With binoculars trained on the marsh osprey nest, Dr. H. Wayne Carver II intently observes the osprey pair’s patterns. At first, the female sits in an incubating position on the nest. Shortly thereafter the male arrives and perches on the nest’s edge. The two then voice to each other in apparent communication over a 40 second period. Then the female gets up and flies away to find food and the male takes up her former incubating position on the pair’s eggs.

Another moment in the life of the osprey pair that Wayne, as official steward of Old Saybrook Osprey Nest Number One, records.

“The ladies are larger and the males are smaller and faster. They can go more than a meter underwater to get food,” says Wayne.

At least twice a week from spring through summer, he takes up a position on the shore near Ayers Point. Armed with a checklist developed by the Connecticut Audubon Society, he records data about the osprey pair and their behavior: The pair arriving in the springtime. The moment the eggs hatch and young bird heads can be seen in the nest. The hours when the fledglings begin to learn to fly.

The information from his observations he sends on to the research program manager to enter into the state-wide osprey-nest database; the database is linked to an interactive map that displays the location of each of the state’s 414 (as of 2014) osprey nests.

Wayne is one of more than 100 citizen-scientists who are official osprey nest stewards in a research program partnership of the Audubon Society and the State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). Launched in 2014 and called Osprey Nation, the Audubon Society website www.ctaudubon.org notes “it is a statewide program aimed to monitor and help enhance the osprey population in the state. [It’s] a two-pronged approach to facilitate scientific research on ospreys and to build a citizen science program to monitor their health across the state.”

Wayne says he has been fascinated by the natural sciences from the time he was a young child.

“I used to take my sports toys and link them together to make a lab,” says Wayne. “I was a brilliant goof-off in school, but I aced my tests. At high school, I had a great series of science teachers. I remember teaching the class paper chromatography. I hung around with a bunch of science geeks.”

Like many scientists, Wayne also was an accomplished instrumental musician; his instruments of choice were the low brass, the tuba, trombone, and bass trombone. In high school in Illinois, he was named an all-state tuba player; in New Jersey, where he moved with his family after Illinois, he earned the slot of second tuba in the New Jersey all-state orchestra.

Medicine became his chosen career—he was selected for a special seven-year program at Brown University which accepted him into medical school while still in college. His last year of college, also his first year of medical school, was the year he was the drum major of the Brown University Marching Band. And through his first years in medical school, he played in the Brown University chamber music group, in the wind ensemble, and in the stage band.

“I played music six days a week,” says Wayne. “I still play, but neither well nor frequently.”

His academic focus had always been on the sciences that he loved, however.

“I wanted to be an organic chemistry major because it was fun,” says Wayne.

In his final year of medical school, he did a rotation with the medical examiner’s office and found the work intriguing. After exploring other options, he decided after medical school to join the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the State of Connecticut. Wayne ended up staying there for 32 years, serving the last 26 of those years as the state’s chief medical examiner (CME).

“The job of the CME’s office is to investigate sudden, violent, unexpected deaths. Forensic pathology is fun. The autopsy is our most powerful tool. X-rays too,” says Wayne. “And anyone in the state who is to be cremated must have a records review by the office and get a number. There are about 14,000 cremations a year. A doctor [in the CME office] is on call 24/7.”

In his role as the state’s CME, Wayne has testified in more than 600 trials and responded to scenes of some of Connecticut’s most gruesome crimes—the wood chipper murder, the Pettit home invasion murders, and, near the end of his tenure as CME, the Sandy Hook school tragedy. As a teacher of forensic pathology, he has worked with medical students at Yale and UConn Medical schools, law students at Yale and UConn Law schools, and with most of the policemen in Connecticut through presentations at the state’s Police Training Academy.

Over his 32 years as staff and later chief in the CME office—and two years more on a per diem basis after he retired—Wayne developed special expertise in the analysis and assessment of gunshot wounds: the patterns of them, the relationship between the shooter and the victim, and, with less precision, the shooter and the environment and the relationship with witnesses.

Now that he has retired, he uses his keen observational skills honed over many years in the CME’s office to study and record details of the natural world near his Old Saybrook home of eight years. He completes the paper’s daily crossword puzzles. Occasionally, he tries his hand at documenting what he sees in charcoal drawings. Still bitten with the need to observe and to still learn, he also is delving into his two other areas of interest: maps and African art.

With all that Wayne has witnessed in his lifetime, gazing out on the peaceful marsh in Old Saybrook must be a soothing antidote.