Van was already a top birder before he came to California. He grew up near Denver, Colorado, and had associated with the best birders in that state. After two years at Andover, he swore never to go school again in the northeast, and turned down Princeton to go to Stanford where he began to meet California's better observers, such as Dave DeSante. He first appears in the fall 1969 issue of Audubon Field Notes, chasing vagrants (going with Ted Chandik & Mike Parmeter to see a Tropical Kingbird) and gathering data (cited for several specific counts of local shorebirds). In less than 3 years, he was a Regional Editor for northern California (he served for six seasons). He was perhaps most active in Statewide birding during his PhD program at Berkeley, rounding up groups of fellow enthusiasts to drive the length and breadth of California, chasing State birds and searching for vagrants. Van was lively, opinionated, and personable — attributes that (excepting perhaps "opinionated") did not characterize many other California birders. These attributes made Van a leader.

In the photo (left or above), Van Remsen provides a perch for a Least Bittern found lost in Death Valley, as (L to R) Guy McCaskie, Jon Dunn, John Luther (with camera), Lee Jones (almost hidden), and Steve Summers look on. We'd stopped at the gas station at Stovepipe Wells and the attendant, seeing our binoculars, asked if we were looking for birds. Hearing the affirmative, the attendant told us that there was a bird from Australia right beyond the station. "Why Australia," we asked. "Because its beak is pointing straight up to heaven," he said. Okay, that made sense. Walking behind the station we found this Least Bittern doing its best to "freeze" among the desert rocks. It was exhausted and Van picked it up. We transported the bittern in David Luther's playpen to Furnace Creek, and released the bird into a reedy pond there. 1 June 1974 © Don Roberson
 

Despite the seriousness with which he approaches bird identification, Van has a great sense of humor. Some of that humor is displayed in the brilliant little parody on finding the Ringed Turtle-Dove (Remsen & Garrett 1976), published just in time for an ABA convention in southern California. He also published, under the pen name Vanzio Remsenetti, a little piece on how to pronounce "Craveri's" in Craveri's Murrelet (it's Italian, like "spaghetti").

By the mid-1970s, Van had already begun field work on the Amazon River in Colombia for his doctoral dissertation. There he lived at the research station on "Monkey Island" and studied five species of kingfishers in nearby channels (in the photo, right, Van hold up a glass of water straight out of the Amazon River at Leticia, Colombia). Van set himself up to become one of the world's leading experts on the Neotropics during that field work [to simplify slightly, his PhD work showed that big kingfishers eat big fish and little kingfishers eat little fish; Remsen 1981.]. In the summer of 1975, Van invited a group of Bay Area birders to join him in a personally guided tour of Colombia, with everyone just splitting the costs. Several of our "top 40" California observers took him up on the offer (e.g., Alan Baldridge, Ted Chandik, John Luther, Don Roberson).
 

Among Van's significant contributions to California ornithology were his two-part article (with L.C. Binford) on the status and identification of Yellow-billed Loon (Binford & Remsen 1974, Remsen & Binford 1975), his surveys of remote mountain ranges in the Mojave Desert (with Steve Cardiff), and his preparation of the first government-sponsored "Bird Species of Special Concern" (Remsen 1978).

After leaving California in the late '70s, Van began a career as a professional ornithologist at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. LSU already had a strong neotropical emphasis, and Van's participation would lead it to new heights. Today he is the Curator of Birds at LSU, as well as a member of the A.O.U. Checklist Committee, and chair of the South American Checklist Committee. He has published extensively on the ecology, distribution, and taxonomy of South American birds, and other topics of interest (e.g., his paper on the importance to bird conservation of collecting birds is recommended to all birders; Remsen 1995). Van was also among the scientific advisors on the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and co-author of the paper on the species' rediscovery 

Finally, if you want to be jealous about something, try this: Van has a bird named after him — Chestnut-bellied Cotinga Doliornis remseni. It is known only from the páramo of the central Andes of Colombia and the eastern Andes of Ecuador [Robbins, M.B., Rosenberg, G.H., and Sornoza, F. 1994. A new species of cotinga (Cotingidae: Doliornis) from the Ecuadorian Andes, with comments on plumage sequences in Doliornis and Ampelion. Auk 111: 1-7.]

Selected publications on California topics 1974-1989:

• Binford, L. C., and Remsen, J. V., Jr. 1974. Identification of the Yellow-billed Loon (Gavia adamsii). West. Birds 5:111-126.
• Remsen, J. V., Jr., and Binford, L. C. 1975. Status of the Yellow-billed Loon (Gavia adamsii) in the western United States and Mexico. West. Birds 6:7-20.
• Remsen, J. V., Jr. 1976. Identification of Purple and Cassin's Finches. Colorado Field Ornithol. Journal, No. 25, reprinted in Birding 8: 231-234.
• Remsen, V., and Garrett, K. 1976. In search of the Ringed Turtle Dove. Birding 8: 149-151.
• Remsen, J. V., Jr. 1977. On taking field notes. Amer. Birds 31: 946-953.
• Remsen, J. V., Jr. 1978. Bird species of special concern in California. Calif. Dept. Fish & Game, Wildlife Mgt. Branch Admin. Rpt. 78-1.
• Remsen, J. V., Garrett, K. L., and Erickson, R. A. 1982. Vocal copying in Lawrence's and Lesser Goldfinches. W. Birds 13: 29-33.

• Remsen, J.V., Jr., J. S. Luther, and Roberson, D.1976  A Ringed Woodpecker Celeus torquatus in Colombia. Bull. Brit. Ornith. Club 96: 40.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr. 1981. Community ecology of Neotropical kingfishers. Univ. Calif. Publ. Zool. 124: 1-128.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr. 1982. A new subspecies of Schizoeaca harterti with notes on taxonomy and natural history of Schizoeaca (Aves: Furnariidae). Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash. 94: 1068-1075.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr., and Parker, T.A., III 1983. Contribution of river-created habitats to bird species richness in Amazonia. Biotropica 15: 223-231.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr., Parker, T.A., III. 1984. Arboreal dead-leaf-searching birds of the neotropics. Condor 86: 36-41.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr. 1985. Community organization and ecology of birds of high elevation humid forest of the Bolivian Andes," pp. 733-756 in Neotropical Ornithology (M.S. Foster, ed.). Ornithol. Monograph 36, A.O.U., Washington, D.C.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr., and Traylor, M.A., Jr. 1989. An Annotated List of the Birds of Bolivia. Buteo Books, Vermillion, S.D.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr. 1994. Use and misuse of bird lists in community ecology and conservation. Auk 111: 225-227.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr. 1995. The importance of continued collecting of bird specimens to ornithology and bird conservation. Bird Conserv. International 5: 145-180.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr., ed. 1997. Studies in Neotropical Ornithology Honoring Ted Parker. Ornithol. Monograph 48, A.O.U., Washington, D.C.
• Remsen, J.V., Jr. 2003. Family Furnaridae (Ovenbirds), pp. 162-357 in Handbook of the Birds of the World (del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., & Christie, D.A., eds). Vol. 8. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.