Saturday, July 22, 2006

Avid birder drops everything and flies to see a rare variety

By Nat Newell. IndyStar.

Larry Peavler stood up to his neck in the Gulf of Mexico for hours watching for a red-footed booby . . . and barracuda.

Prepared: With a telescope on a tripod, Larry Peavler is ready to check out the birds at Eagle Creek Park. He is one of the nation's top birders, and has seen 872 different species in the United States. - Sam Riche / The Star


His bird-watching tour boat through Florida's Dry Tortugas National Park was preparing to move to the next island, but the red-footed booby had not returned to its nest.

Peavler wasn't leaving.

No one was allowed on the island because it would disturb the birds' habitat, so he plunged into the water, fighting off terns that tried to land on his head and thoughts of carnivorous fish gnawing on the rest of him.
"It's really rare," Peavler said with a shrug when asked why he risked battling barracuda for a glimpse of the bird. "I'd never seen it."

The red-footed booby is one of 872 different species of birds the Northside Indianapolis resident has seen in the United States in the past three decades.
Peavler is one of the country's top birders. His total number of sightings is the sixth-most since the American Birding Association began tracking such statistics in the 1960s.

The hobby has taken Peavler to all 50 states -- including seven trips to Attu, the last in the chain of Aleutian Islands off Alaska, which is now off-limits -- 124 countries and six continents. He's seen 3,413 different birds, including the fourth-highest total in Indiana (349) and Kentucky (306), according to the ABA's 2005 List Report.

"One thing that makes birding exciting is you see something new every day," said Peavler, who also touts the exercise it provides and leads regular hikes at Eagle Creek Park. "A new plumage, a new nest, something they're eating . . . it doesn't matter how long you've been birding or how often you go out, you still see new things.

"You turn the corner, and you don't know what you're going to see."
He got his start when he saw an advertisement for a birding hike at Eagle Creek Park in 1973. Peavler was immediately hooked and began to devote more and more of his free time to the new hobby.

The first bird he chased was a Eurasian curlew in Rhode Island in 1976; Peavler saw it and it hasn't been spotted in North America since.

...this birdwatching hobby keeps him on the go...

Hobby keeps him on go | IndyStar.com

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