Elizabeth Dickens lived alone for decades in a weather-beaten farmhouse at the end of a long, rutted road on Block Island's south end. It overlooked acres of open fields and miles of ocean. Long Island's Montauk Point was visible in the distance. It was the perfect place for the woman everyone called the "Birdlady" to practice her avocation.

She kept an unprecedented, 51-year record of daily bird observations on Block Island that drew many of the nation's birding authorities to her door. She banded thousands of birds, helping experts track their migrations.

Despite her isolation, Dickens reached out to every Block Island student from 1914 to 1962, teaching regular classes about birds and nature. If a teacher's highest goal is to leave her students more aware and appreciative of the subjects she taught, Dickens must have been very satisfied.

She also organized Christmas bird counts that sent Rob Lewis and dozens of other islanders scurrying about the ponds and the moors each December, logging every bird species they saw.

Rob Lewis and generations of other Block Islanders credited Dickens, or "Miss Lizzie," as they addressed her, with instilling in them a great love of nature and an understanding of the need for conservation.

Rob recalled meeting Dickens soon after he started school.

"At that time we only had the five little one-room district schoolhouses," he said. "I was 5 years old in first grade. She would go to each school once a month and give a talk on birds -- usually bringing a mounted specimen or two with her to illustrate her talk.

"We would all keep a list of any birds that we had seen during the month. And we would each read off our bird list. This went on all the way through school."

Dickens nearly always wore a long, dark dress and men's white, high-top basketball shoes. She had a soft voice, so children strained to listen. But she was interesting and funny and there didn't seem to be anything she didn't know about birds.

Display cases for her huge collection of bird specimens, bought after a collection drive by the women on the island, still stand in the island school. (Historian Bob Downie said Dickens would mount birds that were killed accidentally but would not accept those that had been shot.)

Dickens started recording her observations in 1912 in a 4- by 6-inch journal. Each page had space for five entries, and there were 365 pages. On each page she would list the birds she had seen that day. Every five years, she would begin another book.

The 11 bound volumes of her observations are stored at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island headquarters in North Smithfield.

She made her first entry on July 4, 1912. She got off to an erratic start, missing much of the rest of the month. But from mid-August on, she scarcely missed a day -- for more than five decades.

In 1926, she saw what she described as the "greatest number of snowy owls ever recorded." Various islanders shot 18 of them and had them mounted as keepsakes. (The shootings showed how difficult it was for some customs to change. Audubon Societies were created in states around the country to lobby for an end to the slaughter of wild birds to provide feathers for hats and specimens for trophies. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act to protect them was passed in 1918. But people kept shooting.)

She personally identified 290 species of birds that she had seen, almost exclusively on Block Island. Eugenia Marks, director of policy and publications at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, observes that 323 species of birds are commonly seen in the state. Eight are hawks that won't fly over water. Others -- such as cardinals, mockingbirds, tufted titmice and cattle egrets -- hadn't moved into this area in Dickens' day. Subtract those from the total, and it appears that Dickens saw all but about 20 of the species that lived on or migrated over the island.

In 1986, Joseph Kastner, a writer and editor for Life magazine and part-time Block Island resident, devoted several pages of his book, A World of Watchers, to Dickens. He said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was indebted to her for nearly all of its knowledge about the island's significance as a stop-off on the Atlantic flyway.

Kastner, who died in 1997, said Dickens was the first to report on a historic flight of great blue herons in 1910.

"I was attempting to feed my flock of 75 turkeys when they suddenly all became sky-gazers," she wrote. "Of course, I did likewise and beheld 12 great blue herons circling above the flock. Round and round and round they flew until I was almost dizzy trying to follow their motion with my eyes. . . . A little later, another dozen came from the west and alighted in a row along the edge of the bluff. Twas interesting to see the difference in heights and sizes.

"Then there came groups of threes and fives and nines and so it continued at intervals all day. In the afternoon came one great flock of just a hundred birds. As they reached land a life-saving crew fired into them and the flock became two bunches of 40 and 60 birds. I don't know how many herons I saw that day but there must have been several hundred."

When Dickens was 16, her mother, Nancy, died. Dickens lived on the family farm with her father, Lovell, until his death in 1938. Kastner says Dickens credited her father with everything she knew about birds. She kept flocks of turkeys, chickens and geese, as well as a cow, a horse and some sheep. She also had a garden and filled hundreds of canning jars each year.

One of her close friends was Bill Lewis, Rob's brother, who lived on the adjoining farm.

In 1962, Journal reporter Neild B. Oldham went to see Dickens. She was 84 and a little sorry that she had decided that year to stop teaching. She spoke of the steady stream of visitors who made their way to her remote house. Oldham said she didn't complain of living alone at such an old age. "She was where she wanted to be, doing what she wanted," he wrote.

She joked that if anyone called her old, "They can look out for a haymaker."

She talked to Oldham about local school issues and noted that changes had come to the island. She said, "The farms are going and the meadowlark is disappearing."

The following June, Dickens was found lying on the ground, far from her house. She had suffered a stroke and broke her arm when she fell. She was taken to Westerly Hospital, where she died of pneumonia.

By previous agreement, Bill Lewis bought her farm.

Years later, the Block Island Conservancy joined with The Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island and the state Department of Environmental Management to raise $1.1 million to buy the Lewis and Dickens farms.

Most of the Dickens farm and the Lewis farm -- more than 200 acres -- are now preserved forever.