Roger Tory Peterson celebrated his 80th birthday at a book-signing party in Concord, Massachusetts. In an apt location, near Walden Pond and the 'the shot heard 'round the world' bridge -- 400 people celebrated the man who revolutionized bird-watching and sowed the seeds of America's environmental movement.

I asked the Dean of bird artists how it all began. He immediately replied: "It was 9:30am, April 8, 1920. I was a kid, roaming around, when I saw a pile of brown feathers on the trunk of a tree. I poked it. A bird -- a flicker looked at me with wild eyes, then flew away in a flash of gold. What struck me was the contrast between what I thought was dead -- to something, in the next instant, very much alive. Birds are the most vivid expressions of life. I like butterflies, too, but they don't sing. . ."

Roger Tory Peterson was born in Jamestown, New York in 1908. While Peterson was teaching science and art at the Rivers School in Brookline, Massachusetts, William Vogt, the first editor of Audubon Magazine persuaded him to write and illustrate a pocket-sized guide for bird watchers.

Although, in the midst of the Depression, Houghton Mifflin decided to print 2,000 copies of Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide To The Birds. Because of the risk anticipated in the project, the author agreed to forego royalties on the first 1,000 copies. All 2,000 copies sold out within one week. Now -- 54 years and millions of copies later the Peterson Field Guides still sell at a rate of 150,000 per year. Peterson's Field Guides are considered the greatest inventions since binoculars.

Inside the Nature Company store, hundreds of people stood in line for the hour-an-a-half Mr. Peterson and his wife, Virginia (she does the range maps) signed books.

Overheard in line: "John James Audubon is no longer the King -- Roger Tory Peterson is!" "Audubon's birds don't have any bones in them." "Peterson paints the very grouseness of the grouse!"

Hard-core birders greeted their guru with the queedle queedle of the blue jay and a gracoo-a-a-a of the sand hill crane. Original first editions of A Field Guide To Birds were placed before him to sign -- a few already bearing his signature -- second and third generations bringing the family heirloom in for an update.

The image of bird watchers as "absent minded ornithology professors and old dowagers is ridiculous," Peterson said. He went on to explain that corporate executives, generals, prime ministers, kings and presidents, along with innumerable ordinary folk, are enthusiastic birders. "And it is inevitable that the intelligent person who watches birds becomes an environmentalist. Birds are the 'early warning system' of man's damage to the environment."

Peterson likened the mind of a good birder to a kaleidoscope -- wherein fragments of colored glass fall into symmetrical patterns. "We see a bird, and center it in our glass. All the thousands of fragments we know about birds: locality, season, habitat, voice, action, field marks, and likelihood of occurrence flash across the mind and fall into place -- and we have the name of our bird."

Peterson's kaleidoscopic mind has identified more than half of the birds known to exist, and he is one of two individuals who has seen all seventeen species of penguins around the world.

Peterson has received almost every award in the fields or ornithology, natural history, wildlife conservation, and public service, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented by President Carter -- the highest honor a civilian can be awarded in the United States.

"A New York publisher is doing a book called The Courage To Grow Old and wants me to contribute," Peterson said. "Frankly, I'm angry and scared of growing old. I have five more books to do!"

Peterson spoke of the role photography plays in his finished art. "As an artist you have to be careful with photos. People think that the camera doesn't lie, when of course it does. There's the thing about color temperature. Once I took a picture of a bird at noon and there was all this blue shading, and then I took it again at dusk, and it looked like an entirely new species. The photo records an instant, whereas a drawing is the composite of many past experiences."

After the book signing and birthday celebration, while walking along Monument Street, I asked Roger Tory Peterson the key to his success.

"I have friends in high places!" he said with a wry smile -- as a flock of Concord crows sailed cackling overhead.