delaware valley ornithological club. 5 



John and Joe Krider 



Personally I knew little of the Kriders. John Krider' s old 

 gun shop, still standing at the northeast corner of Second and 

 Walnut streets is an ancient landmark of local ornithology, and I 

 remember the second story — a dingy cubbyhole where ' 'Charlie ' ' 

 Wood, a brother of "Chris," presided as taxidermist. Charlie 

 struck me as very different from " Chris " — much more of a mel- 

 ancholy cast of mind, but I really did not know him very well and 

 saw him only a few times. Krider' s shop was a rendezvous of the 

 "gunning " fraternity and among them were many ornithologic- 

 ally inclined sportsmen. It was quite natural for men of this 

 type to be interested in birds in a quasi-scientific way. This 

 attitude of mind is reflected in that rare old book of D . Elisha 

 Lewis, "The American Sportsman, " and to a lesser extent in 

 Frank Forester's " Field Sports ". Such books are in a sense 

 unique and altogether representative of the type that frequented 

 Krider' s shop. John Krider, himself, published a small book 

 under the title, "Forty Years' Notes of a Field Ornitholo- 

 gist", with a sub-title as follows — "Giving a Description of 

 All Birds Killed and Prepared by Him' ' . It bears the imprint of 

 1879 from the press of Joseph H. W^eston — Philadelphia — and 

 is an annotated list, with the scientific names then current, of 

 335 species, beginning in the old style with the rapacious birds 

 and ending with the guillemots and auks. The specific names 

 all begin with a capital letter, the name of the describer following. 

 It is by no means a local list, much of the matter relating to Iowa, 

 where Krider and his son Joe spent their summers collecting. 

 Ruthven Deane and I visited the old shop some years ago and 

 were each given a copj'- of this book b}" Mr. Lee Siner, the pres- 

 ent incumbent. Joe Krider also was a characteristic field man 

 and a good collector, though like his father entirely unscientific. 



One of these kindred spirits that I came to know was Charlie 

 Westcott. He was an out-and-out sportsman with a strong bias 

 toward ornithology. Charlie was in no way professional, how- 

 ever. At one time he was in the gun business, I think with 

 the old firm of Philip Wilson. Westcott used to collect in a 

 casual sort of way, shooting warblers along Crum Creek during 



