From the NY Times article:
“Mr. Cooper’s love of birding began at age 10, he said, when his parents, two Long Island schoolteachers, enrolled him in a 4-H program. There, in a woodworking class, he crafted a bird feeder that he set in his lawn.
The creatures that flocked to it set off a fascination that has endured for four decades, through his time at Harvard, where he graduated with a degree in political science, and into his years as an editor for Marvel Comics, where he is credited with creating one of the first gay characters in the Star Trek comic universe.”
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“Mr. Cooper, who now works in communications and lives on the Lower East Side, has fed his passion with birding trips to Central Park and around the world, and he is on the board of the New York City Audubon Society.
He has developed a virtuoso’s ear for their birdsong, and can identify them by chirp. (“There’s a myth that I have the best ears in the park,” he said. “It’s a myth.”)
Thanks proxy_user.