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Last summer, even as he talked about facing jail time, Jim Stevenson couldn’t stop looking for birds. “There’s a couple yellow-crowned night herons,” he said, pointing out his living-room window. “They roost in that chinaberry tree.” He rested his eyes on the blue-gray birds. “Anyway, the cops pulled me over and searched my van and found the gun, and —”
Stevenson is a bearish, ruddy-faced 54-year-old former science teacher who is known as the ornithological guru of Galveston, Tex. Ten years ago, he moved to this Gulf Coast barrier island because of its abundant shorebirds. Enormous flocks of American avocets, willets, sanderlings, dowitchers and plovers feed in the shallow, fertile estuary of Galveston Bay. Stevenson built his house amid a clump of trees so he could always be watching birds; he lives in a bird blind. Birds are his obsession and his profession. He is the director of the Galveston Ornithological Society and publisher of the quarterly newspaper Gulls n Herons. For money, he leads bird-watching tours.