Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival
Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival
Historical Highlights - 2007
Keynote
Speaker John Acorn
Acorn, the Nature Nut
He's not so nutty after all
By Rick Pilger
You turn on the TV and here's this guy with a
guitar. He's dressed up in a cowboy outfit, and he's
serenading a daisy out by some bush. "I could be
your tall lungwort, baby," he warbles, inserting the
names of wildflowers into the country music cliches
of his song. The guy's obviously some sort of nut,
you say -- and you're right. He's Acorn, the Nature
Nut.
"I've had a fanatical interest in nature since I
was a kid," says John Acorn, '80 BSc, '88 MSc. "I
can remember being absolutely fascinated by a book
about insects when I was five years old."
Fortunately for his ever-growing and loyal
television audience, his parents didn't discourage
that interest: "I think most kids are interested in
bugs when they're young, but then they're given that
message that it's time to quit. I guess I was never
given that message."
Acorn: The Nature Nut, is produced by Great North
Productions in Edmonton and is broadcast on the
Discovery Channel and several independent stations
across Canada. It has also been sold to The Learning
Channel in the U.K., to Arab-speaking countries in
the Middle East, to Malaysia, and to various
independent PBS stations in the U.S.
While
he has dealt with everything from microscopic life
(for that episode, he dressed up as Antoni Van
Leeuwenhook, the inventor of the microscope) to
dinosaurs ("Giant Dumbos of the Past") on his shows,
Acorn remains particularly fond of insects. "They're
easy to wrangle," he says. "And they're good for the
camera -- you can get right up close."
Acorn has been putting on silly costumes and
strumming his guitar in the interest of
communicating science ever since he started work as
a park interpreter at Sir Winston Churchill Park
near Lac la Biche, Alberta in the summer of 1977.
"What I am doing on television is exactly what I was
doing when I was a naturalist for the Parks system,"
says Acorn, who also hosts Twits and Pishers, a
bird-watching show that's also produced for the
Discovery Channel by Great North and seen as far
away as Japan.
While his often-zany antics in front of the
camera sometimes obscure the fact, the Nature Nut is
a serious scientist. He has degrees in entomology
and paleontology, contributed a 16-page dinosaur
article to Compton's School Encyclopedia, is the
author and photographer of The Butterflies of
Alberta, collaborates with U of A professor emeritus
George Ball on research into beetle evolution, and
is president of the Edmonton Natural History Club.
And as for being a nut -- Acorn is doing exactly
what he loves, having a great time doing it, and
getting paid. If that's nutty ...