Singing the Praises of Birds

Charles Clarkson is the director of Avian Research for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. Since 1897, the organization has worked to stop the destruction of wild birds. Audubon maintains and manages a 9,500-acre refuge system in the state, which includes
nearly 30 miles of trails.

Clarkson was appointed to his position in September 2021. Before coming to the Audubon Society, he served as the coordinator for the Rhode Island Bird Atlas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences at the University of Mary Washington College in Fredricksburg, Virginia; a master’s degree in biology from Virginia Commonwealth University; and a doctorate in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia.

Here is a conversation with Clarkson. The full interview can be found here.

Charles Clarkson never fully realized the beauty of birds until he took an ornithology course in college. Growing up in Virginia, Clarkson says his father was a carpenter and had a large farmhouse “in the middle of nowhere.” He quickly gravitated toward birds.

“If you are a backyard birder, the reason you’re doing it is because you are attracting these birds that you find absolutely beautiful and meditative, and you can sit on your back deck all day long and watch these vibrant blue jays and red cardinals and yellow warblers,” Clarkson says. “I am no artist, but I cannot deny that birds are like a palette unlike anything else on this planet.

“For me, it’s scientific and it is emotional. I’m emotionally connected to the birds that I research.”

Clarkson says that birds have evolved into a species capable of surviving and thriving in some of the world’s most hostile environments. He adds that birds have the highest resting basal metabolism of any vertebrate.

“I think of them as metabolic hot rods that have been on this planet for 160 million years,” he says. “These are organisms that are constantly walking the tightrope between life and death on a daily basis.

“They are artists in themselves over millions of years of evolution, how they’ve deposited seeds from around the world and caused vegetational communities to sprout up.”

Clarkson said that volunteer surveys can allow birders — amateurs and seasoned veterans — to spend an entire day birding.

It is a great learning opportunity for birders, and Clarkson said his organization also receives scientifically useful information.

“It’s a win-win for everybody,” he says.

Clarkson says a paper written during the late 1980s by Stanford University biology professor Paul Ehrlich compared biodiversity and functioning ecological communities to metal rivets on an airplane.

“The analogy is that every one of these rivets is important. If you start removing rivets from this airplane, eventually, if you remove enough, the airplane is just going to fall apart and fall from the sky and crash, he says. “And if you think about the planet that way, we are very much part of the biodiversity around us. This is a web of nature, and we are part of that web.

“Humans cannot survive without nature.”

Clarkson says he loves his job with the Audubon Society.

“I think I’m one of the few very lucky people on this planet that decided early in life what it was that excited me and then proceeded to follow that path,” he says. “This is what I want to do. I want to do what I can in my role as a conservationist to make this planet in this small state of Rhode Island better for the birds that reside here.

“Whether they’re wintering here or breeding here, I want to do whatever I can. What’s in my power to make their jobs easier.”