Laura Erickson's For the Birds

The United States has had two presidents who were members of the American Ornithologists’ Union, and they shared a last name, Roosevelt. I’m reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and am delighted to learn about the life of this fascinating ornithologist.

Teddy Roosevelt was captivated by birds from the time he was a boy. He took enormous pleasure in them his entire life, and ·even as president did what he could to ensure their preservation. During his presidency, he established the US Forest Service, added 150 million acres to the national forests, set up five national parks, and created 51 federal bird reservations.

Roosevelt is one of the nation’s most famous hunters who enjoyed shooting songbirds as well as game species. He shot a great many birds for museum specimens–what ornithologists euphemistically called “collecting” back then. But his passion was far deeper than simply that of a hunter for his quarry. He loved birds for their beauty, their fascinating behaviors, and perhaps most of all for their sounds. He was unusually focused on natural sounds, which helped in stalking elusive prey, but also because he took genuine auditory pleasure in bird song. When he was 18 years old, he wrote in his journal:

Perhaps the sweetest bird music I have ever listened to was uttered by a hermit thrush. It was while hunting deer on a small lake, in the heart of the wilderness; the night was dark, for the moon had not yet risen, but there were clouds, and as we moved over the surface of the water with the perfect silence so strange and almost oppressive to the novice in this sport, I could distinguish dimly the outlines of the gloomy and impenetrable pine forests by which we were surrounded. We had been out for two or three hours but had seen nothing; once we heard a tree fall with a dull, heavy crash, and two or three times the harsh hooting of an owl had been answered by the unholy laughter of a loon from the bosom of the lake, but otherwise nothing had occurred to break the death-like stillness of the night; not even a breath of air stirred among the tops of the tall pine trees. Wearied by our unsuccess we at last turned homeward when suddenly the quiet was broken by the song of a hermit thrush; louder and clearer it sang from the depths of the grim and rugged woods, until the sweet, sad music seemed to fill the very air and to conquer for the moment the gloom of the night; then it died away and ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Perhaps the song would have seemed less sweet in the daytime, but uttered as it was, with such surroundings, sounding so strange and so beautiful amid these grand but desolate wilds, I shall never forget it.