ornithologists

"The huge, forward-projecting of the male is his chief sexual characteristic and white skin aournd the eye is a peculiarity of the female. Many African s have brightly colored patches of skin and wattles about the head and neck."

"During my first year at Harvard, in 1928, I became fascinated with the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology. How exciting for a mere freshman to meet and talk to such famous ornithologists as . ... In succeeding years Griscom, aided by , who was just bringing out his first bird guide, became the great figure who built up the type of —pretty much limited to finding rarities, listing species seen, and census taking—that has now become a national pastime. I remember arguments about this new approach to birding back then. The clincher for the Grissom-Peterson type of birding was that it was competitive. ... By the time I was a junior at Harvard I found my interest in this type of birding wearing thin."

"When I began studying birds at age fourteen, I was fortunate in having 's Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America and 's Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States, the three volumes of which were then just coming out. I remember carrying Chapman's handbook with me into the woods and sitting on a stump to identify a beautiful bird I had seen—yellow on the belly with a black bib, and bright red on throat and crown—a ! I had made a discovery by myself. If I have carried my boyhood enthusiasm for learning about birds into old age, it is in part because by interest has never been dulled by too many classes, lectures, workshops, meetings, or other experiences that can kill initiative. It is better to learn ten birds on one's own than several hundred following a leader. Learning on one's own is especially important if you want to make discoveries. ... Watching birds and other animals for enjoyment should be something that makes us think."

"Ornithological Margaret Morse Nice (1883–1974) changed the course of American through her two pioneering field studies in 1937 and 1943 on the . Although students of understand her importance, few general readers recognize her name, much less significance. There are many reasons this omission should be remedied: her outstanding professional accomplishments, her ability to balance family and career, her management of gender issues, and her work in conservation, preservation, and the ."

"Written under the pen name Olive Thorne Miller, most of her children's fiction has been forgotten, but her , both for children and adults, are still read. She became interested in bird watching in 1880 and avidly pursued this hobby for the rest of her life. ... Olive Thorne Miller wrote books on birds that reflected a close observation of their habits. Although her treatment was sometimes , most of her facts were accurate, and her works were useful in stimulating popular interest in ."

"A lady who has given us some charming books of minute and faithful studies of birds and beasts, Mrs. Effie Bignell, says of the two robins who were free in her house, that they were entirely different in every characteristic, one of them loving and gentle "like a perfect gentleman," while the other was greed itself, with shocking table manners, and in every way different."

"The chapters of this book present a sampling from his lifetime of behavior watching, the s liberally salted with philosophy and quotes from past and present nature watchers. Kilham strongly believes that great satisfaction can be derived from sitting in one place and learning about in depth. He always prefers to be unobtrustive in his watching and never, for example, has . He suggests that it is best to learn about a bird first hand and then read about it. ... ... Kilham writes well and is obviously a very experienced and keen observer of nature. If you are a behavior watcher you will love this book. If you are not, you probably ought to read it anyway. It may stimulate some new interests and in the long run increase the pleasure you get from birds."

"The concept of territory proves to be as old as the science of ornithology, since Aristotle was the first writer to mention it. This was pointed out by Lack (Condor, 46, 1944:108) who, however, did not follow the subsequent history of these observations. ... It was Aristotle, then, who declared that eagles partition out the land according to their needs for food, and this statement was incorporated into the books of Pliny, (in regard to ), Albertus Magnus (transferred to vultures), , , and Buffon."

"We walked lonely es and s, and we delighted in and s, but we made no great lists. Books that I like at the time were books written by observers, people doing the kind of that I wanted to do; books such as Henry Beston's and 's Beach Grass. They exemplified an idea type of natural history: you lived within walking distance of a beach, marsh, woods, or mountain and started observing."

"... in the north are as wary as . They make a low pecking, the blows coming slowly, when excavating in rotting logs and trunks. It is these sounds that I follow in trying for a view of their activities. They someties work on large s and s, digging into the where have their galleries."

"Also I should like to explain how a lover of free birds can endure to keep them in confinement. Each inhabitant of a in my house has been liberated from the positive discomforts of a , and besides the wearied effort to make their lives happy and as free as possible in a room, the moment one shows a desire for the world outside my windows, he is gladly allowed to depart."

"Each spring the drowsy trill of the called us and armed with pails and strainers and home-made nets, off we started to the nearby railroad . Here we found treasures: strings of toad eggs, s big and little, sedate s (which we believed were lizards), and alluring s, drab , and most tempting of all, . Caddis flies had fascinated me ever since I had read about them Charles Kingsley's (1863), and it was wonderful to find that these almost mythical creatures of English brooks were our neighbors here in our own waters."

"So long as you do only what you have done every day, though it be to sit within three feet of their nest, most birds accept you as a , but if you vary from your usual programme you shall have every bird within sight and hearing excited, calling in warning tones, anxious and angry "phit's," "tut's," and "chack's" on every side."

"Because of its quiet tints, the beauty of plumage of the is often underrated. Nothing can be more attractive than the soft cinnamon browns of his back and wings, and the satiny white of breast and under parts, tinged in places with buff, and decorated profusely with lance-shaped spots of brown. Lovers of birds alive and free have reason to rejoice that our most interesting birds are not gaudy in coloring. The indiscriminate and terrible , is surely enough to make the most long-suffering lover of nature cry out in grief and pain. To me — let me say it frankly — they look not like an adornment of feathers, but like the dead bodies of birds, foully murdered to minister to a passing fashion."

"Professionally Lawrence Kilham is a who teaches at , but he is widely known for his papers on bird behavior, particularly those dealing with s. Never Enough of Nature is a personal account of the experiences with wild and captive animals that provided data for many of the scientific papers. The book was illustrated by the author's relatives, primarily his wife, Jane. The early chapters of the book deal with field experiences in South Carolina and Georgia, but others take the reader to Africa, Panama, and New England."

"The solo of the differs from nearly all other bird-songs that I know, being a clear, distinct whistle that may easily be reduced to our musical scale, and perfectly imitated by the human voice; in this latter quality it is almost unique. The notes are very few, usually two, never, I think, more than three; and the little ditty consists of, first, a single long, deliberate note, then two short repetitious of one a third higher, followed by three triplets at the same pitch. It is so distinct, indeed, that the of northern Minnesota—as a traveler in that country kindly wrote me—have put it into words, namely, "Pu'orn chiman, chig-a-big, chig-a-big, chig-a-big," which being translated means, "The Sioux canoes are close to shore, close to shore, close to shore," and the friendly bird is held in much esteem by the grateful Chippewas."

"The most cherished of my life came in 1895 — 's Bird-Craft (1895). For the first time, I had coloured bird pictures. Many of these were adapted from Audubon's (1827); single birds, or occasionally a pair, sometimes in surprising attitudes, were depicted. In later years, when looking at the reproductions of Audubon's original plates, every now and then a picture has given me a little tug at the heart, recalling my childhood years of eager search. The simple descriptions, the charming discussions, the enthusiastic introductory chapters of Bird-Craft — all these I pored over and all but learned by heart."

"Mrs. Irene Grosvenor Wheelock, author of several books, and a careful student of living birds in the nest, has found decided individuality in young bluebirds as early as ten days old. One would be gentle, easily pacified, and trustful, while another was fierce and resentful of captivity."

"In teaching our child the English language, we talked to her as an adult except that our words were simple and concrete. In general our practice has been not to correct her mistakes, trusting to the force of good example. As much as possible we have tried to have her words stand for real things; for instance, we took her to see pigs and bears and skunks, so that she would not get her conceptions merely from stories, pictures and s. Finally we make an effort to avoid the dead level of too simple language by at times dealing with familiar situations in new words."

"! The old enmities imprinted into my mind by hearsay and history lessons were not so easily eradicated. Russia, the massive land in the east, always in search of outlets to the sea, of land and more land to satisfy its gluttonous cravings for own its own purported security, a ruthless giant dangerously dwarfing its smaller neighbors. Nonetheless, soon after New Year I took the train south and on a dull wintry afternoon arrived in , the camp for Russian prisoners of war."

"My station is in the heart of the breeding grounds for the majority of the Eastern North-American s. Except for a few, such as the and the which breed in , most of their s come to an end in this Canadian zone. My traps stand in the midst of the woods surrounding my house, their locations carefully chosen according to season and the species expected to be visiting them."

"A maximum of 140 species of birds can be seen more-or-less regularly each year in interior Alaska. Of these species, however, only 28 can be considered regular winter residents, including two hawks, six s, five owls, four s, and eleven s ..."

"Most s leave the during September and October (Hunt et al. 1981b), but stragglers have been recorded as far north as as late as any water exists, even to mid-November ( and 1959)."

"Young s are unable to fly when they leave the nest; they fall and flutter to the water below and swim immediately ..."

"The author takes a ian approach to identifying the major environmental factors that help define the species-specific niches of birds in Alaska. In her study, she censused breeding birds on twelve 10- plots selected to represent fairly homogeneous tracts of each of the major s described for Alaska's taiga."

"Kear was instrumental in efforts to save the — from extinction. Over-exploitation and the introduction of the predatory to the had reduced an estimated 18th-century population of 25,000 to less than 30 by 1949. Three birds taken into captivity and sent to the WWT's , , headquarters formed the basis of a captive breeding programme. Thus were 200 reintroduced to Hawaii by the WWT during the 1960s, and more than 2,200 by the early 1990s. In the late 1970s, she moved from Slimbridge to become curator of in the north-west, making her the first woman in charge of a regional centre. She developed it into one of the most important in the WWT chain. It now attracts up to 20,000 and 1,300 s each winter, with large numbers of people enjoying the spectacle."

"The collection of down from the nests of s was a common practice among Eskimos and, in Iceland, the wild Eider Duck is farmed. In the early 1960s there were about 200 Eider farms in Iceland holding some 250,000 nesting females, each producing an average of 19 g. of cleaned down."

"The is perhaps the evolutionary link between the , and the . The Mallard has been domesticated for over 2,500 years. the Romans initiated the process in Europe, and the Malays in Asia."

"Man's interest in consuming , as well as in using their feathers for warmth and their fat for lighting and heating, was behind their early domestication. Two goose species were involved, the and the , and two ducks, the and the . Features of all wildfowl domestication include large size, a reduced number of tail and wing feathers, flightlessness, rapid maturation, an increased clutch size, long breeding season, loss of 'broodiness' (so that the technique of artificial incubation becomes necessary at an early stage), loss of aggression, a polygamous mating system, and the laying down of abdominal fat."

"In 1949 Grace and Ian Telfer, an member, decided to mark in an attempt to follow their movements. Though s are resident on the , nothing was known about them outside the breeding season. The first seals were tagged in 1951, and within fifteen days the first marked seal was recovered in Norway. This was ground breaking research as no one had realised how far the Grey Seals were traveling."

"These youngsters appear to have little fear of man for Jack Shiel tells the story of how, on a day in late autumn when they were line fishing for , a young kept helping himself to the best fish while the men were taking the others from the hooks."

"To-day, although numbers of s are still taken—in addition to the some 30,000 yearlings of the are killed each year—the decrease in the number of whales, and the increasing demand for edible oil has meant a growing emphasis on the exploitation of seals for oil."

"On 3rd December, 1958, ten calves were killed on the North Wamses, a small island some three miles off the north coast. This was the first licensed killing of grey seals during the breeding season since the passing of the 1932 Grey Seals Protection Act and it was intended to be the first stage of an experimental annual cull of 300 calves, recommended as a means of reducing the grey seal population of the and thereby lessening the damage done by seals to the salmon fishing industry."

"The can readily be distinguisedh from the true wild Swans, the and the , for it arches its neck much more and its bill is reddish orange with a protruding black knob at the base ..."

"Wrens do not appear to indulge to any great extent, though they appreciate drinking water. It should be remembered that if birds have plenty to drink in summer they are less likely to make attacks on fruit."

"At the time the was formed the main interest in birds lay in whether they or their eggs were good to eat, or in their possibilities as a source of amusement at which to blaze off a gun."

"Even on the train we began to feel the grateful influence of restful country life. From the windows we watched the , the wayside flowers, and the , engaged in the surprising occupation of following the plow. At our station, a sang his sweet strain from a telegraph pole; we could hear s calling from the marshes. We took the only wagon that met the train, and drove through the village. It was a typical Mormon village, one of a line of closely connected settlements running along the valley between the and the ."

"New Mexico has the distinction of being the first State in the Union from which bird notes were recorded by white men. These notes refer to birds seen on the in 1540, three hundred and eighty-eight years ago, eighty-two years before the first recorded birds were seen in New England (see 's New English Canaan, printed in 1637). The actual study of the birds of New Mexico has attracted naturalists from the the days of the earliest explorations that crossed parts of New Mexico, the first records being made on the . ... The systematic survey of New Mexico was definitely undertaken in 1903, under the direction of , then Chief of the Biological Survey; and , who had just completed a survey of the adjoining State of Texas, .. was put in charge of the work."

"The amazing views of the naturally dominate and absorb the attention of the hurried visitor to the canyon rims, but between views the bird-minded may hear arresting songs and cath glimpses of feathered passers-by that will add intimate pleasures to the memories of the "great abyss." After a night in the familiar song of the may be heard on awakening, followed by the happy song of the rosy well associated with the sunshine of the Southwest. Then perhaps will come the coarse croak of the , adding a grateful bass note to the ."

"A tribute to Florence Merriam Bailey (1863-1948), a passionate ornithologist who revolutionized the way scientists and general nature lovers study birds. Keating introduces Florence as a child who was delighted to sit patiently in the woods to watch birds and take careful notes on their features and behavior. As an adult, she is outraged by the fashion of and killing birds in order to study them. She popularized bird watching and promoted protective legislation. She turned her years of note taking into field guides for professionals and the general public alike."

"... Colombia has one of the highest, if not the highest, number of bird species within its shores of any country worldwide: currently believed to be 1,875 (Compare that with just over 300 species found in the UK!). This high number is attributable to its unique location and to its . It is the only country in that has an Atlantic and a Pacific coast and it is also unique in stretching from to the . Three mountain ranges of the magnificent occupy the western part of the country; in the east the habitats vary from lush and flat s to sandy desert. Given this variety of s, it is not surprising that Colombia has the second or third highest number of parrot species worldwide, a total of 52. This is exceeded by Brazil with about 72 species and possibly by Australia with 52 or 53 species. (These numbers could be revised at any time as DNA research often indicates that a particular species is, in fact, two species.) There is a sad statistic connected with Colombia's 50 plus parrot species: at least 12 are in imminent danger of extinction."

"Parrots were not designed to live in houses. They are noisy and destructive and suffer probably more than any other animal when kept in an unstimulating environment. They need constant interaction, either with a human or another parrot, to keep them happy and healthy. Keeping a parrot is so much more demanding than keeping a dog or cat. Alas, the fact that many owners have failed, and failed miserably, is evidenced in the growing number of parrot refuges. They are filled with feather-plucked or phobic parrots whose former owners had no idea of their emotional needs."

"Parent-rearing keeps the pairs occupied for weeks or months, according to the species. They need the occupation. Rearing reduces the monotony of the days and weeks and years which have little to distinguish them. Boredom and lack of stimulation is a very real problem for the more intelligent species. Many s enjoy family life and most "owners" obtain a lot of enjoyment from seeing family groups in an . (And I do mean an aviary and not a little suspended cage where close confinement can result in aggressive encounters.)"

"I can't emphasize enough how important parent-rearing is, because by hand-rearing we are denying s their birthright unless it is possible to wean them with ... other birds of their own species."

"This is an almost unique case of how a can be endangered by trade without specific demand. It was literally unknown in until only five years ago. There was always a local trade, within the and islands, the only places where it occurs. These islands form a chain from northern to in the Philippines. Then suddenly, hundreds of birds were captured and exported. In 1992 about 1,000 were captured, at least 700 of which were exported. In that year, at least 200 died from disease and neglect at the premises of one dealer in Jakarta. I saw dozens crowded together in the cages of a dealer in Singapore. This would have been appalling whatever the species."

"After June 20, morning temperatures were between 45 and 50 degrees and slightly higher some days. The highest temperature in June was on the 27th, 60 degrees at eight in the morning. The mid-day temperatures average about 5 degrees higher. Insects were countless by latter part of June. Butterflies of several species, bumblebees, spiders, several species of gnat, flies, and mosquitoes were common. The end of June was characterized by rapidly melting snow, nesting activities of the birds, and the quick development of vegetation, Grasses, in particular, made fast headway in moist depressions. Actual bloom was not particularly noteworthy until early July. On June 28 the white heather, ', began sparingly to bloom. On June 30 the mountain avens, ', and the Arctic blueberry, ', suddenly burst into bloom. The Arctic Labrador tea, ', was just on the point of bloom on June 30. The last snowstorm of the season occurred on June 17 and the first rain the following day."

"The food of the chiefly consists of , especially the plentiful, widely distributed . These are caught by waiting their appearance at breathing holes in the ice, by crouching at the edges of floes, or by creeping up to the animal as it sleeps on the ice. The Eskimo assert that the polar bear also catches seals and young by seizing them in the water, from underneath, and dragging them onto an ice pan."

"' Linnaeus. Mallard.—This is the predominant duck of the region, but it has only slight numerical superiority over the . Mallards were omnipresentin the waters of the entire territory, often varying only slightly in relative abundance from one lake to another. In only a few lakes were its numbers surpassed by any other species of ducks. In relation to all other ducks, its ratio varied from as low as 11 per cent to as high as 42, the average for 32 lakes being 26.3 per cent."

"The lives largely on s throughout the year. These they easily catch during the summer. In winter they dig through the snow for them or catch them as they wander on the surface. may constitute part of the diet and, rarely, the , especially the young. In winter, foxes are often very thin, thus indicating their difficulty of making a living during the season."

"If you are fortunate to have the chance to examine a recently dead bird, even one brought home from the poulterer with intact, spend a little time examining the s carefully and note down various points of interest."