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With him, a trip down the river was an education

Thanks to the continual work of Rich Paul, many local species of birds are now safe.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published November 13, 2005

	[Times file photo]
	Rich Paul made it his mission to conserve ecosystems throughout the county in the interest of the avian inhabitants. He died Friday after a yearlong battle with cancer.

Whenever Rich Paul took me bird-watching, I felt like an amateur golfer who gets to play 18 holes with Tiger Woods. I enjoyed it, but I was always nervous about missing an easy putt.

"Is that a reddish egret?" he called from the stern of the boat, where he was poling through the shallows near the mouth of the Alafia River. It was my call. I had the binoculars.

Reddish egrets, uncommon, usually are a rusty brown color. But there's a whitish variety, too. I felt flattered that somebody like Rich, the manager of the Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuary for National Audubon, treated me like an equal who should know his birds.

"Yeah, reddish egret," I told him. "But it's a white morph."

"Let me see," he said, calling the bluff.

I handed over the binoculars.

"A great egret," he said with a snort.

I had missed a gimme putt.

I can't believe Rich is gone. He was only 59 when he died of cancer Friday at a hospice in Temple Terrace. An Audubon employee for more than three decades, he protected the birds of Tampa Bay from the impact of 125,000 boats and 3-million people.

When he started, only three islands in the bay boasted active colonies of seabirds. At his passing, there are 50,000 pairs of breeding birds and 50 colonies.

He doesn't deserve all the credit - the birds certainly did their part. But their best friend had to be this gangly-as-a-stork fellow named Rich Paul.

"The key to protecting birds is protecting their habitat," was the gospel he always preached.

He knew that seabirds are especially vulnerable to changes in their habitat. Some seabirds, like the endangered least tern, don't even nest in trees. They nest directly on the sand. A pedestrian walking his dog on a beach will frighten parent birds away from their nests.

Many of us who live in West Central Florida learned about birds from Rich.

He graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and got his master's in wildlife ecology at Utah State. He studied golden and bald eagles out west and Adelie penguins in the Antarctic. In the Caribbean, he studied colonial waterbirds and flamingoes.

He arrived here in Tampa. He made sure nobody was shooting birds on the islands of Tampa Bay. In the heat of summer, he'd wade into the mosquito-infested mangroves and rescue pelicans entangled in fishing line. He counted roseate spoonbill chicks in their nests.

Even when he was sick, he kept his eagle eye on the birds. His wife, Ann, a talented ornithologist who has replaced him at Audubon, took me out to look for spoonbill nests this spring. But Rich was in the boat with us in spirit.

He'd sent along an obscure 19th century journal I had never seen about the hunting of plume birds in Tampa Bay. But that's what Rich was all about. Educating.

He was all scientist, which meant he was not a touchy-feely guy. In fact, he always tried to guard his enthusiasm, at least in front of me. But every once in a while it would slip out.

One time, as we hauled his boat at a ramp near Ruskin, a flock of pigeons flew over. Pigeons are part of the scenery - rats with wings, some people call them. I barely gave them a glance. But Rich was so attuned he immediately noticed they were flying nervously.

"A peregrine falcon!" he shouted. Sure enough, the great predatory bird was inches behind the pigeons. It was one of the highlights of my birding career.

Then he was Rich again, the calm and collected teacher. He told me the natural history of peregrine falcons, but I knew he was just as thrilled as I was.

Brown pelicans. Great blue herons. Little blue herons. Oyster catchers, double-crested cormorants, sanderlings, marbled godwits, Caspian terns, willets and ruddy turnstones.

If you take a boat out on Tampa Bay, and you know what you're looking for, you might see them.

Black-necked stilts. Yellow-crowned night herons, American avocets, great yellowlegs. Long-billed curlews.

Roseate spoonbills. Reddish egrets.

In the 21st century, their populations are in pretty good shape around here.

Rich left the world a better place than the one he found.

Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 893-8727 and klink@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 13, 2005, 07:39:45]