John Value Dennis

Background

John Value Dennis was born on November 9, 1916, in Princess Anne, Maryland, United States. He grew up in Washington. His father died when he was a teenager, and for a time he helped his mother operate a boardinghouse in Washington.

Education

Before World War II, John Dennis attended George Washington University. After the war, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied political science. It was at Wisconsin that he began to develop an interest in ornithology. A friend used to wake him early in the morning to go bird-watching, and Dennis found that he liked it. In 1951, he received a master's degree in botany at the University of Florida and started work on a doctorate in ornithology at the University of Illinois, but never completed that degree.

Career

During World War II, John Dennis was a radar technician with the Flying Tigers aircraft unit in Yunnan, China. While serving, he went birding in the rugged mountains and valleys of Western China.

In 1948, he journeyed to the remote mountains of Oriente Province in Eastern Cuba in search of the rare ivorybill woodpecker, which had been thought to be near extinction. He found a nest and three adults of an ivorybill subspecies. He also learned of a sighting in northwestern Florida in 1950, and during his investigation, he heard what he believed was the bird's unique "hant hant" call. Dennis responded to a reported sighting at the Big Thicket area of East Texas in December 1966 and stated he saw the elusive bird for himself. He returned in 1968 and made audio recordings of what he identified as the woodpecker's call. But the ornithologist community mostly dismissed Dennis' claims as erroneous and argued the quality of his field recordings were inferior and inconclusive.

Dennis headed the Nantucket Ornithological Station during the early 1950s and was a biologist for Koppers Co. in Pittsburgh and the American Petroleum Institution during the 1960s and early 1970s. He worked as a field researcher for the Nature Conservancy from 1977 to 1979. Dennis was best known as the author of birdwatching guides and guidebooks for maintaining bird feeders and gardens. His book A Complete Guide to Bird Feeding (1975) includes information on how to select and locate bird feeders, how to protect bird feeding sites from predators, how to use the planting and topography of a garden to attract birds and how to select, prepare and set out bird food. Other books are Wildlife and Garden Plants (1983), Summer Bird Feeding (1988), The Great Cypress Swamp (1988), and a volume focusing on his beloved region of Maryland, The Pocomoke: History and Natural History of Maryland's Most Scenic River (2000). With Charles R. Gunn he wrote the World Guide to Tropical Drift Seeds and Fruits, in 1976, which, in effect, is a catalog of the material sometimes known as "sea beans" that washes up on beaches around the world, sometimes after drifting on ocean currents for up to 15,000 miles. From this material, scientists can calculate the direction and distance of ocean currents, and they can often glean cultural and anthropological information.

On the windswept moors of Nantucket, he netted and banded migratory birds. He explored the flora and fauna of the Congaree Swamp in South Carolina.

Achievements

• While in Pittsburgh, John Dennis invented a bird repellent that kept woodpeckers from damaging telephone poles. Since its publication in 1975, his book A Complete Guide to Bird Feeding has been considered the best book on the subject. It was said to have helped make bird feeding popular among suburban Americans.

Works

More photos

• book

  • World Guide to Tropical Drift Seeds and Fruits

    (This guide is for amateurs and professionals who find ple...)

    1976
  • A Complete Guide to Bird Feeding

    (Detailed advice on the design and placement of bird feede...)

    1975
  • The Great Cypress Swamps

    (Looks at the history of swampland in the southeastern Uni...)

    1988
  • Summer Bird Feeding 1988

Views

John Dennis supposed that once begun, a bird feeding program should not be halted in a time of scarcity, such as winter as many birds become so dependent upon people's bounty that they would not be able to manage on their own if people suddenly discontinued the feeding at a critical time of the year.

Membership

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  When John Dennis returned after World War II, he found a job as the sanctuary director for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, where he worked until 1949.

  Massachusetts Audubon Society , United States

  1949

Connections

John Value Dennis was married to Mary Alice Dennis. He had three children: Louisa Dennis Wilking, Laura Dennis, and John Value Dennis, Jr. He had a brother Alfred P. Dennis and six grandchildren.

Brother:

Alfred P. Dennis

Wife:

Mary Alice Dennis

Daughter:

Louisa Dennis Wilking

Daughter:

Laura Dennis

Son:

John Value Dennis, Jr.