Honored Friends

(This column was published in the November 16, 1992 Buffalo News.)

   Two stories.

   The first was told to me years ago by Al Fudge of Elmira. One spring in the 
1940s Al and his wife Vera were hiking in a Southern Tier forest when they met 
a young man who identified himself as Harold Axtell, a Cornell doctoral 
student studying the vertebrates (animals with backbones) of Chemung and 
Schuyler Counties. Al was impressed, he told me and I was too. Most doctoral 
theses are written about very narrow subjects -- something like The Summer 
Distribution of Red-bellied Snakes in Delaware Park -- but this young man had 
taken on a much larger problem.

   Another thing that impressed Al was the fact that Axtell wore sneakers 
instead of hiking boots. Now his feet and trouser legs were soaking wet. When 
Al inquired about Harold's footwear, the young man replied, "I always wear 
sneakers when I'm hiking. My feet dry quickly and sometimes I learn from 
getting them wet. For example, in wading across that creek back there, I found 
the water colder than in other nearby streams. I have checked a topographic 
map and I'm sure that at the creek source about a half mile from here the 
temperature will be near freezing. That means that there is a real possibility 
of my finding there a rare red salamander, a species that prefers very cold 
water."

   Naturally, Al told me, he and Vera were intrigued. With the young man's 
permission, they joined him in his climb to the stream source. Sure enough, 
there in the clear spring water were two beautiful red salamanders.

   The second story is my own. Many years ago I rode in Joe Taylor's 
convertible with the top down. That would not be so extraordinary except that 
it was late December. We were on a Christmas census recording the birds around 
Braddock's Bay northwest of Rochester and it was bitter cold. Even with the 
layers upon layers of clothing I wore and even fortified by Helen Taylor's 
strongly seasoned and spiked bullion, I was finding the experience punishing. 
Not Joe: he had his jacket open and his shirt unbuttoned at the neck.

   Suddenly he stopped the car. Across the reeds came the "two two two" cry of 
a lesser yellowlegs. We never saw the bird but it called several more times. 
Delighted at our find, we knew that it would be the best record of the day.

   But when we reported this exceptional occurrence that evening at the census 
recording session, our coworkers laughed at us. They insisted that we must 
have heard the somewhat similar call of a pine grosbeak. One even questioned 
how much of Helen's broth we had sipped. We argued but lost: our bird was not 
tabulated.

   A month later, however, Walt Listman, on one of his regular forays into the 
Braddock's Bay cattail edges, put up a yellowlegs. Our record may not have 
counted, but we knew that we were vindicated.

   I have told those stories, because now within a month both Harold Axtell 
and Joe Taylor have died. Each was an honored friend for over forty years. 
Others have written of their great stature: Harold's service as zoology 
curator at the Buffalo Museum and international reputation among field 
ornithologists, Joe's as president of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and the American 
Birding Association and as one of the earliest members of the exclusive 700 
Club of birders. Those aren't religious donors; they are rarer individuals: 
bird watchers who have identified 700 species in North America.

   Their accomplishments were great, but I will remember Joe and Harold better 
for their personal qualities: their enthusiasm, their openness and most of all 
their willingness to share their vast knowledge of nature with so many of us.

   And they will live on through our adventures together.