Bird Watcher's Digest - September/October 2017

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“It was 39 years ago today….” said Bird Watcher’s Digest

Founding Publisher Elsa Thompson, the last person surviving from the original triumvirate that founded BWD in

1978. Her partners in launching the first issue were her husband, Bill Thompson, Jr., and William “Shep” Sheppard, a professor at Marietta College, who served as editor of that initial edition.

BWD is now entering its 40th year of publishing. It all began with a stay-at-home mom’s desire to get beyond her kitchen and learn what she didn’t know about birds and nature.

“I was taken with a weekly newspaper column, Birds I View, in the Marietta Times, written by Pat Murphy,” Elsa said. “She was a bird savant— and her passion was contagious.

The characters she wrote about
intrigued me. I wanted to know
more about birds and about the
people who chased them.”
Elsa contacted a local
women’s club, the Betsey Mills,
which organized the weekly
bird-watching adventures Mur-
phy led. Elsa’s participation
with the club drew in her two
sons, Billy (Bill Thompson, III)
and Andy, who were in elemen-
tary school. As Elsa’s interest
blossomed, so did that of her
sons. Eventually, their week-
ends grew to be dominated by
bird watching, and Elsa, Bill III,
Andy, and Pat Murphy would
regularly gather on Saturdays
to listen to and observe the sea-
sonal comings and goings of the
birds of the Mid-Ohio Valley.
By the mid-1970s, Elsa, Bill
III, and Andy were all in, but
one major holdout remained:
Bill Thompson, Jr. Elsa recalls,
“Bill felt somewhat excluded
from our adventures, but one
time, when he and I were bird
watching, he was on his own
and identified a sora—an
uncommon sighting in our area.
Reflections on BWD