Nature Notes: A Fine Bird Notebook

There is another new nature book in town. This time the town is the Village of Sag Harbor and the nature in the book is Sag Harbor’s birds in photographs, poetry, prose, and other jits and jots. The author-photographer is also local, Terry Sullivan, known more, perhaps, for his Irish ditties, poems and short stories, and his many years’ singing with Pete Seeger, while lately he is in a local American folk song group.

 Terry has joined the ranks of other recent self-made Long Island naturalists, including Dell Cullum of Amagansett, who recently put out a wonderful book of photographs on the wildlife and history of East Hampton Village’s Nature Trail.

 Terry’s appreciation of birds stems from his many years as a freshwater trout and saltwater striped bass fisherman. Early on, he was with another local nature writer and fisherman, Al Daniels, when an osprey kept diving at a popping lure until it finally hooked itself and had to be reeled in, soaking wet and unable to fly, and be rescued by Al and Terry along with other casting fishermen.

 The feeder outside Terry’s small house in northeast Sag Harbor has provided many hours of rapt attention to avian detail as well as a wonderful stage for his photography. That’s how a lot of people get deeply into the lives and souls of birds, by quietly observing them for hours on end. 

 (As I write this column on Monday afternoon I am trying not to be distracted by the juncos, white-throated sparrows, blue jays, and the tufted titmouse plucking seeds from the snow on a little shelf outside my bedroom window. But how can I not be distracted by these wonderful little creatures who take turns at the trough, fly away, come back, feed some more, fly away again, and so forth?)

One of the ways in which Terry became such an excellent photographer of birds both stationary and flying was by switching from an older camera to a Canon Rebel EOS T2i. I can’t help but think back on how the late Long Island naturalist and environmental activist Paul Stoutenburgh was able to sharpen his bird pictures by switching to a Leica.

The photos in “My Sag Harbor Bird Notebook” are as fine as any I have ever come across. They are displayed side by side with pithy anecdotes, poems, and apothegms, giving them contextual backgrounds. The word “Notebook” in the title is apt, because the book is spiral bound so the pages can lie flat, rather than partly curled at the inner edges as they can be in books with hard spines.

 There are lots of photos of crows, but what makes them extra appealing is a memory about the late Stuart Vorpahl’s preoccupation with crows, which started as a child in grade school and didn’t end until late in life. Stuart, it seems, once brought four pet crows to school and taught them how to peck at the windows from outside to the disconcertion of his teacher. He taught them how to speak — in basic Bonac, of course — and when with them Stuart became as much a crow as they became humans.

Several of the photos in Terry’s book are birds in flight. Ospreys diving, hawks chasing flying prey, great egrets taking off with massive white wings, and the like. Photographing a bird in flight is a bit of an art. As in hunting pheasants or ducks, for example, one has to lead them a bit, or you’ll only catch the tail end.

“My Sag Harbor Bird Notebook” is also a kind of primer, beginning with Terry’s first attraction to birds as a fisherman, how he got hooked, and how he is more likely to be seen today with a camera in his hand than a fishing pole. It is also proof of an adage that every human is a book in the making. Not an ebook, mind you, but one that you can hold fondly in your hands and go to sleep with at night.

We cannot leave out the publisher, Empire Science Resources, which did such a wonderful job. Where can you get this book? I already have one, but am told they will be available at Canio’s in Sag Harbor and the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center (SoFo) in Bridgehampton as of the publication of this review.

There wouldn’t be such a wonderful new book in print without the everyday support and hands-on oversight from the missus, Jeanelle Myers, who is also deeply involved with nature. Pretty good for a plumber by trade, don’t you think?

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].