Meet the Editor of North American Birds

Edward S. Brinkley

Ned Brinkley (photo ca. 1893) before tripod leg extensions were invented.

(b. 4 May 1965), "Ned" to everyone but telephone solicitors, began birding at age 6 in May 1971 in the Great Dismal Swamp, an intoxicating bottomland hardwood swamp forest on the Virginia—North Carolina border. His mentors were the gracious and patient members of the Cape Henry Audubon Society: Susan Taylor Hubbard (whose father had been colleague and physician to Arthur T. Wayne, who described the waynei subspecies of Black-throated Green Warbler), Gisela Grimm, Rebecca White, Floy Burford (an avid collector in the mid-twentieth century, related to the Coffeys of Tennessee), Robert L. Ake (who brought California-style birding to Virginia), David L. Hughes, Robert L. Anderson (a student of Paul Buckley's at the time), Thomas Gwynn, Donald Schwab, and Grayson "Butch" Pearce, who treated Brinkley like a son. Their influences on the youngster in Norfolk of the 1970s were as varied as their own interests, but all shared a common quality: they were or are all naturalist-birders, interested in all aspects of the environment and in its preservation. Their combined knowledge of botany, herpetology, and limnology were as infectious as their love of birding.

Brinkley's parents, Stan (a mechanical engineer) and Kate (a librarian), encouraged their son to pursue the interest in the natural world and helped him attend The Nature Camp, in Vesuvius, Virginia, which taught courses in ornithology and herpetology, among many others. There, Brinkley met Fenton Day, the instructor in the ornithology course whose chilly predawn jeep rides through the Blue Ridge would produce an affection for the avifauna of the old mountains nearly as strong as that for the southern swampwoods.

Through his teen years, Brinkley birded Virginia and North Carolina with fine companions drawn mostly from Virginia's southern half and during this time developed a particular interest in pelagic seabirds through excursions organized by Ake and friend Paul G. Dumont. Through a liaison with sister-city Wilhelmshaven in (then) West Germany, Brinkley had the opportunity to live abroad in Jever, in Friesland, and study shorebirds on the famous "Wattenmeer" and adjacent coastal areas in 1982. After living in Europe, he lectured to local birding and Audubon groups on coastal seabirds of Europe and their identification.

Attending the University of Virginia for the undergraduate years of 1983-1987, Brinkley was able to bird the western reaches of the state more regularly and continued to make forays offshore in search of seabirds. Study at the University of Vienna, the Free University (Berlin), and the Goethe Institute during a year abroad in Europe culminated in a summer spent backpacking alone through Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, and a final week in Iceland, before returning to University for the final year. He graduated with a double B. A., awarded summa cum laude in Comparative Literature and summa cum laude in Germanic Languages and Literatures. His theses treated five centuries of Pauline and patristic exegesis (in comparative literature) and constructions of subjectivity in Robert Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (German/Austrian literature).

After study at Virginia, Brinkley moved on to study comparative literature at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, taking an M. A. and Ph. D. with concentration in western European literature, though he was able to spend three years studying African and African-American literature with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Wole Soyinka, Cornel West and others before resuming his work in European literature. His dissertation treats aspects of the transition from "decadent" modernist literature of the 1890s to fascist modernism of the 1910s and 1920s. While at Cornell, Brinkley helped guide up to 40 field trips per year for the Cayuga Bird Club and also worked as teaching assistant for Steve Kress, whose Field Ornithology course was a great local success. His interest in pelagic seabirds persisted, to the detriment of his progress toward a doctorate, leading him to guide tours for scores of days into Gulf Stream waters for Brian Patteson, Inc. and five other companies here over the years. The high point of all this searching was (finally!) the first verifiable sight record of a Bermuda Petrel at sea in July 1993; this led to journeys to Bermuda and to publication, with David Wingate, Brian Patteson, and Todd Hass, of an article on the identification of the species in the ABA's Birding magazine.

Brinkley returned to Virginia in 1994 to teach as an Assistant Professor at University of Virginia. During the mid-1990s, he worked in spare time as a birding tour guide for WINGS, Inc., in Manitoba and Antarctica, and helped design tours to other destinations as well. A university sabbatical spent in 1998 on the Eastern Shore of the state, however, proved his undoing, and he found himself unable to leave the coast and its rich birdlife for the western Piedmont as he had readily done in 1983. Taking what he likes to call "early retirement," he began guiding birding tours full time for Field Guides, Inc. (based in Austin, Texas), and opened a full-time birders' bed-and-breakfast inn (Sterling House Bed and Breakfast) on the Chesapeake Bay, with his partner, Steve Hairfield. His international tours have taken him to Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Iceland, Bermuda, Manitoba, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, while his domestic tours include North Carolina and Virginia offerings (of course) and several Texas destinations. In 2004, he hopes to offer a Greenland excursion as well.

Brinkley has published mostly on regional avifaunal observations, and his background as Editor of North American Birds is wholly that of a birder who has contributed observations to the journal for 22 years and who has relished reading the journal immensely. His hope is that in time the journal will grow into a larger, more resplendent periodical that holds something of interest for every serious birder in North and Middle America and beyond. He welcomes suggestions for improvements from all quarters: ensifera@aol.com.