Recordist of Note: Davis Finch

By Charles Duncan 22 Nov 2024

Davis Finch, Monhegan, Maine, ferry. 26 September 2014.

Sound recordist, tour leader, and dedicated note-keeper, Davis W. Finch passed away this October at age 86 in Exeter, New Hampshire after a brief illness. Beginning with his recording of Yellow-olive Flatbill in Brazil in 1984, Davis contributed over 1,600 recordings to the Macaulay Library, with a focus on Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana. Indeed, Davis co-authored the “Field Checklist of the Birds of Guyana,” and over the years, he made 20 expeditions to that country. Before he started contributing his Guyana recordings to the Macaulay Library in the mid-90s, Macaulay only had ~125 total recordings from the country (almost all from a single expedition), making Davis the first person to make a consistent, focused effort to record the avifauna there. His 1,170 recordings there still make up fully a quarter of all recordings in the archive from Guyana to this day!

Davis Finch and Charles Duncan with field gear, Las Claritas, Bolívar State, Venezuela. 30 August 1989

Some 166 featured recordings of 144 species are currently on Merlin and eBird species pages from Davis’s collection. Some, like the Rio Branco Antbird, are stunningly rare; others, like the Zigzag Heron, painfully cryptic. Davis archived the first recordings ever of 25 species in Macaulay, and the importance of Davis’s recordings to the Macaulay Library overall has not diminished with time, with over 80 species he recorded still having fewer than 50 recordings in the archive and over 200 species with fewer than 100 recordings.

Davis’s interest in the natural world began as a child growing up in New Hampshire. His first profession, however, was as an instructor of French at the Sorbonne, Yale, and Vassar. From 1967 to 1977, he was Regional Editor for the Northeastern Maritime region for Audubon Field Notes (now North American Birds). In 1977, he and Will Russell started the Northeast Birding tour company. In 1980, Davis, along with Russell and the late Rich Stallcup, founded WINGS tours, still one of the best-known birding tour companies. Meanwhile, his own interests focused increasingly on the neotropics. He led some 90 tours there, particularly to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Guyana. He taught week-long workshops for the Institute for Field Ornithology in Maine, Colorado, northern Mexico, and the llanos of Venezuela.

Although his professional tour-leading wound down in the mid-1990s, Davis continued his explorations and recording expeditions to northern South America for the next decade or more. His extraordinary linguistic skills, combined with his profound knowledge of birds, led to his work as principal consultant for The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, and The Audubon Society Master Guide to Birding. He was a consultant for the Field Guide to the Birds of Cuba by Orlando Garrido and Arturo Kirkconnell, and a valued informal advisor to the recently published Birds of Maine (Vickery, P. D, 2020) and Birds of Monhegan [Maine], (Ewald, B., 2023).

His native New Hampshire and nearby Maine were always part of Davis’s interest. He lived in the same home in East Kingston, NH, from age one until his death, with time out for Paris and New York. For 20 years, he maintained a “meat pile” of leftovers in his yard, some three tons per year from local butchers, feeding and attracting everything from Bald Eagles to a Thayer’s Gull. He also participated in Christmas Bird Counts in New Hampshire for six decades. His contributions were recognized in the Goodhue-Elkins Award presented to him at the 2016 New Hampshire Audubon Annual Meeting.

Davis Finch, with Black-capped Chickadee, Ipswich River (MA) Audubon Sanctuary, 4 November 2017. Photo by Jim Sonia.

Davis was also an annual visitor and tour leader to Monhegan Island, 12 miles off the coast of Maine, where in 1978 he initiated Christmas Bird Counts with Peter D. Vickery and Ralph S. Palmer. Among his publications was “Pelagic Birds of the Gulf of Maine” (Am Birds, March, 1987, v 32 (2) pp 140-155), written with Will Russell and Ed Thompson.

Fluent in French, Spanish, and English, and capable in Portuguese, Davis was appreciated by those who knew him for his wry humor and insights: seeing a fledgling Upland Sandpiper, he once shared that “we’re seeing a downy Uppie.” A howler monkey in Venezuela, draped lazily over a limb, was referred to as “an allegory of lassitude.” Nonetheless, it is perhaps telling that when people learned of his death, the most frequent responses were: “he was so kind to me,” or “he was always so patient in helping me.” 

We are honored that Davis asked that any donations in his memory be made to the Macaulay Library. To do so, please go to our website, birds.cornell.edu/tribute, select the “In Memoriam” button, then enter “Davis Finch” in the “Honoree/Memorial Name” field and proceed with the remainder of the form. Donors can choose to enter anyone they wish to be notified of their gift.