Although I have been active outdoors since childhood, I had never attempted to learn new bird species or to keep records until my family and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 1988. Later on the same trip we visited some Tanzanian game parks and, fortunately, had a trained ornithologist as a driver and guide. A contest on sighting new species between us adults and our grandchildren soon graduated from lions, hyenas, elephants, and giraffes to sunbirds, barbets, weavers, and whydahs. Among the 120 species we learned, the superb starling, D’Arnaud’s barbet, and the various rollers were favorites.
Since then our work at The Carter Center has taken Rosalynn and me to many nations—35 of them in Africa—and we have used every opportunity to observe and study birds in as many places as possible. Even when we do not have a spare day available from our official work, we try to arrange in advance of our visits for a good birder to go with us for a few hours early in the morning. This gets us out of capital cities and Western-style hotels and into parklands, farms, and small villages, where we are able to learn about wildlife and the lives of native people.
A few of these bird watchers knew the scientific names of the birds, but we found it difficult to decipher the common names, which often varied from one community to another. This problem was solved when I learned about a fellow retired navy man, Bob Eisberg, who had developed a computerized worldwide bird list and keeps it up to date. Although not an avid bird watcher himself, he has been a source of good advice to us and others who have questions about naming a doubtful bird.
We have been fortunate in expanding our knowledge about our local species because for a quarter century there has been a breeding bird survey route that almost encircles our home in Plains, Georgia, and we accompany these expert observers each year when we’re home the first week in June.
We had never planned a specific birding trip until this year, when we began to look over our North American bird list to see where we might have the best opportunities for new sightings. I mentioned this desire during a speech at a conservation award ceremony, and within a few days we received an invitation from Lee Zeiger, president of the local Audubon Society chapter in Brownsville, Texas, to visit the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Not knowing anything about the area, I called him and suggested that it might be better for us to go farther northwest along the river to find habitat more different from that in Georgia. Lee was taken aback, and extolled so fervently the advantages of his area that we decided to accept his kind offer.
I sent him a list of the birds we had already sighted in other states, and my only specific request was to add either a least or an American bittern to our list. We had been frustrated for years in searching for either of the two species, both of which are native to Georgia.