An Eye for Beauty: Remembering Tom Johnson – Nirantara

From the Winter 2024 scenario of Dwelling Hen journal. Subscribe now.

In July 2023, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology neighborhood misplaced an costly good good friend and colleague when Tom Johnson handed away unexpectedly on the age of 35.

Tom’s extraordinary experience in footage, chook identification, and as a birding tour data have been pushed by how lots he preferred being out in nature. Johnson generously contributed more than 10,000 photos, audio, and video recordings to the Cornell Lab over 20 years, from his highschool years by means of his 2010 graduation from Cornell Faculty and previous.

“Previous his formidable experience and galvanizing passion for birding, Tom was an rather more wonderful particular person,” wrote Ian Owens, the supervisor director of the Cornell Lab. “His warmth, thoughtfulness, humility, and generosity of spirit made him an exemplary ambassador for birds and the pure world and an costly good good friend to many.”

An Eye for Magnificence

“Tom had a easy, warmth technique about him, immediately making anyone he was with actually really feel cozy,” says Brian Sullivan, a Cornell Lab digital publications enterprise chief and shut good good friend of Johnson’s. “He had the type of charisma that made others actually really feel seen and heard. He would wish us to keep up seeing all of the sweetness spherical us—the heartbeat of the planet that he preferred lots, the sweetness that on no account escaped his eyes.” 

All footage are by Tom Johnson. Faucet/click on on hyperlinks to view larger footage via their Macaulay Library archive internet web page.

Warblers in Flight

From an early age, Tom appeared to personal a pure current for taking chook footage. By the purpose he was an undergraduate at Cornell, inside the late 2000s, he was already capturing split-second flight footage of tiny birds on the switch in opposition to a limitless sky. None have been further spectacular than his warbler footage, a number of them taken at dawn from the comment platform at Higbee Seashore in his beloved Cape May, New Jersey. For many people, getting a well-lit, well-focused flight shot of any kind is set off for celebration; via the years Tom captured good flight footage of correctly over 20 warbler species, along with seldom-seen treasures like Cerulean, Connecticut, and Golden-winged Warblers.

Possibly the one best illustration of Tom’s persona, experience, and dedication is {a photograph} of a Prothonotary Warbler he found within the midst of the night on a ship south of Nantucket, Massachusetts. As well-known on an eBird pointers from the day, Tom heard the chook’s chip remember in his sleep and awoke at 2:30 a.m. Taking his digicam alongside to analysis, he ended up capturing this dramatic flight shot, in near-complete darkness, miles from land.

A Connection With Seabirds

For a lot of years after Tom’s graduation he served as a seabird observer on NOAA evaluation ships—an opportunity to sharpen his formidable observational experience with among the many chook world’s most notorious identification challenges. Tom was nicknamed “Albatross” by his Topic Guides colleagues, and his affinity for these wide-ranging, pressured, and ineffably glossy creatures is obvious from the images he launched residence. A chook like a Southern Royal Albatross may appear large, nonetheless in opposition to the limitless sweep of a gray ocean even this massive seabird is an issue to grab in a digicam physique.

Frontiers of Identification

Birding is about noticing particulars—it’s what brings a manner of discovery and likelihood to every journey exterior. Tom’s eye for aspect was unparalleled, and his capability to key in on virtually invisible variations or irregularities meant he often seen unusual birds that others might have handed by. Take into consideration watching a swooping swallow and realizing it was not a Cliff Swallow, nor the identical Cave Swallow, nonetheless a hybrid of the two? Or standing on a seashore in Nome, Alaska, and selecting by means of 100 White-winged Scoters to hunt out 5 virtually an similar Stejneger’s Scoters. Tom’s eBird checklist illustrates that finely tuned eye, noting the Stejneger’s completely completely different head type, eye blaze, and flank shade. (Whereas moreover noting, with attribute enthusiasm, that the sighting was “extraordinarily superior.”)

A World of Functionality

Tom spent virtually 10 years guiding birding excursions for Topic Guides, touring to a minimal of 15 worldwide places on some 120 journeys (be taught a remembrance from Topic Guides). In his 35 years, he amassed an unbelievable retailer of information and experience that he shared with anyone in his warmth and provoking technique.

“The fields of ornithology and birding blended have suffered an infinite loss,” says Sullivan, “as Tom was one in every of many unusual people who had the combo of experience wished to interrupt down the boundaries between these two worlds—he deftly communicated the magic of birds and the power of science to anyone in his path.” Tom had a breadth of information and enthusiasm that spanned from the tropics to the poles.

Certainly one of many true privileges of engaged on the Cornell Lab is the prospect to spend time with so many proficient youthful birders and ornithologists who come proper right here to test. Tom was one in every of many very brightest, and all of us assumed that we’d be finding out from him for a few years to come back again. We’re grateful for the time we had with Tom, and we be a part of alongside along with his family, buddies, and the broader birding neighborhood in remembering his life.