Geoff Dennis lives in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where he makes a living as a commercial fisherman. He’s also an avid photographer and birder, two hobbies that converged in 1995, when he photographed what is thought to be Rhode Island’s first Rufous Hummingbird in his backyard. Since then, Geoff has spotted and photographed a plethora of birds, both close to home and during trips to Monhegan Island in Maine. His photos have graced marketing materials for birdfeeder companies and been used by The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and other organizations.
A shorter interview with Geoff, focused on his experience with migratory neotropical warbler fallouts on Monhegan, will appear in the Spring issue of Northern Woodlands magazine, which publishes March 1.
I grew up literally on the shores of the Sakonnet River part of Narragansett Bay. Right from an early age, we were down at the beach exploring, catching crabs, doing all sorts of outdoor stuff. There were a lot of places we used to love to go. My brothers and I, we’d go down to a little area called Fogland Point Marsh to catch blue crabs. They’re nasty little things, with a nasty bite. We used to catch them by wiggling our feet in the mud. They’d reach up and bite our feet, and we’d reach down and grab them. I can remember, when I was 10 or 12 years old, I found a cecropia moth caterpillar, then found a cecropia moth a couple of years later. At that age, that kind of stuff fascinates you. It’s just curiosity, plain old curiosity.
I’m one of five. My brothers and sisters all went off to college. I did one semester down here at Roger Williams College. I did well. I proved that I could do it. But my head was outdoors all the time. My two brothers are computer whizzes. My sister’s a veterinarian. And I just love the outdoors.
Where I grew up, I could literally walk out of the house, out onto the porch, down the steps, across the lawn and beach, and there was the river. There were guys that were shellfishing out there – it’s called bull-raking – and I got to know them over time. I was working at a local market, and these guys would stop in in the mornings and get their coffee before they went out. I began to recognize them when they were working out on the water. So I’d throw on my mask and my fins and I’d swim a mile or two out and join them on the boats. I learned pretty quickly that they were making more money in one morning than what I was making in an entire week. So I saved up and bought a boat, bought all the equipment, bought an outboard and that’s where it all started, in the mid-1970s.
You see a lot of stuff on the water. And that’s what got me interested in birds. Early in the morning in the fall, you’d hear the little call notes of the birds before the sun came up, and I wondered what they heck they were doing at that time of day. So I learned about migration, and that just totally blew my mind, what they’re capable of doing. It left me in awe of them.
I started learning more and more and really became interested in birding in the mid-1990s. When my dad passed away, I inherited his manual focus Nikon camera. I thought it was the greatest thing. It had a 500 millimeter lens, which I didn’t realize at the time was a piece of junk. It was the cheapest one you could get. I went out there blowing away film trying to photograph birds. I had put up bird feeders in the yard, and I started seeing birds I’d never seen before. I wanted to know what I was seeing, so I really started going over the bird books and being able to identify them by eye, and eventually by ear, too.
My friend Fred Thurber was into birds, and he was writing a bi-weekly article for a local newspaper. He’d call and ask me if I’d seen anything cool in the yard. I’d tell him what I was seeing, and I could sense the doubt in his voice. The photography helped me to prove that I was seeing what I said I was seeing. And then in 1995, a little Rufous Hummingbird showed up in my yard. It was Rhode Island’s first. It was in mid-October that bird showed up. I got a call that afternoon from a gentleman from the Rhode Island Ornithological Club and he said do you mind if I come down with my son tomorrow. He ended up showing up with the entire Ornithological Club, and then the word spread. New Jersey, Vermont – people came from all over to see it.
I went to Monhegan 19 years in a row, starting in 1996. Tom Martin was a birder there and was responsible for the island’s reputation as a birding hotspot. He began going there in 1945. We didn’t hit it off in the beginning; that can be Tom’s way. One day on the island, I was photographing a female American Redstart on a rocky section of shoreline near where he and his wife Josephine stayed. I don’t recall the how long I was there at that spot, wedged in between rocks, but it was a very long time. Hours I’m sure. I had trouble walking for a few steps till dead legs came back to me. Tom had been watching me. I came up from the shore by his place, and he came out the upstairs door with a big grin on his face and shouted down, “You have what I had!” And our friendship was born. He was a dear friend and mentor to me and left me with lots of great memories. Tom died in 2016.
I volunteer for The Nature Conservancy, working with piping plovers. This year will be 20 years doing it. They joke about me being their unpaid employee. I’m kind of proud of it. I put in over 500 hours a year between April and mid-September. We have to set up the fencing every year on April first. Because of what I do – my type of fishing is very physical – I’ve got some pretty good arms. I’m really good at hammering in these steel poles, because it’s going into cobble – it’s not beach sand at all. Then it’s putting up the predator exclosures when we find a nest. Basically, it’s wire with two-by-four-inch openings, and the plovers can pass through very easily, but the predators can’t. You put mesh netting on top so crows and gulls can’t get in. It allows the nest to be protected until the eggs hatch. And once they hatch out, the chicks are precocial, so they’re up running and feeding themselves. We’ve had our good years and our bad years. Last year was tough, because there was a big explosion in the fox population. The crows have been getting into them a lot lately, too. And we’ve had skunks going through the wire. You’ve got to do something to help these poor little birds if you spend enough time with them.
One of my favorite places is Goosewing Beach Preserve. It’s quiet down there now. I like to walk down there and just disappear from the world for a little bit.
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