Rare bird Paul Riss has always flown his own path
An outcast in his youth, punk birdwatcher from the east end stars in documentary
Hamilton’s punk birdman of the east end is a rarity, but also pretty easy to find.
There was Paul Riss recently at Van Wagner’s Beach, having swooped into action when his phone app alerted him that a brown booby was in the area, just the second time the seabird has ever been spotted in Ontario.
The first time was in Fort Erie about 10 years ago. Riss saw that one, too.
But if you really want to discover Riss, or rather understand his evolution — and why he has scientific bird names tattooed all over his body — you need to go back to the day when the winged wonders changed his life.
First the news: Riss stars in a film premiering Oct. 3 called “Rare Bird Alert.” The CBC documentary features “punk rock birder Paul Riss as he embarks on a one-man odyssey to meet other enthusiasts and take the pulse of birdwatching in North America,” reads the promotional
material.
Enthusiasts? Riss has 234 bird names inked on his hide.
The story behind the tattoos is 2011. That was when Riss decided to attempt a “big year” in birding parlance, meaning he set out to find as many species as possible in 12 months.
On one excursion he drove seven hours to Manitoulin Island, in the farthest reaches of Lake Huron, and tromped through snow and ice to spot the sharp-tailed grouse — or Tympanuchus phasianellus if you were reading it on his back — perhaps best known for the dance it performs to attract a mate.
“I didn’t have waterproof boots, but I just remember it was a memorable time and I fell in love with the place,” says Riss.
Less memorably, Riss rose at dawn one morning that year to drive to Ottawa to see a bird, only to strike out when he arrived and return home in darkness feeling deflated.
The idea to record his findings that year on his skin was inspired by a book called “Kingbird Highway” by Kenn Kaufman — “a birdwatching god,” Riss says — about the author’s days in the 1970s as a hippie hitchhiker birder.
Riss loved how Kaufman belied the stereotype of staid Tilley hat-wearing birdwatching folk.
“In 2011 people were still saying that to me: ‘You don’t look like a birder.’ I thought maybe I needed to change perceptions and have the name of every bird I saw that year tattooed on me.”
Back then, Riss was living in Toronto, where he grew up. Five years ago he moved to Hamilton and fell in love with the city, choosing a neighbourhood in the east end, to his ear gloriously in earshot of the Ticats roar from the stadium.
Riss owns an advertising company he has always run from home, which gives him flexibility to chase birds. Locally he’s impressed with places like the Dundas Valley and Hamilton Cemetery for birdwatching.
His wife, Rachel Riordan, is an illustrator and painter, and they have twins, Georgia and Shepherd. The kids’ middle names?
Wren and Thrasher.
Riss says birding has long served as an outlet for directing his creative energies and relieving stress and anxiety. He sketches birds in the field, and paints them, and has designed T-shirts for birders.
The allure of birds for him includes the numbers — more than 10,000 species in the world, he says — and their myriad habits and features.
“They are all beautiful, even the ugliest ones, even the vultures. There’s no limit to what you can learn about them. And they can fly. Which is the coolest thing. The blackpoll warbler travels 6,000 miles a year. And weighs just ounces. It’s remarkable, their feats of strength and determination. You have to respect a creature like that.”
Riss made enough of a name in birdwatching over the years that producers had approached him several times about doing a documentary. But it often felt like they wanted to get him on camera in order to poke fun at birders.
But he says “Rare Bird Alert,” that will appear on CBC Docs, explores how popular the pastime has become, touches on issues that matter to him and many birders, such as climate change, and captures the spiritually nurturing power of birdwatching.
Riss knows it well, that power. When he was a kid in the 1980s, he felt like an outcast who never fit in. These were days long before the notion of the hipster became cool.
“It wasn’t good to be a nerd back then.”
He found refuge in his drawing, and also in punk rock and heavy metal that perhaps allowed him to drown out his anxieties, pounding music like the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, and Slayer.
Not everyone approved: he was sent home from elementary school for wearing an Iron Maiden “Killers” album art Tshirt. (He still listens to the strains of head banging rebellion every day.)
But the genesis of a new, allconsuming passion happened when he was 11.
That’s when his dad took him to see some birds.
“He was a typical 1970s dad, looking to connect with his son who only seemed to like art and horror movies but not sports,” says Riss. “A buddy of his said, take him to Cranberry Marsh, in Whitby.”
It was there, in one moment, that he says it flourished in his brain.
Young Paul Riss held seeds in his outstretched hand. A blackcapped chickadee floated into his palm.
The strength in the tiny claws felt magical, and it was as though the gentle yet powerful creature lifted him up that day, offering a view from which the birdman has never descended.