The good Cornellians can do: Robert Wurts Blye, Jr. ’72

Rob Blye ’72 spent 40 years working as a wildlife biologist for a consulting firm founded by his Cornell professor, Edward C. Raney.

When Rob retired, he and his wife moved to the Delmarva Peninsula, located between the Delaware and Chesapeake bays. This area boasts pine and oak forests, seacoast, both fresh and salt water marshes, and abundant bird life. Rob describes it as, “Lower, Slower Delaware.”

Rob notes that nearly 400 species have been spotted in this area and reported on eBird, the Cornell Lab virtual platform. In 2016, shortly after he relocated to Delaware, a fellow bird enthusiast and eBird contributor introduced Rob to the the Sussex Bird Club. Soon, Rob was organizing and leading birding walks for the community.

“Our bird walks occur biweekly and include as many as 25 people and as few as 2 or 3,” Rob says. “We get participants in bitter cold, searing heat, and all kinds of bad weather. If we do not schedule a field trip for two weeks, I get complaints,” he says.

Last winter he hosted a holiday bird count at Cape Henlopen State Park. A mother and son attended, and Rob was deeply impressed by the boy’s birding skills (Quentin, on the right in the photo above).

“We peered over the hill at Herring Point and a flock of birds approached. I said they look like cormorants and Quentin chimed in, ‘No; They're brant.’ He was correct!”

Rob reports that, one day, Quentin hopes to attend Cornell and study birds.

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