Davis Finch

Davis Wells Finch passed away Friday, October 18, peacefully in the Exeter Hospital after a short illness.

Born in Boston in 1938 he grew up in Exeter and East Kingston, New Hampshire. After attending Exeter Academy he received an undergraduate degree at Yale University (1959) and then a Master’s in French Literature. Following he had a brief career as a French instructor at Yale and Vassar College.

But his first love from his very early years was birding. Under the encouragement of his parents he started keeping meticulous records of birds around his home in New Hampshire. This passion continued through Yale where he was mentored by the esteemed professor of Ornithology S. Dillon Ripley. In the early 1970’s he left the teaching profession and founded the bird tour company Northeast Birding and eventually cofounded Wings, one of the three biggest bird tour companies in the US.

He is survived by his nephew, Roderick Topping, and many many birders and naturalists who took inspiration from his work and encyclopedic knowledge of birds all over North and South America.

His family’s dear friend Ann Nesslage remembered him with this poem:

 For Davis, after reading Irish myths

If I spoke the language of birds,

I would wander like Suibhne, standing still as feathers sprouted from my fingers —stork like , heron like, listening to the linnets and little birds before I uttered my harsh cries, I would follow them, listening, listening, wishing to be heard.

If I spoke, the language of birds, I would come through storms and surging waves to a quiet pool like the children of Lir and sing my sweet songs in a high human voice through my long swan throat and then fall silent as the linnets, nightingales, and all the little birds replied.

If I spoke the language of birds and the ancient monk returned me to my human form, I would mourn the loss.

And I would find a desk and sitting under a solitary light I would write and write – – word scratchings, bird scratchings, remembering the music, remembering the flight, the dance, longing for the wonder, the wonder.