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<\/p>\nEighty-six years ago today, George Washington Goethals died in New York City.<\/p>\n
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Here in our part of the world, he is best known as the eponym of the great bridge that spans the Arthur Kill to connect New Jersey and Staten Island.<\/p>\n
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A few people with longer memories recall Goethals’s heroic role as Chief Engineer for the Panama Canal, completed under his supervision a hundred years ago this year.<\/p>\n
But very, very few of us remember Goethals’s Hummingbird<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Edward A. Goldman<\/a> — the famous collector whose own name is borne by so many Central American birds — took the first specimens of this new hummingbird<\/a> in March 1912, in the Darien region of eastern Panama. Goldman sent the Smithsonian three skins<\/a>, a female shot on March 6, a male shot ten days later, and a second male taken in May; Edward Nelson chose to describe the species using the first male, “slightly immature,” as the type.<\/p>\n Nelson’s analysis determined that the new hummingbird was closely related to the Violet-capped Hummingbird<\/strong>, but differed from the birds of his genus\u00a0Goldmania\u00a0<\/em>in certain characters of the wing, most notably the apparently “normal,” unmodified shape of the outermost primary. He deemed that difference sufficient for the erection of a new genus, which Nelson named\u00a0Goethalsia<\/em>,<\/p>\n in honor of Colonel George W. Goethals, head of the Panama Canal Commission, to whom the scientific workers of the Biological Canal Zone are deeply indebted for prompt and courteous assistance in prosecuting their work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The species epithet Nelson assigned the bird,\u00a0bella<\/em>, is just the flattering icing on the cake.<\/p>\n