On a beautiful morning last month in Patagonia, Tom Brown, Site Manager of Audubon’s Paton Center for Hummingbirds, talked about how he approached his job.
“My mission statement is: This is always going to be Marion Paton’s Backyard,” Brown said. “There is a tranquility and a serenity here that isn’t found anywhere else. Audubon is currently doing a major restoration at the Paton Center. My job is to take this project over, manage the restoration, do the scheduling, obtain all the necessary permits, and manage the Center as a business. And I am at the same time the ‘Bird Person.’ I want to accomplish Audubon’s goals that they hope to achieve here, and my personal goals align with Audubon’s.”
Brown animatedly spoke about Audubon’s current major renovation of the former Paton home. Phase one involves replacing the roof, followed by renovating the interior spaces to include rooms for the preparation of hummingbird food, cleaning and refilling the feeders, a gathering place for volunteers and a meeting room for 30 people. And there will be a new space to accommodate a gift shop that will offer violet crown hummingbird T-shirts, hats and mugs.
Completion of this work was originally estimated to be around the first of the upcoming year, but due to the vagaries of renovating a 109-year-old house, there have been minor delays. For example, one of the original rafters was found to be made of old picket fence pieces and others were made of scavenged pieces of wood. “This house was built of scraps of wood,” laughed Brown. He hopes the work may be complete by Valentine’s Day.
Additional renovations include the construction of two ADA public bathrooms, the septic system for which has already been installed. Then, down the road from the current entrance, a new parking lot will be built without cutting down any of the existing trees. This area will be the future entrance to the Paton Center, curving through trees and exiting further down the road. A new birding trail has already been established and is “a big hit,” said Brown. ADA trails will lead back to the Paton Center and to the nearby Nature Conservancy site. All that will be visible from the road will be the entrance and four ADA parking spaces; the rest of the 18 spaces will be camouflaged by trees. The present entrance will be fenced off and flowers will be planted in the old parking lot. “More flowers for more hummingbirds and butterflies,” Brown said.
Overseeing this big project while still being the Bird Person, greeting and interacting with all the visitors, requires a large skill set, and Brown has these skills in spades.
“I am one of those people who never settled in one occupation,” Brown said.
Brown grew up in central Oregon, studied at the University of Oregon, and was sent by a company he later worked for to Seattle where he met his future wife, Jeanne Walker, who was living on a sailboat. They married, he moved onto the boat, and he studied marine electronics at Washington State. They eventually embraced the sailing life and set sail for Canada, exploring the area for a few years. Their next adventure was to sail offshore down to Mexico where they lived on the boat near La Paz, Baja California for eight years. While they were there, they opened a boat parts and repair shop. Walker got into canvas repair, and a mechanic and diver were hired to clean boat bottoms.
The couple also operated a bird guiding business they named Focus on Feathers, which taught people to take bird pictures. Brown was a bird lover and photographer from the age of 14 when he got his first camera, a Leica M3. Walker is also a wildlife photographer. They took people on tours of one to two weeks, instructing them in the finer skills of wildlife photography, mostly birds. “I mostly shoot birds, but if other wildlife appear, I’ll take it,” Brown said.
Eighteen years was a long time to live on a boat, so they sold the sailboat and the businesses all in two weeks and traveled all over the world. “We would fly into a country, rent a mini-motor home and explore for a month or two before moving on,” Brown said. Next the pair explored all 11 Western states in a 5th wheel, looking for a place they might eventually call home. Friends in Tucson convinced them to live there, which they did for two and a half years.
Destiny called when Brown ran into Luke Safford, Director of Engagement for Tucson Audubon. Their meeting led to the two leading field trips at Sweetwater in Tucson for two and a half years. Meanwhile, Brown and Walker, who had never owned a home, felt ready to find their own place. They were both from small towns and shared small town values. They began looking around Patagonia, Elgin and Sonoita, hoping to find a small, affordable home. Everything they saw was too expensive. Then an internet search directed Brown to a property in Salero Ranch, south of Patagonia. It too was above their budget, but when it didn’t sell, the owner drastically lowered the price, and Brown jumped. For the next 12 months the two of them worked seven days a week, from dawn to dusk to finish the house, which had only a roof and walls when they bought it.
By this time Brown had been visiting the Paton Center for years. “I’ve always had a passion for this place,” he said. Funding for the renovation project at the Paton Center had been budgeted for nine years. Many meetings had taken place to formulate the goals of the project. A new Director for Tucson Audubon, Melissa Fratello, took office. She and Brown had the same vision for the Paton Center project, and he was hired as Site Manager in May, 2022.
Along with all the renovation work, Audubon and Brown share the same vision. Birds need three things: food, water and shelter. “We are doing all we can to provide these three things,” Brown said. “We are clearing invasive species but need to find the balance between what’s good for the birds and what’s good for the environment.
“This little mini-spot right here is truly one of the best spots in the world for birders. It’s a huge deal. Southeast Arizona is truly magical. About two to three hundred people a day from around the world come right here to experience what we offer. An added benefit to the community is that these birders have coffee or lunch in town and many stay at the hotels, often for a week.
“I have tracked the visitors for the last 15 months, and we average visitors from 41 states and nine countries every month. This past June saw 49 states and 21 countries represented. The majority come from Mexico and Canada with Scotland third, followed by Japan, the UK and the Netherlands, then the rest of the world.
“Two weeks ago, I received a call from a gentleman asking if he needed a reservation to visit the Paton Center. I replied that no, we are wide open. He then said that he and three other men were coming from Iceland to see the violet crown hummingbird.
“I am impressed every day by how knowledgeable birders are, both from away and local folks, about the birds and habitat,” Brown said. “It makes me love being here, providing the best possible experience for our visitors, without affecting the habitat.”
Asked about his most noteworthy memories of his time at the Paton Center, Brown related two. The first is of all the time he’s spent seeking permits at the federal, city, and county levels—endless hours of paperwork. His favorite punching bag is the Federal Floodplain Use Permit, which he has filed many times.
The second most spectacular memory took place in January and February of 2024. One of the very large pecan trees near the Paton house had mysteriously not dropped its fruit in the fall when all the other pecan trees on the property had. The tree was covered with thousands of pecans. Hungry woodpeckers found this bounty, and soon the tree was feeding downy woodpeckers, which had never been recorded in this area before, as well as red nape sapsuckers, northern flickers, Arizona woodpeckers, acorn woodpeckers, ladderback woodpeckers and Gila woodpeckers.
However, these birds only ate the meat from the fruits, leaving the rest behind. Soon this food was discovered by the smaller birds including Cape May warblers, yellow rump warblers, yellow Crowns and titmice. “We could have put out bleachers, there were so many birdwatchers here,” Brown said. “There have been a lot of other sightings, but this was truly an amazing thing.”
Brown extended thanks to Patagonia Town Manager Ron Robinson for all his help with the permitting, the Dirtbags for their trail building, the Paton Center’s volunteers, and Tucson Audubon for their support.