The Inspiration of Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Fuertes influences my life in other, perhaps more important, ways. I have served on the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (CLO) board of directors for the past five years. In our board room (at Sapsucker Woods) we are surrounded by the original Fuertes paintings from Frederick Brewster's library. Every moment that I sit in that room I think about how a love of birds binds one generation to another. I am certain that Fuertes and I could talk for many hours about the birds of west Texas, and ignore the decades that have passed since his tragic death.

When in that room I also think about the responsibility that we, who know, have to conserve and sustain the birds that tie our generations together. Fuertes' birds are our birds as well. This is precisely what motivates me, and others, to create new efforts such as the Texas Bird Conservation Initiative. For those who know the truth, the truth so poignantly illustrated in Fuertes' paintings, there is simply no other choice. As Pablo Neruda wrote in one of his most important poems,

"bird by bird, I have come to know the earth."