A birder who talks turkey at professional meetings about the effect of food supplementation on chickadees in the Maine woods and publishes papers with titles such as "The Foraging Behavior of Semipalpated Sandpipers in the Upper Bay of Fundy: Stereotyped or Prey-Sensitive?" Wilson communicates just as well with people who don't know biology from biomass. He has given talks and led outings for area birders since he arrived at Colby in 1990. A column he began writing for the local Audubon Society newsletter evolved to "For the Birds," a bi-weekly Waterville Morning Sentinel and Augusta Kennebec Journal column that has offered timely information for area birders since 1993.

One article last fall explained how the pine siskin, an infrequent winter visitor in Maine, showed up in 1999 because seed crops to the north were poor, forcing the pine siskins, which feed on seeds from spruce, hemlock and other trees, to migrate into Maine and points south. Even rookie birders could recognize this little finch (brown on top with white underparts and yellow wing bars), its personality ("highly social") or its call ("a buzzy ‘zreeeeee' note") and distinguish the male from the female. The column topped off with the e-mail addresses of a couple of Web sites showing pictures of the pine siskin.

Sometimes Wilson touches on subjects of general interest–the effect of wind-power turbines on migrating birds, for instance–and sometimes on specific issues, such as why turkeys have both light and dark meat. "I try to mix it up," he said, "to make the column interesting and to help people learn more about birds." He usually ends either with a "bird bulletin" of sightings reported by readers or with a request for questions.

And flock in they do, two to 10 letters or e-mails after every column. From all over the state he hears about sightings of 40 sharp-shinned hawks, a northern shrike, a peregrine falcon, a few merlins. And however many e-mail or snail mail questions come winging his way, Wilson says he always takes the time to respond.

He also gets phone queries. What was it, one mystified caller wanted to know–a bird flew up out of the snow literally between his shuffling snowshoes during a moonlight trek in the woods the night before. Did he hurt the bird? Was it already injured or freezing? No, no, the bird buries itself in the snow, explained Wilson, describing the behavior of the ruffed grouse. Sometimes, he says, strangers recognize him from his picture in the column and chat him up. "It's fun," he said, a scientist gladly instructing novices.

Wilson, who grew up in North Carolina, says his mother claims that his first word was "bird"; he says he was 12 or 13 when the family vacationed on the coast and he and his four siblings walked along the beach to see an osprey nest. "That got me excited about birds," he said. It may have taken something like Big Bird to catch his eye, but over his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina and Ph.D. work at Johns Hopkins Wilson's interests tended toward smaller species–such as the song sparrows on Colby's Runnals Hill–a prime site for the sparrows, he adds, because they like a little woody vegetation.

Below the main campus in observation blinds in Colby's Perkins Arboretum and Bird Sanctuary, Wilson and his students watch chickadees cluster around nearby feeders. Sometimes the birds are captured in mist nets, then banded with color bands. When a particular bird returns to feed, visit or vocalize, the bird watcher usually needs only binoculars, but the microphone and directional tape recorder or the video camera also may be up and running–mechanical eyes and ears helping take stock of the frequency of the bird's returns, variations between it and other birds coming to the feeder, the bird's aggressiveness or other foraging behavior. "The banding allows you to identify an individual. Otherwise you're just looking at chickadees," Wilson said.

As the result of a Northeast Educational Services grant, which included funds for the blinds and for faculty who use the arboretum as a resource, his ornithology course will visit the area more frequently than in the past, Wilson says. "We're seeking increased use of the arboretum," he said, explaining the overall theme of the grant. Although the ecology and animal behavior courses have always used the place, and the introductory biology course goes in for a day, he thinks new courses in humanities may be devised around the sanctuary and that the humanities will profit most from the stipends.

Perkins Arboretum is home to barred owls, downy and hairy and pileated woodpeckers, bluejays, American crows, American goldfinches, white and red-breasted nuthatches (they descend trees headfirst) and brown creepers (they climb trees using tails as well as feet, like a lineman with cleats and belt going up a utility pole). The numbers of these year-round residents swell in the summertime. "You can find fifty species in a few hours," Wilson said. "What's interesting is the diversity of the feeding types. They feed on flying insects. Nectar. You see them boring into deadwood. All sorts of things."