began doing battle to protect habitats, birds were holding central positions in major religions and mythologies, and soaring to the highest levels in business, where as logos they perched with dignity and grace atop corporate letterheads.

They are a symbol of peace, of freedom, of God. We may revere them, respect them, fear them or eat them. But, arguably, none of us keeps a closer eye on them than Craig Faanes, the subject of this week’s Centerpiece story, written by staffer Pancho Doll.

In addition to his job as head of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura, Faanes is known to birders far and wide for having sighted and tallied this year the greatest number of North American birds for the annual List Report of the American Birding Assn.

To accomplish such a feat, Faanes has had to dedicate most of his free time and disposable income in the pursuit of one bird or another.

All of which makes Faanes seem to be a rather, shall we say, intensely dedicated guy? Which is not necessarily the way Faanes sees himself.

“While interviewing him for the story,” Doll said, “Faanes told me about the time he was asked ‘When are you not intense?’ The answer he gave was, ‘When I’m below the Tropic of Cancer.’ Which goes with his favorite aphorism, manana, which he said doesn’t mean tomorrow; it just means not today.”

Such an attitude seems at odds with Faanes’ actual behavior, which seems downright driven at times. Not that he is the Tonya Harding of ornithologists; he’s never been known to kneecap another birder. But he is a man who goes to great lengths to get his bird--his passport has extra pages to accommodate all the necessary visas, and entry and exit stamps.

Clearly, Faanes likes the thrill of the chase, but he also insists that he has the birds’ best interests in mind.

“He claims to have done a fair amount of environmental sabotage as a youth,” Doll said. “When he was a teen-ager, he found some earthmoving equipment near his home in Wisconsin. He cut the wires and filled the gas tank with sand. Ever since, he has been very concerned with the preservation of bird habitats.”

If you find after reading Doll’s story, as we did, that you are more interested in Faanes than in the birds he watches, you will be happy to know that he is now in the process of compiling an autobiography of his travels and birding pursuits.

What do you think will have the greater number of pages, the autobiographical text or the index?