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[Sid Easley <Sid.Easley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following is a copy of an obit in the NYTimes  March 8, 2003.   The 
founder of the American Birding Association, G. Stuart  Keith  died Would 
that we all have this kind of leaving.
Melissa Easley
Murray, Ky.


G. Stuart Keith, a champion bird-watcher who was a founder
of the American Birding Association and who at one time had
a good claim to having seen more birds than anyone else
alive, died on Feb. 13 while on a bird-watching expedition
to the Micronesian island of Chuuk, sometimes called Truk,
in the Pacific Ocean. He was 71 and lived in Redding,
Calif.
The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Sallyann, who
was with him on the trip.
She said his wish had always been to die on a bird-watching
trip after seeing a bird he had never seen before. He got
his way, having spotted the Caroline Islands ground dove,
Gallicolumba kubaryi, for the first time the day before he
died.
In the 1970's, he was the first person to report seeing
4,000 different species, and the Guinness Book of Records
then credited him with having spotted more different kinds
of birds than anyone else in the world.
At the time of his death, Mr. Keith was credited with
having seen more than 6,500 different bird species, or
about two-thirds of the roughly 9,000 species that,
according the American Museum of Natural History, exist
today. (Phoebe Snetsinger, who died in 1999, was later
recognized by the association for having seen about 8,400
of them.)
In 1968, Mr. Keith proposed to a dozen enthusiastic
bird-watching friends that they form an association and
exchange information about the numbers of birds they had
spotted. This association eventually became the American
Birding Association, as bird-watching was to be known from
then on, and the association's magazine, which first
appeared in 1969, was titled simply Birding.
Mr. Keith became the association's first president in 1970
and was a member of its board until 1990.
George Stuart Keith was born on Sept. 4, 1931, near Baldock
in Hertfordshire, England. His mother took her four
children to Canada during World War II. The family returned
afterward, and Mr. Keith was educated at Marlborough
College. After service with a British infantry regiment in
Korea, he studied classics at Worcester College in Oxford.
Although he had planned a career in finance, his love of
ornithology caused him to tire of his work, and in 1958 he
became a research associate in the ornithology department
of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Mr. Keith devoted his life to birds, supporting himself by
writing and lecturing and from a small inheritance. He was
secretary, then president, of the International Council for
Bird Preservation, United States Section, from 1965 to
1973. His bird watching expeditions took him all over the
world.
With John Gooders, he wrote "The Collins Bird Guide," a
survey of European birds, in 1980. That year he began his
22-year involvement with "The Birds of Africa," in seven
volumes, written with C. Hilary Fry and Emil K. Urban,
although he did not live to see the final volume published.

He also produced bird films and recordings of bird calls.

In addition to his wife, the former Sallyann Burgess, whom
he married in 1975, he is survived by a sister, Annabel
Beretti of Edmonton, Canada; and two brothers, Anthony of
Calgary and Peter of Ottawa.
Mr. Keith was a true bird fanatic. Since 1991, he persisted
in birding despite a number of serious ailments and several
heart operations, visiting Kenya, New Zealand, Costa Rica,
Ghana, Namibia, South Africa, Morocco and Spain.
When he took up birding in his youth, the association
recalled when it announced his death, his family did not
expect him to live long once he bought his first car,
because he swerved too often so that he could see a bird.




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