Perhaps you have a field guide to Texas birds, or you’ve thumbed through one. They have a beautiful painting of a bird with a description of their range and scientific nomenclature. Kent Rylander, at the time a professor of biology at Texas Tech University, took that one step further by describing the complex lives of our feathered cohabitants. While we all live in the same world, our lives don’t intersect with wild birds often, and much of their lives is a mystery. About half of the behaviors described in this wildly unpredictable guide were from his original research, so Kent spent a great deal of time observing Texas birds and other birds in the writing of this book.
A Texas Tech staffer once told me that Kent had the reputation of being the best teaching professor the University had ever had. When Kent does a public presentation, come early to get a seat, as the room will be full. I never took a course from Kent, but in an event sponsored by the Native Plant Society of Texas, which I attended, Kent got a standing ovation at the conclusion an hour-long presentation. The talk ended with a stirring 10-minute description of how a woodpecker’s tongue works. I’m not kidding, it was fascinating.
Photo: pxhere.com
If you are a birder, you already know this is interesting stuff; if not, you will be shocked by what you discover in this book. Kent began his pursuit of knowledge of the natural world at the age of 13 in Boy Scout summer camp. One day, he was sick and couldn’t go out in the field with the other boys. The leader assigned him a project to do for the day – identify all the birds he could find in the camp. That led him to the Birding Merit Badge and a list of 40 birds to find, and ultimately to a 50-year career teaching at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and Junction.
I know Kent to be a kind and gentle person, and it is hard for me to imagine him as an Army draftee learning to fire a rifle, buy what I have always been amazed by is his insatiable curiosity about the natural world. I have been fortunate to visit Enchanted Rock with him a few times, where he gave a running narrative about all the birds we came across. Some of these birds I never saw, just heard, and Ken would explain in a whisper, “he’s somewhere in that tree over there” or “that’s a juvenile Bewick’s Wren, you can tell because he only has the first part of his call; the rest he won’t learn until he is older.”
Photo: pxhere.com
Now, among his many pursuits, Kent is in a jazz trio, playing the trumpet. He meets weekly with the young interpretative ranger at E-Rock, mentoring her as she learns about microscopic organisms. His curiosity led him to practice writing fiction, so different from the scientific writing he did all his life…and a very difficult transition for most. Kent has been a member of my writing critique group for many years, and I expect that if anyone in our group wins a big prize for writing it will be him; his stories are as unpredictable as, well, the behavior of Texas birds.
“THE AMAZON BASIN — UNRULY, INCRUTABLE, and unnerving in its immensity—is the adopted home of Europeans and North Americans who, like myself, have believed it could provide a slice of life important enough for us to endure its discomforts and accept its risks.” -Kent Rylander, “The Mustangs of Cotopaxi”
“The Behavior of Texas Birds” is available from the University of Texas Press, and his most recent fiction “The Mustangs of Cotopaxi” is on Blurb.
Originally published in the Fall Issue of Heart of Texas Magazine.
