Matt Garvey '99 waits for the police officer to return with the speeding ticket.
At 6:30 on a Saturday morning, Garvey had not anticipated running into the police on Route 89.
Garvey suddenly points to something just beyond the windshield. "Did you see that?" he asks the reporter sitting next to him.
"It's a tree swallow," he says as he ducks his head to peer at the bird from a better angle.
Garvey is on his way to Heap Pinnacle, just north of Bethel, Vt., to conduct a bird census for the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences.
The police officer arrives with the ticket. Pulling off the shoulder of the road, Garvey spots another bird, this time a finch.
One of the most important aspects of bird watching is "being so attentive, all the time," Garvey says. Bird watching requires the use of eyes and ears to catch "any little movement, and then see what's causing it, to find out where the bird is."
They always land in Central Park
Garvey started bird watching as a child in New York City.
"When I was little, I always loved going to zoos and watching nature shows," he said.
Garvey took special interest in birds when he realized how many different and interesting species there are. "I wanted to learn about all their habitats and characteristics," he said.
Garvey's father encouraged his interest by taking him to bird sanctuaries. "My dad got into it, and we started going places on weekends" to go bird watching, he said.
New York City's Central Park is a surprisingly good place to go bird watching, Garvey said. "Any bird flying over New York City will land in Central Park," he said. "There aren't too many other places for the birds to go."
Garvey's interest in birding waned for a time, until high school when he participated in a summer camp in Arizona for young bird watchers. Garvey said he was "stunned" to meet young people who shared his interest in bird watching.
Attending the camp renewed Garvey's interest in bird watching, and gave him the idea for going to the World Series of Birding, held annually in New Jersey.
After the camp Garvey went home and studied birds. "The more I did it, the less frustrating [bird watching] was," he said.
Garvey is currently working on an Aquinas House internship in Manchester, N.H. He is the legislative intern for the Catholic Archdiocese and New Hampshire Council of Churches.
Two weekends ago, Garvey took time off from his leave-term internship to lead a team of students from the Arizona camp to the World Series of Birding. It was Garvey's fifth time competing at the event.
Garvey's team was the Wildbird Magazine Team Zugunruhe. Wildbird Magazine sponsored the team, and contributed $2,500 "towards conserving land in New Jersey deemed valuable to the birds that live there or migrate through each spring and fall," Garvey said.
"Zugunruhe" is an orthinological term that describes a bird's restless, anxious state of mind when it wants to fly and migrate, Garvey explained.
The World Series of Birding is a 24-hour "bird-a-thon" in which contestants try to identify by sight or sound as many species of birds as possible within the state of New Jersey.
Garvey said his team "saw 157 species of birds, which I don't think was that bad considering it rained almost the whole 24 hours, really hard at times."
Garvey's team came in third out of the 19 teams that limited their bird watching to one county in New Jersey, and 12th out of 47 teams overall.
Some can't whistle
Turning left before the intersection he has already crossed three times in search of Heap Pinnacle, Garvey stops his car. Two birds in front of his car do not want to move.
After the birds fly away, Garvey continues to drive.
Once he finds Heap Pinnacle, Garvey is supposed to "collect data along a set route, to get an assessment of the birds that use the Connecticut River Valley as a stopover point," he says.
But the directions provided by the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences to the site are not very clear, and Garvey does not find Heap Pinnacle until after 8:30 a.m. It is best to bird watch early in the morning when the birds are more active and vocal, Garvey says, and 8:30 is a little late to start looking for birds.
Although he will have to wait until the next day to conduct the census, Garvey gets out of his car to look for a few birds anyway.
Garvey cannot whistle, which impedes his ability to make bird calls. But he can make a "psshing" noise, which piques the birds' curiosity. Several birds sing back to Garvey, including a tiny hummingbird that he spots as it buzzes through the air above his head.
Kate Creskoff '99, Garvey's friend, said Garvey's birdcalls are still effective.
"Last summer, Matt and I were hiking on the Appalachian Trail and all of a sudden he stopped abruptly because he heard a chickadee. He started making this 'psssh psssh' noise and the next thing I knew, tons of birds were flocking around him," she said. "It was like he was the Pied Piper."
During spring break, as part of the Tucker Foundation Jamaica Volunteer Immersion Group, Garvey's interest in birds led him to an unusual person.
While on a group trip to the Bob Marley Museum, Creskoff said Garvey heard a birdcall and raced to find the source of it.
"Without warning, he rushed out in back of the garages -- where tourists aren't really supposed to go -- to find the source of the call," Creskoff said.
"Turns out he ran into and befriended Georgie from 'No Woman No Cry'," Creskoff said.
Garvey's love of bird watching also factored into his decision to attend Dartmouth. Garvey said he liked the College's rural environment and its emphasis on activity in the outdoors.
Bird watching and Dartmouth "allow me to go places I would otherwise never get to," he said.
This summer, Garvey will work for the Environmental Defense Fund. A history major, Garvey is thinking about law school after graduation from the College.
He is particularly interested in environmental law since it would combine his academic interests with bird watching.
"It's something I'm possibly considering as an interesting way to protect birds and their habitats," Garvey said.
On the way back from Heap Pinnacle, he gets no speeding tickets.
