Talk:Douglas Arthur James

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I've not used a talk page for years. I'm wondering which reference information was labeled as "not verified." The statement that the Buffalo National River was the first national river of the USA was made in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas reference. In other news, I plan to add more encyclopedia type info to this page in the coming days. I will add a few comment here. As a student, I was disappointed when Dr. James spent my first year of college studying shrubland birds in Africa and especially when he left in my fourth year to work in Washington, D. C. where he stayed the following school year while I started on a master's degree I never finished at that time. However, he was a great mentor to me from the time before I started at the U of A, sending me letters and giving me advice on studying ornithology. During the time we were both at the U of A, he advised me to apply for a work-study job in the Department of Biology; this allowed me to get to know all the graduate students and professors in the Botany and Zoology departments leading me to several other mentors. All this changed my life, of course. I worked on updating the records of Arkansas birds which he had filed on 3 X 5 index cards. I considered him a good friend and visited him several times, usually for a few minutes, over the years. He was the only professor I had who took his students on numerous field trips in a single semester. I was glad he allowed me to attend the "Texas trip" in my sophomore year despite not being enrolled in his ornithology class, especially in light of the 1974 trip being cancelled due to his absence / work in D.C. and the oil embargo and shortage of that time. Sedgehead (talk) 23:40, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Sedgehead