collecting – Birding New Jersey

September 27, 2015September 27, 2015

Heermann’s Birds

One hundred fifty years ago today, Adolphus L. Heermann was killed, “having evidently stumbled and fallen,” when his collecting gun fired.

John Cassin, who knew him well, said of Heermann in earlier, healthier days that no better man could be had for a collecting expedition. In 1853, Cassin dedicated a “beautiful gull” to his friend, an

acknowledgment due to his accomplishment as a naturalist, and his perseverance and success as a scientific traveller.

In Washington, D.C., Spencer Baird was equally impressed by Heermann and his work in the field. On working through a collection of sparrows from the west, Baird encountered one that Heermann had sent from Tejon Pass, California, resembling a song sparrow but

differing very appreciably from a large number of specimens from Washington and Oregon…. I have come to the conclusion that the species is worthy of specific separation, and have accordingly named it Melospiza heermanni, after its accomplished collector and discoverer.

Today we “know” that that California bird is “just” a subspecies of the song sparrow. But there’s no reason not to call it the Heermann’s song sparrow, especially today.

September 2, 2015September 2, 2015

Smelly Sparrows

One of my favorite lines in the history of American ornithology comes from J.P. Giraud‘s description of one of my favorite birds, the Henslow’s sparrow.

Shotgun birders like Giraud found this species no less maddeningly elusive than today’s observers. Happily, though, writes Giraud,

from the eagerness with which it is pursued by dogs, we may infer that it possesses considerable game effluvia.

As late as the 1970s, it seems, hunters in Louisiana were complaining that their dogs were pointing these grassland “stinkbirds” instead of quail.

Gellert, you have a mission.

July 15, 2015July 15, 2015

Casualties of War

Auguste Ménégaux, who died on this date 78 years ago, was in Le Havre when war broke out in 1914.

A magnificent collection of living hummingbirds from South America, in very good health, arrived at the very moment that war was declared. The poor birds were neglected, and they all died on board the boat before reaching Paris, to the great dismay of their owner and collectors.

The business suffered setbacks in London, too, where

many collectors have been able to sell or trade their objects only at very low prices.

And who knows, Ménégaux asks ominously, what may have happened to the trade in live birds and specimens in Wallonia and Belgian Luxembourg.

We tend to think of the end of consumptive natural history hobbies as the result of a new ethic, the cultural abandonment of practices finally recognized as barbarous. But in fact there were other causes, not the least of them the First World War and the attendant breakdown of the international networks of collectors.