Nature Done Wright

The most spectacular bird that Steve Bailey ever saw was a Wilson’s Bird-of-Paradise male in a courtship display.
Credit: Andrew Spencer, Macaulay Library, Cornell Lab.

My column today in The Record is about Steve Bailey, who grew up in Ridgewood. The ornithologist, who now lives in Italy, has seen more than 8,500 species of birds — and much, much more.

By Jim Wright
Special to The Record

   Today's column began almost 63 years ago, in a Ridgewood day camp for sixth-graders. Every morning, before breakfast, the students took a bird walk, and a young Steve Bailey was immediately enthralled.

     “I was thrilled to see so many active, colorful, singing birds in one hour,” Steve recalls. “All without having to catch them and imprison them. It was so much better than catching and caging my pet reptiles and amphibians!”

   Those walks engendered Bailey’s lifelong love of birds. With the help of birders from a local nature group, Bailey expanded that interest. It took a decade for him to start documenting his sightings methodically.

     “Only when I became a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley did I record all my observations every day,” Bailey says.

  Since then, he has become a world-renowned ornithologist, and he has traveled the globe in search of birds and other wildlife. At last count, Bailey has seen 8,591 species of birds, 977 species of mammals (including 89 marine mammals), and 447 reptiles.

“In the world rankings online at Surfbirds.com, my numbers rank me 34th, ninth, second and second, respectively,” says Bailey, who now lives in Italy.

  Here are three of his highlights.

  The most beautiful bird he’s seen:  “The most spectacularly colorful bird in the world is the Wilson’s Bird-of-Paradise male displaying.

   “In a parallel vein, another New Guinea bird, the Vogelkop Bowerbird, makes the most amazing display bower, artistically decorated with many different objects. It mimics all sorts of birds, humans, and natural sounds with incredible accuracy. For a while, New Guinea was a specialty area for guiding birding tours.”

   The one that got away: “When you have birded as much as I have, there are always many that got away – but so many more did not get away! My most frustrating miss must be the Puerto Rican Parrot, which I searched for on two trips and heard and just missed seeing multiple times.”

   His rarest sighting: “A bird that I saw for a couple of seconds in a forest in northeastern Papua New Guinea. The only reason I was able to see that bird, very unexpectedly, was that I stood completely still and silent while observing a mixed flock of birds feeding.  

    “Then I heard soft footsteps of something walking toward me.  When the creature came into view, I was stunned by something that looked like a short, robust man dressed in hairy black clothes and a tall black hat, with his neck painted bright red and his face fluorescent blue!  

    “When my mind caught up with my momentary sighting, I knew it was a Northern Cassowary – a huge, very scarce, flightless bird that can kill people with one kick. It has been hunted by native Papuans for millennia, and thus is terrified of people and seldom seen.”  

    The Bird Watcher column appears every other Thursday. Jim’s next book, "The Screech Owl Companion," will be published by Timber Press. Email Jim at celeryfarm@gmail.com.