The Godfather Of His Flock

"There are many undone chores at home," said Ryan, who lives in the District. "It has become a bit of an obsession."

Even for veterans such as Jo Solem, who worked on the prototype atlas in the 1970s in Howard and Montgomery counties, the project is "an excellent way of learning about birds. You watch, you observe, you try to determine what it is you're seeing."

The current effort documents the decline of forest-dwelling warblers trying to nest in woodlands stripped by voracious deer. Development and intensive farming have claimed many open fields and hedgerows, causing bobwhites, ring-necked pheasant, field sparrows and meadowlarks to disappear in Maryland. The population boom of nonnative species, such as Canada geese and house finch, also is noted.

Robbins's passion began while growing up in the Boston suburbs as the oldest of three boys. His college professor father and mother took their boys on bird walks on Sunday afternoons, and "we just grew up knowing the birds," Robbins said.

At Harvard, he wanted to study biology, but the course work was daunting so he switched his major to physics. He graduated in 1940, and because he was a conscientious objector during World War II, he came to the Patuxent research center as a member of a civilian public service corps. At the war's close, he got a job at the center, banding birds.

He and his wife, Eleanor, settled along the Patuxent River near Laurel, where they raised four children. Robbins attended George Washington University at night to receive his master's degree in biology in 1950. Surprisingly, ornithology was not included in his course work. "I've taught it, but I never studied it," he said.

Robbins's first landmark initiative was prompted in the early 1960s by a letter from a midwestern woman who worried that too many robins were dying from DDT spraying. Robbins couldn't tell her how the species was faring, but he decided to find out by devising a reliable, annual one-day survey of breeding birds.

Because there weren't enough federal or state wildlife employees to do the fieldwork, Robbins turned to knowledgeable amateurs who belonged to local birding societies. The survey had its trial run in Maryland and Delaware in 1965, and eventually spread to thousands of routes covered each spring and summer across the United States and Canada. Mexico is planning its first breeding bird survey for 2006.

Robbins also served as principal author of a popular one-volume field guide, "Birds of North America," first published as a Golden Guide in 1966 and revised under his editorship in 1983. He is also the author or co-author of more than 500 scientific papers.

In the 1980s, Robbins and Patuxent Wildlife Center researcher Barbara A. Dowell began documenting how the fragmenting of the mid-Atlantic forests reduced breeding by certain birds. They took that message to countries in Central and South America and for 16 years worked with researchers to show them how to band birds, protect forests and conduct bird censuses.

Another result, conservationists said, was Partners in Flight, a 14-year-old coalition of government and environmental groups in North and South America to monitor and protect migratory birds.

Robbins still handles a very crowded schedule. Some days start at 3:30 a.m., when he drives to the Eastern Shore to listen for night birds as part of his atlas work.

Oddly enough, though, this meticulous scholar has neglected to update his "life list," a record of every species observed that often is the hallmark of a serious birder. His incomplete records are stuffed in a bird book at home.

"Someday I'll do all these things," he said, "but I've got other things that keep me busy."