Gris: His eyes are on the sparrows
Ty Ivey brakes for birds.
OK, maybe he doesn’t always stop the car.
But while others are daydreaming on the avenues, making phone calls during rush-hour traffic and keeping time with the radio along the interstate, Ty’s eyes are on the sparrows.
He is passionate about every feathered friend, from blue jays and brown thrashers to purple martins. He loves barn swallows and chimney swifts, ospreys and bald eagles.
“When I’m driving down the street or going to lunch, I see all the birds,” he said. “Some people don’t even know they passed one.”
Away from the high-speed cable of life, Ty finds joy perched on fence posts and telephone wires. Who needs Twitter when the world is filled with tweets, chirps and warbles?
He shoots them, too, even mockingbirds. And not with a gun, but a cannon.
Actually, it’s a Canon camera the size of a bazooka. The 500mm lens is almost 2 feet long and weighs 7 pounds. He can focus so tight you can see the veins in the feathers.
For most of the past 38 years, Ty has captured images of thousands of birds in thousands of places. It’s easier now. At age 71, he is more patient.
And, in this era of digital photography, he doesn’t have to fret about the cost of film. He can train his lens for hours, as if he is sitting in the bough of the same tree, and snap away.
Today is National Audubon Day. It was established to celebrate the birthday of John James Audubon, who was born on April 26, 1785. Audubon was a French-American artist and ornithologist. He identified more than 700 North American bird species in his book, “The Birds of America,” and included 435 drawings.
About 85 million Americans are active in bird-watching, according to a recreation and environment survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For Ty and others, the love of “birding” goes beyond a pair of binoculars and a field guide.
Beauty is meant to be shared, not kept to oneself.
“It’s like a sunset,” Ty said. “It means more if you share the experience. Photographing birds is my way of sharing with others.”
At the fourth annual Old City Flower Festival at Vineville Methodist in January, several people asked me if I had seen Ty’s excellent exhibit in a second-floor hallway of the church, where he is a member.
I told them I have been looking at Ty’s bird photographs for more than 30 years. He has been my dentist since I moved to Macon. I have had many a tooth cleaned, drilled and filled at his office on Forsyth Street, while admiring his wall of wings.
He grew up in Macon and graduated from Lanier High School in 1961. His mother was a nurse and his father owned a clothing store, Ivey’s Men Shop, on Cherry Street.
He always wanted to be a dentist, but briefly ventured into journalism in high school, working part time in the Telegraph sports department.
(There is a photograph in the newspaper’s archives of the newsroom on Cherry Street in the early 1960s. It shows Managing Editor Jim Chapman and Sports Editor Harley Bowers sitting at their desks. Tom Johnson, another part-timer from Lanier, is in the picture. Johnson went on to become publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN. In the background of the photo is cub reporter Ty Ivey.)
He graduated from Mercer in 1964 and dental school at Emory University in 1968. After two years in the Navy, he returned to Macon and opened his dental practice on First Street in 1970. He married his wife, Cathy, the following year.
The genesis of his bird-watching began in 1977, when he and Cathy visited Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. They were fascinated by a beautiful bird -- a Clark’s nutcracker -- but could not identify it.
Although the nutcrackers were everywhere, a park ranger was nowhere to be found.
It turned out to be a blessing.
“If I had found a ranger who could have told me what it was, I might never have gotten interested in birds,” he said.
Cathy has always been one of Macon’s most ardent readers and a longtime member of the Friends of the Library. She suggested he buy the “Golden Guide to Birds” for $4.95 and read it on the flight home. When he got back to Macon, he went exploring with a pair of old binoculars, and a new world opened up.
During the time Georgia Power was building Plant Scherer, he would drive to where they were clear-cutting for Lake Juliette and discovered dozens of bird species there. That Christmas, he went on a bird count at Lake Tobesofkee with the local chapter of the Audubon Society.
“A bald eagle flew right down the middle of the lake,” he said. “I was hooked.”
His bird-watching is mostly centered in Georgia and Florida, but he has been all over the country. Two of his favorite photographs now hang on canvas at his dental office.
One is of a painted bunting, a member of the cardinal family and among the most colorful and beautiful birds in North America. They have a blue head, red breast, chartreuse back and reddish-orange feathers.
“They are only here in the summer,” he said. “They look like tropical jungle birds with fat bills. Any time you can get a photograph of a painted bunting, you have something special.”
Another favorite is an action photograph of a pair of Mississippi kites, which are birds of prey in the same family as hawks and eagles.
Ty caught them in a flurry of outstretched wings and poised heads. Actually, they were about to mate.
Later, realizing he couldn’t enter anything “pornographic” in a photo contest, he cleverly named it “Aerial Combat.” It took home a blue ribbon at the Georgia National Fair in Perry.
There is a spiritual side, too. Years ago, I asked Ty to present a slide show of his bird photography to a local civic club. As he proudly displayed images of amazing birds that have long since flown away to heaven, the music to one of my favorite hymns played in the background.
This is my Father’s world.
The birds their carols raise.
The morning light, the lily white.
Declare their maker’s praise. ...
Contact Gris at 744-4275 or egrisamore@macon. com.
This story was originally published April 25, 2015 at 8:01 PM with the headline "Gris: His eyes are on the sparrows ."