[TN-Bird] Fwd: A Venerable Birding Club, at an Epicenter of All Things Feathered
- From: Mark Campen <mcampen7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:01:18 -0500
> A Venerable Birding Club, at an Epicenter of All Things Feathered
>
>
> Ornithology Department, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
> The bird collection at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology is one of
> the world's largest, with species like, from top, the imperial woodpecker,
> the ivory-billed woodpecker and the pileated woodpecker.
>
> By CORNELIA DEAN
>
> Published: November 28, 2011
>
> CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The Nuttall Ornithological Club, the nation’s oldest
> birding group, was having a meeting, and Ron Lockwood, its president, was
> calling things to order.
>
>
>
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> Enlarge This Image
>
> Ornithology Department, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
>
> The great auk.
>
> Enlarge This Image
>
> Cornelia Dean
>
> Jeremiah Trimble is the collection manager at the Harvard Museum of
> Comparative Zoology.
>
> “We are going to waive the secretary’s report,” he told the 50 or so people
> crowding the room early this month. “I don’t know of any old business or any
> new business.”
>
> Nearby, a cinereous vulture appeared to listen intently. The gray-brown bird,
> stuffed and displayed on a cabinet, was one of the reasons Mr. Lockwood was
> so ready to rush through the club agenda. The group was meeting at the
> Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, in the rooms housing its enormous and
> encyclopedic bird collection, and the members wanted to start looking around.
>
> There was plenty to see. The museum collection is the fifth largest in the
> world, and the staff members had set out some treasures — a brace of golden
> pheasants Lafayette gave to Washington; the world’s smallest bird, the aptly
> named bee hummingbird, found only in Cuba; and a red-throated loon shot by
> John James Audubon himself.
>
> And there were woodpeckers, including two that are almost certainly extinct,
> the ivory-billed woodpecker and its larger Mexican cousin, the imperial
> woodpecker.
>
> Nuttall has a loose relationship with Harvard, said Peter Alden, a naturalist
> and author who is a former president of the club. “Every few years we have an
> open house at the bird department,” said Mr. Alden, who said his record of
> bird sightings (what birders call a “life list”) was once, “briefly,” the
> longest in the world.
>
> He gave that race up when it started to feel like a pursuit of numbers rather
> than of birds. “I’d love to see a lot of birds I haven’t seen,” he said. “But
> I don’t give a damn about the numbers.”
>
> Anyway, though plenty of Nuttall members keep lists, the club is not an
> organization of “listers,” he went on. “There’s a lot of closet ornithology
> in this group.”
>
> Founded in 1873, the club is named for Thomas Nuttall, who came to America
> from England in 1808 and compiled prodigious records of the country’s plant
> and animal species.
>
> Membership is by application, and the requirements are stiff: a record of
> scholarly publication, experience in ornithological education, and leadership
> in conservation efforts or bird surveys. The eminent biologist Ernst Mayr was
> a member, along with Roger Tory Peterson, whose guidebooks made him one of
> the most influential ornithologists ever.
>
> Nuttall supports academic research with grants it offers every year. Current
> projects include a study of the effects of controlled burns on bird breeding,
> the relationship of songs with choice of mate, and whippoorwill territories.
>
> Scott V. Edwards, the ornithology curator at the museum, called Nuttall’s
> publications “really high quality,” and praised its members’ work in
> monitoring changes in bird populations.
>
> “These clubs serve as a collective memory,” he said, “sometimes local but
> increasingly national and international eyes on the changing landscape of
> birds.”
>
> Despite the emphasis on research, members embrace fieldwork as well.
>
> “These are some of the best birders in the country in this room,” said Mark
> Faherty, who came to the meeting from Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, where he works
> for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Mr. Faherty, who started birding when
> he was 6, pointed to the youngest person at the meeting — Miles Brengle, 12,
> from Ipswich.
>
> “I am jealous of him,” said Mr. Faherty, who said his own childhood birding
> was a solitary pursuit. “He is hooked into this network now. He will really
> start to develop skills.”
>
> Jim Berry, the member who invited Miles, said the boy did not need much help.
> “He knows what he is seeing even if he has not seen it before,” he said. “He
> has studied the books. He knows the songs and calls.”
>
> He turned to Miles. “Don’t touch the birds and then lick your fingers,” he
> advised. “Many of the birds are preserved with arsenic.”
>
> The preserved birds are called “skins” — skin and feathers stuffed with
> cotton. “We have approximately 7,000 species, 400,000 individuals,” said
> Jeremiah Trimble, who manages the collections. “We have 80 percent of the
> species in the world.”
>
> The earliest examples came from the late 18th century, like the Washington
> pheasants. Many of the skins date from the 1860s to the 1930s. Today, Mr.
> Trimble said, the museum collects specimens so it can answer particular
> bird-related questions, not simply to fill gaps in the collection.
>
> He took a few people into a room filled with white metal cabinets, each
> holding an array of shallow sliding trays. He slid a tray out to reveal
> several dozen dusky seaside sparrows, the last of which is believed to have
> died in Florida in 1987. (The species was declared extinct in 1990.)
>
> Each tiny body bore a tag giving its species and when and where it was
> collected. Mr. Trimble removed one bird, which fitted easily in the palm of
> his hand, and looked at its tag, which said it had been collected at Banana
> Creek, Fla., on April 23, 1914. Taken together, the drawer full of birds “is
> a snapshot of where that species occurred,” he said.
>
> Any specimen might be important, he said, “but not as important if you don’t
> know where and when it was collected.”
>
> Maintaining the collection is largely a matter of keeping the skins dry and
> free of insect infestation. “If we do that, they will last essentially
> forever,” Mr. Trimble said.
>
> For the Nuttall group, Allison J. Shultz, a graduate student in evolutionary
> biology at Harvard, assembled an array of birds, most of them brightly
> colored tanagers, for the event. She is studying the birds for clues to the
> genetics of coloration. Among other things, she wants to know “how the birds
> were seeing each other.”
>
> She picked up a palm tanager, a drab olive-green bird at first glance devoid
> of charm. But that’s not the way another bird would see it, she said, because
> birds can see in the ultraviolet spectrum in a way people cannot. She turned
> its body until the feathers began to shimmer slightly in the light. “This one
> has reflectance,” she said.
>
> In another room, Mark Liu, a postdoctoral researcher in ornithology, was
> discussing bird diseases with another young Nuttall guest, Jeremiah Sullivan,
> 14, of Reading. They were looking at a tray of house finches, common backyard
> birds. Unlike the other red-breasted birds, one had yellow coloration — a
> possible sign of disease, the two agreed.
>
> Like Miles Brengle, Jeremiah plans to be an ornithologist, and he had brought
> his bird notebook to the meeting. But he confessed he had not made many
> entries.
>
> “I am too busy looking at things,” he said.
>
> This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
>
> Correction: November 29, 2011
>
>
> An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a vulture specimen
> displayed at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. It is the
> cinereous vulture, not the Cisneros vulture.
>
FYI
Bird On!
Mark Campen
Knoxville, TN
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