Reunion

Forty-some years ago our common admiration for birds - and a previously completed video project - brought me together with filmmaker Henry Ferrini to pitch an idea for a televised series on birdwatching. A third Gloucester resident, Mass Audubon naturalist and birding tour leader Chris Leahy, was key to the plan. We centered the pilot video in the Cambridge birding oasis Mount Auburn Cemetery during the height of the May warbler migration, with Chris casting camera-optimal bird enthusiasts of all ages, genders, and polish into the program. 

Fast forward to a recent communication from Henry: "May is for Warblers and given you are working with Chris Leahy, perhaps you should link to our “Birds” movie this month?  Have you ever posted it on your blog?" 

We all took a look at the grainy but charming video and decided to have a reunion at the Gloucester Writers Center that Henry founded in 2010 on the foundations of his poet laureate uncle Vincent Ferrini's creative vortex.

Birds video

It had been a grassroots, low tech, no-budget overture to the mainstream media modeling how we could help promote simultaneously both natural beauty and ecological awareness. In the early Eighties there weren't many such programs. We hoped doors would open to broadcast-quality equipment, special locations, and prominent people. The idea was to showcase a variety of different responses and experiences within the world of birding.

Magnolia Warbler, Halibut Point

One gentleman in the film summoned a memory from boyhood when, lying on his back, a Magnolia Warbler fluttered into the shrub above him and seemed to linger companionably. He borrowed his mother's opera glasses and ultimately acquired a field guide. A lifelong pleasure and obsession was born.

Birders refer to the warbler and its like as a 'spark bird.' "Back then," Chris notes, "birding was still something of an elitist hobby, not really a proper sport. As a kid I didn't dare mention that I was a birdwatcher. It hadn't broadened out to be something that everybody might want to do. Now it is virtually common knowledge that just going out in nature is good for your health, and the additional intellectual stimulation of solving bird identification problems adds to the value."

Northern Parula warbler, Halibut Point

As both scientist and global tour leader Chris tries to emphasize the natural history of birdlife. But underlying it all he acknowledges that "it's an emotional and aesthetic experience available virtually anywhere. You don't have to be in the Amazon Basin in order to appreciate birds."

Wilson's Warbler, Halibut Point

Increasingly we understand the remarkable capabilities of migratory birds, their interrelatedness to all life in their paths, their vulnerability to contemporary alterations of the planet. One thing that hasn't changed since the making of our film is Chris's summation. 

"It's the spectacle of the birds themselves; it's the excuse to go out in the wonderful places where you find them; it's the thrill of the chase. And there's something else‒something indefinable." Here he quotes a youngster with binoculars in the video: "It's awesome!"