Plate 69 |
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a place where habi tat peripheries overlap. The area of overlap favors individuals found in both habitats, so it often contains more than the usual number of species, and often more than the usual amount of activity—making them ideal spots for naturalists of all sorts to visit. Neither artist takes us inside the area of overlap, but a well-crafted caption enables us to take a virtual visit.
If we were lucky enough to see a lek and watch an ordinarily peaceful landscape roil into activ- ity, the chances are good that the sight would long be remembered. The sudden, unexpected burst of motion of even a single nearby bird is often easy to recall years later. Roger Tory Peterson tells of the day when he was eleven years old and touched a bundle of feathers clinging to the trunk of an oak, only to discover with a shock—as the startled bird whipped its head around and stared at him—that it was alive. The mass of feathers was a sleeping Northern Flicker, but the shock—the connection —was so great that Peterson saw it as an event that directed the course of his life. Bird artists and bird scientists all have memories of their first great connection with birds, and of many later ones as well. They bring some of those connections to us, sometimes as art, sometimes as research, some- times as both. Science Art, at its best, conveys these connections as though they are happening again.
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