 While still a high school student, he published a booklet on birds seen in Boston Public Garden.For about two years he was a bellhop at Boston's Women's City Club.When he graduated from high school, a lady whom he met while bird-watching helped him find work as an assistant to Edward Howe Forbush and John Birchard May, who were completing Forbush's "Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States" (3 vols., 1923–1929).