The Scientific Nomenclature of Birds in the Upper Midwest

Biographies

Biographies Aristotle (384–322 b.c.) was a Greek philosopher and natural scientist , a student of Plato, and teacher of Alexander the Great. He founded his own school in Athens in 335 b.c., where he established the prototype of the great libraries of antiquity and lectured on many topics. He was most at home in zoology, and it was in this field that he displayed his love of orderliness and system. A keen observer and precise logician, Aristotle also possessed an intense curiosity about all natural phenomena and wrote extensively on natural science. Many of his extant works are thought to be his lecture notes, memoranda, and the notes taken by his students; all are attributed to Aristotle. In his Historia Animalium, consisting of 10 books, the Aristotelian qualities are manifest, for here we find an elaborate classification of the animal world. His description of birds is found for the most part in Books 7 to 9, and the citations in our text are usually from those books. Many of the birds in Historia Animalium are not easily identified. This uncertainty is compounded by variant readings: for example, the word used by Aristotle for a finch-­ sized bird that subsists on thistles is thraupis. Medieval manuscripts offer thlypis as another spelling; one manuscript spells the word thlaupis . Because we do not know the species of the original thraupis and its variant readings, we now find thraupis used for the family and genus of tanagers and thlypis for several genera of warblers: Geothlypis, Limnothlypis , and Oreothlypis. What is certain, however, is that Aristotle and his work have had great influence in ornithological nomenclature. John James Audubon (1785–1851), America’s best-­ known ornithologist and painter of birds, was born on the island of Santo Domingo (Haiti). The son of a French sea captain, Audubon was educated in France. In 1803, he came to America to manage the family estate at Mill Grove, not far from Philadelphia. Here he spent most of his time observing birds, and it was here that he introduced bird banding to America. In 1808, Audubon, newly married to Lucy Bakewell, moved to Kentucky. While continuing to observe birds, he attempted to establish himself in several businesses, all of which failed by 1820. Working his way down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Audubon supported 158 biographies his family by taxidermy, by portrait painting, and finally in New Orleans , by teaching drawing, music, and dancing. He soon began his sole occupation of searching for birds to paint, while Lucy supported him and their two sons by teaching in Louisiana. Audubon published his famous Birds of America, which appeared in parts from 1827 to 1838, and his Ornithological Biography in five volumes from 1831 to 1839. In his extensive travels, Audubon discovered and described 25 species and numerous subspecies of birds, to which he frequently assigned eponymous names. John James Audubon stimulated an interest in and popularized ornithology in the United States by his art and prolific writing. He died in New York. Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823–1887) was for many years secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. As a young man, Baird began his large collection of bird specimens and soon became acquainted with leading American naturalists such as Audubon, Nuttall, Cassin, and Brewer. Quiet and unassuming, Baird was well liked, and his enthusiasm for collecting flora and fauna was inspiring. During his 28 years at the Smithsonian, the natural history collection grew from 6,000 specimens to more than 2.5 million. Baird encouraged the collection of bird specimens by scores of competent people, many of whom were in government service on expeditions and surveys or in the military. In the book Ornithologists of the United States Army Medical Corps, Baird is mentioned no fewer than 45 times for his work with collectors such as Elliott Coues and John Xantus. For these men on the western frontier, Baird prepared Directions for Collecting, Preserving, and Transporting Specimens of Natural History. Cheered on by Baird, many collectors sent hundreds of bird specimens to him in Washington. His Birds of North America (1860) and other writings were greatly influential in American ornithology and science in general. Thomas Mayo Brewer (1814–1880) was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard Medical School. He soon gave up the practice of medicine to become a naturalist. Brewer’s early ornithological contributions were an inexpensive edition of Wilson’s American Ornithology and frequent submissions to Audubon’s publications. He also began his wide correspondence with...