[Maine-birds] Remembering Chuck Huntington

If you did not see it in today's paper, there was an obituary for Bowdoin college professor of Ornithology Charles "Chuck" Huntington, who has died at the age of 97. He was a remarkable man in every way,  I met him in the early 1980's on the first day of my freshman year in college. We boarded a van with maybe a dozen other freshmen, and off we went to spend several days at Bowdoin's remote ornithological research station at Kent Island off Grand Manan in New Brunswick. 

 At the wheel during the  trip was Chuck, who provided a steady stream of bird sightings, often accompanied by brief rumbles as the van drifted off center or onto the shoulder. It was a trip that at times was a little scary, but it's a form of driving that all of us who admire birds have done ourselves --whether or not we willingly admit it. And it provided all of us back then (mostly new to Maine) with a sense of the size, grandeur and natural landscape of our new state. 

When we finally reached Kent Island after six hours in the van, a stop at Helen's for pie, a border crossing, a ferry ride, a drive across Grand Manan and, finally, a voyage in a lobster boat, we found a wonderland of pelagic birds, most notably the Leach's storm petrel, which was the focus of Chuck's work at the time. We also found a willing instructor in the professor, who cemented our interest in ornithology right then and there. 

THat was 35 years ago and I sometimes wonder would I have become a birder without Chuck? Who knows. But I do know that both in the field and in the classroom, I and countless other Bowdoin ornithology students between 1953 and 1986 learned a great deal from his quiet, patient approach as a lecturer and a field person.  

The obituary is well worth reading, link below.

http://obituaries.pressherald.com/obituaries/mainetoday-pressherald/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=183399100

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