Part-time Patagonia resident Dr. Gregg Gorton, a retired psychiatrist, has spent the past 20 years researching and writing a biography of ornithologist Ted Parker, who left an indelible impression on members of this community who shared his love of nature in general and birds in particular.
Parker’s death in 1993, mourned throughout the birding world, occurred just a few weeks after Gorton’s interest in birding took flight while taking his five-year-old son Jedd on a bird walk in a national wildlife refuge in Philadelphia “to get him out in nature.”
Gorton’s reading of Parker’s obituary in the New York Times sparked a fascination, not just with birding but with birding by ear, something with which his classically trained musical ear resonated. “I was blown away by learning that Parker could identify over 4,000 birds by sound alone,” Gorton explained.
In 2004 Gorton reached out to Parker’s family to gauge their interest in his proposed biography. With their blessing, he began a more focused effort to contact people who knew and worked with Parker. His research has been met with almost universal acceptance and cooperation. “When I say ‘Ted Parker,’ the door opens,” he said.
In a sense, ever since his death in that Ecuadorian jungle, Ted Parker has been a posthumous companion on Gorton’s personal birding journey. Fascinated with Parker’s outsized place in the birding world, Gorton gradually picked up bits and pieces of Parker’s life until he realized that he might fill a significant void in the annals of famous ornithologists by publishing a biography of this legendary figure.
From his early childhood, Parker displayed an unusually intense interest in nature, an amazing ability to identify birds and other creatures from their sounds alone, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge about the flora and fauna that surrounded him. At age 12 he was accepted as a member of the Lancaster County Bird Club and was giving lectures to friends and neighbors in a makeshift lecture area in the attic of his home.
As time passed, word of Parker’s knowledge of birds and his almost magical ability to identify them from their vocalizations alone amazed even prominent ornithologists. While still in high school, according to Gorton, he “stunned the nascent birding world” by identifying 626 species in one year in the lower 48 states and southern Canada, breaking the old record of 598.
So impressive were Parker’s birding knowledge and skill that, at age 21, he was invited to join a team of ornithologists from the Louisiana State University’s prestigious Museum of Natural Science on an expedition to explore the birds of Peru.
It was the first of his many excursions to Peru, Ecuador and other Central and South American countries in his relentless push to document everything he could hear or see about the neotropical birds of that hemisphere. His singular focus on that mission over the next two decades earned Parker the admiration, respect and appreciation of ornithologists and naturalists around the globe.
One such admirer is Sonoita resident Kelly Fleming, a self-taught naturalist, accomplished birder and fervent defender of wildlife. Sharing Parker’s insatiable thirst for knowledge of birds and their habitat, as well as his preference for learning in the field rather than in the classroom, Fleming enthusiastically signed up for Parker-led birding expeditions to Peru and Ecuador.
With obvious fondness, she remembers Parker as a somewhat reluctant but patient and gifted leader who had “an immense ability to focus on everything around him…and see in this teeming whole every individual contributing thread.”
Patagonian Dr. Ron Pulliam, Borderlands Restoration Network founder and conservationist, also knew Parker well. Pulliam took Parker on as an assistant in his research project on sparrows in the 1970s when Parker was pursuing an undergraduate degree in anthropology at the University of Arizona.
It took seven years for Parker to get his undergraduate degree, but that was just fine with him because this leisurely pace meant he was also able to work with Pulliam in the borderlands of southern Arizona, as well as continue his LSU-sponsored excursions to study neotropical birds in South America.
Pulliam recalled an incident that nearly resulted in both his and Parker’s deaths as the small plane in which they were passengers lost power over a river in a mountainous region of northern Mexico. Pulliam was sure they were going to perish but the pilot was able to pull the plane up just before it crashed and get them home safely.
Sadly, Parker’s good fortune on this occasion didn’t hold, as he died in 1993 along with three others when their plane went down in a heavily forested area of southwestern Ecuador.
Gorton’s research has gained him recognition among today’s most respected ornithologists and birding royalty. On Facebook, readers can virtually attend his hour-long lecture on the life of Ted Parker delivered six years ago to an audience of birding authorities and former Parker colleagues at the LSU Museum of Natural Science.
The lengthy process of gathering the essentials of Ted Parker’s life is essentially complete and Gorton is now in search of an agent to connect him with an appropriate publisher.
Those who love birds, who wish to protect threatened species and landscapes, or just find inspiration for accomplishing something meaningful in their lives should look forward to getting their signed copy of “The Bird Genius Who Tried to Save Nature: Ted Parker—Legendary Birder, Ornithologist and Conservationist.”