Roger Tory Peterson Quotes

I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could.

I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me.

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?

I have trained my eye over and over ever since I was a kid. I was a bird watcher when I was a little boy. My grandmother gave me a bird book, and I got to like their colors.

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.

For most of my life, I didn't pay attention to birds.

I am a closet birdwatcher. I can identify Southern African species, but it irks me I can barely tell a jay from a blackbird in the U.K.

My father was an obsessive bird-watcher. The genes of observation passed down.

I consider myself to have been the bridge between the shotgun and the binoculars in bird watching. Before I came along, the primary way to observe birds was to shoot them and stuff them.

I can recognize the calls of practically every bird in North America. There are some in Africa I don't know, though.

I spend a lot of time learning about bird watching.

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

There is not a bird that flies by without our knowledge.

Only in my 40s did I become a person whose heart lifts whenever he hears a grosbeak singing or a towhee calling, and who hurries out to see a golden plover that's been reported in the neighbourhood, just because it's a beautiful bird, with truly golden plumage, and has flown all the way from Alaska.

I believe I saw a woodcock. He had a long bill like putting a fire hydrant into a pencil sharpener, then pasting it onto a bird and letting the bird fly away in front of me with this thing on its face for no other purpose than to amaze me.

In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

Grandmother walked up over the bare granite and thought about birds in general. It seemed to her no other creature had the same dramatic capacity to underline and perfect events - the shifts in the seasons and the weather, the changes that run through people themselves.

I've never been much of a computer guy at least in terms of playing with computers. Actually until I was about 11 I didn't use a computer for preparing for games at all. Now, obviously, the computer is an important tool for me preparing for my games. I analyze when I'm on the computer, either my games or my opponents. But mostly my own.

Few forms of life are so engaging as birds.

I'm not very interesting. Birds are interesting. I could stand there lip-synching all day long, but it would feel funny, and people would be able to tell. I'm not a good actress.

Our most important problems cannot be solved; they must be outgrown.

Very often the lessons you learn are more important than the things you accomplish

The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself.

Anyone who has ever made a resolution discovers that the strength of their determination fades with time. The important thing is not that your resolve never wavers, but that you don't get down on yourself when it does and throw in the towel.

Dreams are so important. You need to have big goals and expect a lot of yourself but you have to enjoy the ride too.