25: Living Bird
Interview with Editor Tim Gallagher, October 2008
Play audio (approximately 30 minutes)
The topic of this program is Living Bird, the member magazine of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. My guest is Tim Gallagher, editor of Living Bird since 1990. Tim is also the author of the books The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, and Falcon Fever: A Falconer in the Twenty-first Century.
Steve: Tim, welcome to Periodical Radio. Living Bird is the member magazine of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Could you describe for us the mission of the lab?
Tim: It’s actually an environmental group. Besides being part of Cornell University, it’s a membership organization with about 30,000 members. We basically are using birds to give people an entry into the natural world, and get them interested in helping to protect birds and other wildlife habitats.
Steve: Where does Living Bird fit into the overall mission of the Lab?
Tim: It’s a popular magazine that’s aimed at a popular audience, so we’re trying to attract a wide range of people, not just scientists. We’re also interested in citizen science, that is regular people gathering data across the United States and Canada that we can use to determine which bird populations are in trouble and so forth.
Steve: One of my questions was why a popular magazine instead of a scholarly journal, and you just pretty much answered that. But what’s the origin of that focus, of really reaching out to the public rather than reaching to other academics, for the publication.
Tim: Well, our founder, Arthur Allen from the start, you know he first started what’s called the Lab of Ornithology in about 1915, although it was nothing like what it is now. It wasn’t a membership organization or anything like that. It was in the 1950’s when it became more like it is now. But actually the publication at first, when it came out in the early 1960’s, it was more of a technical journal on ornithology, and it just came out once a year called the Living Bird. We had a very limited membership at that time. It was about 1,500 members. There was a point in the early 1980’s when Charles Walcott became the head of the Lab. He thought our work was important enough that he wanted it to go to more people, draw more people in, people who might have more influence. So that’s when it became a quarterly popular magazine.
Steve: Why the title Living Bird, rather than something like “Cornell Ornithology Lab News”?
Tim: That was actually suggested by Roger Tory Peterson, the famous bird artist and author. He was on the Lab of Ornithology’s Board of Directors at that point, actually in the early 1960’s. He thought it was important to stress that living birds is what we’re really interested in, to keep common birds common and everything, you know. That was a time when birds were being affected by DDT and other things in the environment, and it was our emphasis to keeping bird populations healthy.
Steve: I have a question about terminology. What’s the difference between a birder and an ornithologist?
Tim: An ornithologist I’d say, it used to be in the 19th century people were called ornithologists, and they very often were amateurs. They were people who went out into the field and studied birds, perhaps collected eggs and bird specimens and so forth. Now it’s more a person who’s gone through . . .they’re professionals. They’ve gone through a university and gotten a Ph.D. usually, and they’re scientists. A birder is more of a hobbyist, although many of them are very serious, someone who’s trying to see as many bird species as possible, and to learn how to be really expert at identifying them. But there’s a lot of crossover.
Steve: Why do people have a special fascination with birds?
Tim: They’re such charismatic animals. Everywhere you go in the world, birds are there. In a way, you could take a birder and drop them almost anywhere in the world, if they’re familiar with the bird songs, that’s part of the distinctive nature of every place you go, there’s a different avifauna. There will be different bird songs and different birds you see. To me, it’s just enriched by life. I can’t imagine not being as focused on them as I am. They’re so colorful, and the songs they sing are so beautiful.
Steve: Richard Louv coined the term “nature deficit disorder” to describe how today’s kids spend too little time exploring nature. In your view, is birding one of the better antidotes to nature deficit disorder?
Tim: Oh, definitely. I have young children, and it’s certainly been great getting them involved in learning about birds, and taking them for hikes in the woods and things like that. It’s really enriched their lives. I do worry about a lot of children now who just grow up playing video games or doing stuff on the computer or watching television. They’re really losing out. That’s nothing like the way I grew up. When I was young my friends and I, we would just run wild all day through the woods. Everything was so interesting and mysterious. I just wanted to learn more and more about it. There’s not as much of that any more. I hope we can do things to counteract that.
Steve: Does the Ornithology Lab have special outreach for young people? Is that a target audience?
Tim: Yes, definitely. We have a whole curriculum that we give to elementary schools, actually K-12 on bird study.
Steve: Is it possible to become a birder without also becoming a conservationist?
Tim: Not really. I think if you learn about wild birds, and you see how their numbers are declining, I mean some of your favorite birds, when these birds are declining five percent a year and have been for the last 20 years, that’s pretty scary. So yes definitely, most birders are conservationists.
Steve: And as you mentioned at the beginning of the program, it’s a major focus of the Living Bird magazine.
Tim: Um-hmm.
Steve: . …the conservation angle.
Tim: That’s right. Personally, to me, I’ve been here for 18 years now. When I came here, that was one reason. I came because I wanted to do some good for conservation, and I’ve steadily pushed this publication to help with conservation. Not necessarily like an advocacy group attacking certain things, but writing about studies we and other people are doing that are showing what is happening with birds and why they’re in danger and why we need to try to help their populations.
Steve: The Ornithology Lab promotes citizen science, something else you’ve already mentioned. What are some things people can do to contribute to the science at the Lab?
Tim: We have a whole slew of citizen science projects, ranging from ones that are really easy to do, like Project Feeder Watch. We have something like 15,000 people involved in that. They just record the species and number of birds that come to their bird feeders. There are other ones that are more in depth, like Birds in Forested Landscapes. We used to have Project Tanager, where you’d go out with recordings and play them and see if tanagers responded. They were really more in depth, including trying to find their nests. We’ve got one that involves bird houses, the Bird House Network, actually going in and counting the numbers of eggs and young of bluebird and tree swallow nests and boxes, and whether they’re successful or not. It’s actually really amazing the amount of data we get in from our citizen scientists. It’s really valid data. There are always some people who maybe don’t know enough, but we’ve got filters to be able to find something that’s probably not accurate. For example, house finches several years ago, a lot of house finches were getting an eye disease. It seemed to be spreading across the East. We asked all our feeder watchers, we formed a new program to study this house finch eye disease. We’ve been able to map the spread of it all across the East and even to the West now in a way that no one’s been able to track the spread of a wildlife disease like that before. It’s really interesting data.
Steve: So the data with the citizen science programs are well respected within the professional ornithology field?
Tim: Yeah, they are. There have been numerous scientific papers published based on this data. People were skeptical at first, but they’re not now. It’s very valid data.
Steve: That’s wonderful. One of the things I’ve noticed in the printed magazine Living Bird is the photography is really exceptional. Who are your photographers, and what are you looking for in the images published in the magazine?
Tim: We have a lot of the top wildlife photographers in the country, people like Arthur Morris and Marie Read. Frans Lanting has done some photo essays before along with a lot of other very well known people. I look at stuff from other people, too. There are up and coming photographers who send me samples of their work and I look at it, and if it’s good I’ll send them our list. Every issue we have a list of our photo needs that we send out. I go through them with a designer and we figure out which are going to be the best pictures to use. Since we’re dealing with birds, the visual presentation is everything. People want to look at beautiful pictures of birds, so we get the best pictures and design them in a pleasing way. We also have some of the best pre-production quality I’ve seen in a magazine. We use a sheet fed press and everything.
Steve: That pre-production process as certainly changed over the years, hasn’t it?
Tim: Oh, yeah! I’ve been around long enough to remember taking physical manuscripts over to a typesetter and then having the paste-up of the magazine. On the last day [before going to press] you were making fixes with Exacto knives cutting letters. It’s been interesting. Now we do it all on the computer.
Steve: A few years ago I spoke with Elizabeth Folwell, who’s the art director at Adirondack Life, and she went into some detail about how much things have changed over the years. It’s really amazing.
Tim: Yeah.
Steve: With all of the information the Ornithology Lab puts up on your web site, why continue having a printed magazine?
Tim: Well, I think a significant number of our members still want to get a physical magazine. I don’t know how it’ll be in 10 or 15 years, I mean a lot of younger people are used to seeing things online. But the way it is right now, we do surveys about things like that, and people love getting Living Bird, and they like having it on their coffee tables for people to look at. Probably for the rest of my career we’ll still be putting out a physical magazine. We have a really nice web site now, too, of course, http://livingbird.org. It captures a lot of what the issue looks like, and has extra multimedia features and all that. But I still see it as an added bonus. I still think people want to get the magazine, probably 80% of our people.
Steve: That’s a similar response I’ve heard from like New York State Conservationist. People just enjoy getting the printed version. Tim, what aspects of your job as editor do you personally find most enjoyable?
Tim: You know, that’s interesting, because I’m a person who in some ways could’ve become a scientist. I was working as a teenager helping with bird counts for the California Department of Fish and Game, like falcons, prairie falcons, peregrine falcons, things like that. I think the reason I didn’t go that route was because I really didn’t like the type of writing that was in technical journals. You know, really dry kind of writing. That’s not the way I felt about these animals I was studying. So I got into journalism, got a magazine journalism degree, then a Master’s degree in English. I still like the scientific life, and I started traveling with scientists and working with them, going on expeditions, which I still do. That’s what I really love the best about my work. I’ve done stuff like gone to Greenland a couple of times on expeditions in an open boat up the coast looking at Gyrfalcon nests and Dovekie colonies and things like that. I’ve gone across Iceland and northern Alaska and Africa. I’ve gotten to spend time with people who are really passionate about their work and the animals they’re studying. I get right into it. I’m a good field worker, a good field biologist. So I get to do that, but unlike people like that who will spend 30 years studying one species, I get to do it for three weeks, then come back and write about it, and then do something else next time. I have a lot interests in my life, and it makes it a rich experience for me.
Steve: What parts of the job are most challenging?
Tim: Oh, you know, I’m probably not the type who likes to work on budgets and things like that, and to have meetings. I don’t like to have lots of meetings. Even just being in an office like I am a lot of times is not the kind of thing I love to do. Although my office, I have a beautiful view of the woods outside with nice autumn leaves. That’s nice. I can duck out and go hiking through the woods and go bird watching. I like the more outdoor things, basically, compared to being in an office. Which of course, being an editor, that’s part of my job, being in an office supervising people and doing budgets.
Steve: Sure. Is keeping it on track, on schedule, a major challenge? Living Bird is quarterly, correct?
Tim: Yes.
Steve: Is that tough to get it out every quarter?
Tim: No, not really. You get a rhythm to it. I’ve worked for a monthly magazine, I’ve worked for a daily newspaper. So it’s not like deadlines—I don’t have a problem with deadlines. I sort of just kind of intuitively know when things need to be done. I don’t put myself through a rigid schedule, it’s more intuitive.
Steve: Do you recruit the writers for the article primarily, or do you get a significant number of articles that are just sent in over the transom, that just come to you? What’s the mix there?
Tim: I do it every which way. I’ll get an idea, or I’ll see something, for instance I might see someone give a talk, and think that it will be a really good article. Or someone might do a scientific paper and I think that’d be good. If I don’t think that scientist can write it for a popular audience himself, I might think of someone else who could write that. I get a lot over the transom, but they’re not always . . . .you get a lot that aren’t as good, a lot of chaff there. I write quite a few myself. I’ll get other people around the Lab to write some sometimes. I give a number of freelance writers whose work I really like assignments. I call them up out of the blue sometimes and ask what they think about writing on a topic.
Steve: Tim, the summer 2005 issue of Living Bird includes the story of the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which of course you played a major role in. You wrote a book about the rediscovery, The Grail Bird. What messages would you like people to take away from your experience with the ivory-billed woodpecker?
Tim: Partly not to give up. There’s been a tendency, you know people in 1910 were saying the ivory bill is probably extinct. Yet people would run across them. When I started working on that book I went around and interviewed people. I started with people who’d seen them in the 1930’s and early 1940’s in the old Singer Tract. But I also found many people much later, hunters and fishermen who said they’d seen them and had good descriptions and seemed to be honest. So I tried to keep an open mind and really listen to what they were saying and check it out and go to the places where they said they saw birds. That’s what led to that sighting. I found one person who had a good description from just 6 days earlier. At this point I don’t know. We’re still searching for some of these birds that are nesting, and we haven’t been able to find a nest yet, or even a reliable bird that you can always find in a certain place. We have a lot of sightings for a month or two after we had that sighting in 2004, but it’s sort of, there’s not much going on in Arkansas right now, and we’ve moved to other places. But I’d say the lesson is just to not give up, and also the importance of saving habitats.
Steve: That’s what I wanted to ask about. I don’t think everybody who might be listening to this program is aware of what the habitat is. Can you describe for us what the habitat was, and what’s happened to it?
Tim: It was bottom land swamp forest with huge cypress trees, and really wild country. At the end of the Civil War, this kind of country was all across the river drainages of the southern United States, filled with wolves, panthers, bears, and just an amazing, amazing place. Then a lot of northern companies came in after the war and would buy up the logging rights and just started cutting those trees down and shipping the wood back up to rebuild Chicago after the fire and places like that. They just devastated that whole habitat. In the 1930’s when they found the trees in the Singer Tract, which was an 81,000 acre tract of virgin timber in northeast Louisiana. It have Ivory Bills, and more wolves than anywhere in the lower 48 states, just an amazing place. There was a huge fight trying to save it, but a logging company cut it down in the early 1940’s. That was the last really huge chunk of that kind of habitat left, and now it’s starting to grow up again. There are places that haven’t been cut in over a hundred years. Of course it will take 400 or 500 years for it to look like it did when it was virgin timber. We’ve got to start moving in that direction. We’ve got to save a lot of that habitat and not let special places like that disappear. We should have learned our lesson by now.
Steve: Are things better now, are you encouraged, in terms of saving really precious resources?
Tim: Well yeah, you know in the 1940’s there weren’t any environmental laws. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t want the Singer Tract to get cut down, but he didn’t have any law he could point to to put a stop to it. The governors of four states put up money trying to buy the logging rights so the trees wouldn’t be cut. But it happened anyway. Now we do have strong laws. Although people keep tampering with the Endangered Species Act and trying to weaken it, it’s still pretty strong. So I’m more hopeful. Actually the habitat in the southern swamps is much better than it was in the 1950’s when was at about its worst condition, since so much of it had been clear cut. Now it’s really growing back a lot. I’m hoping that we won’t just get into another wave of cutting as it matures.
Steve: Tim, is there anything we haven’t addressed in our interview that you’d like to tell our listeners?
Tim: Just that the life of a journalist or a magazine editor is a good career. It’s been good for me, I’ve enjoyed it and I’ve done a lot interesting things, traveled all over the world. I’d recommend it.
Steve: Very good. Well Tim Gallagher, thank you very much for being my guest.
Tim: Thanks, my pleasure.
Steve: Memberships to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology start at $40 and include Living Bird. To subscribe, visit www.livingbird.org. Thank you for listening to Periodical Radio. I’m your host, Steve Black.