10 On the trail of vanishing birds 



for the simple service in the Presbyterian church on lower Fifth 

 Avenue. 



These were the Depression years, and they were also years of 

 change and of experiment. Even in established scientific institu- 

 tions like the Linnaean Society the air was stirring with new ideas 

 and unexpected energies. A Field Work Committee had been 

 formed, largely as a result of the active mind, charm, and per- 

 suasiveness of one Joseph J. Hickey, who was later to take over 

 the late Aldo Leopold's job as teacher of wildlife management con- 

 cepts at the University of Wisconsin, and write such books as his 

 challenging Guide to Bird Watching. I worked closely with Joseph 

 Hickey on this committee, and for me, at least, our efforts were 

 both instructive and rewarding. There are many sides to the science 

 of ornithology, as I had been learning. If a man says that his field 

 is music and fails to go into details about it, you may not know 

 whether he conducts a symphony orchestra or merely sells sheet 

 music. I found that there are ornithologists concerned solely with 

 taxonomy, or the classification of birds. Others specialize in 

 ecology or distribution or migration, while still others spend most 

 of their time making collections of bird skins from remote corners 

 of the globe so that the taxonomist may study them and add to our 

 knowledge of classification and avian evolution. At the time of 

 which I write there was a growing interest in this country in the 

 study of bird territories and bird behavior, fields in which consider- 

 able progress had already been made in Europe. Ernst Mayr, then 

 at the American Museum, was a helpful mentor in these subjects 

 within Linnaean ranks, and the visit of Niko Tinbergen a few 

 years later gave much encouragement to behavior students on this 

 side of the Atlantic. 



As a base for all of these specialized facets of the science there 

 is always the great army of zealous amateurs, most of whom must 

 watch birds in their spare time, which means chiefly on weekends, 

 and thus have to be satisfied with merely listing birds as they 

 see them, from season to season and from one habitat or locality 

 to another. It was this group of amateur "list-chasers" that our 

 committee sought to interest in field projects designed to result 



