Jeff Parrott
speaker
1,461 appearances
12 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 2d ago
Jeff Parrott’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Now, while this approach seemed like an up-close and personal experience of research, Bailey knew that there was actually a kind of distance that existed between the scientist and the thing being studied.
Yes, the lab allowed for the bird to be explored in a setting of comfort and control, yet there was also a chasm between the observation of this dead bird on a table compared to a living bird in its natural habitat.
You could know about the bird in the lab, but you couldn't really know it.
You'd miss the glory of what it's really like as a living thing.
So in a rejection of the comfort and control of the scientific status quo, Bailey went outside of the lab to see what the living birds were really like.
She took up an opera glass, a special set of binoculars originally made for the theater, and used it to give her a better view of the birds she studied.
she exchanged the research lab for real life, and eventually wrote a landmark book in eighteen eighty nine entitled Birds Through an Opera Glass.
Here's a short excerpt that gets at the heart of her approach from the book.
The student who goes afield armed with an opera glass will not only add more to our knowledge than he who goes armed with a gun, but will gain for himself a fund of enthusiasm and a lasting store of pleasant memories.
Now, notice two things that are at play in her observation here.
The person who opts for real life instead of the research lab will not only have increased knowledge, but increased enthusiasm and pleasant memories.
There will be increased delight.
So, yes, studying birds in nature doesn't offer the comfort and control of the laboratory.
Instead, it offers a kind of real experience.
and real encounter that cannot be manufactured or manicured.
It's wild.
It's wonderful.
It enhances both the knowledge and the enjoyment of the thing being observed.
It's the only way to really know the glory of birds as they really are.
In many ways, the approach of Florence Miriam Bailey is analogous to the invitation of the Bible.
Showing 781–800 of 1,461 · page 40 of 74
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