B ob Pyle was truly one of us, and one of 
the very best. A Regional Editor for 
American Birds, Field Notes, and North 
American Birds ever since the Hawaiian Islands 
Region was formally brought on board in 
1977 — and keeper of the official list of Hawai- 
ian birds back as far as 1954 — Bob was one of 
the most affable, prompt, and knowledgeable 
correspondents any of the chief editors of this 
journal have had the pleasure to work with. 
After a year of correspondence with Bob’s 
many admirers, spanning from Hawaii to New 
York to Europe, it gives us great pleasure to re- 
port that this esteem and affection for him 
were universal. Volume 67, Number 7 of the 
Hawaiian Audubon Society’s ‘Elepaio brims 
with reminiscences of friends and colleagues 
who clearly cherished him at least as much as 
his North American Birds family. He was that 
rare person who connected birding and or- 
nithological communities with a sense of com- 
mon purpose — to keep dutiful, accurate 
records on all the birds found in Hawaii. And 
his upbeat persona and enthusiasm for birds 
and wildlife was obviously infectious; not only 
did he encourage and exhort thousands of peo- 
ple to take up an interest in Hawaii’s avifauna, 
he managed to convert his entire family to the 
arts and sciences of the natural world, as their 
deep professional and personal interests in 
ichthyology, botany, ecology, and ornithology 
attest. 
Bob was born and raised in Wilmington, 
Delaware. While still a youngster, he watched 
birds at his grandparents' feeders in Baltimore 
and Washington, D.C. As a student at Swarth- 
more College he recorded his first daily check- 
list of the species and numbers of birds he saw 
on 7 April 1941. After two years at Swarthmore, 
he transferred to New York University to com- 
plete his undergraduate degree in meteorology, 
under the auspices of the United States Army 
for service in World War II. After the war, he re- 
turned to meteorology studies, completing his 
Masters at UCLA and his Ph.D. at the Universi- 
ty of Washington. Part of his dissertation work 
was done on Maui between 1953 and 1956, and 
it was there was Bob was first introduced to the 
wonders of the Hawaiian landscape and culture. 
He joined the Hawaii Audubon Society in 1953, 
as well as the Hawaii Trail and Mountain Club, 
where he met his wife-to-be, Leilani, on a hike 
through the Mokule'ia Forest Reserve. They 
were married for 53 years. 
In Memoriam 
Robert Lawrence Pyle 
27 August 1923 -29 July 2007 
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3 
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a 
Although Bob’s career was in meteorology, 
his avocation in ornithology sometimes pre- 
dominated, as during 1966-1969, when he 
took leave from the Weather Service to work 
alongside professional ornithologists from the 
Smithsonian Institution conducting the Pacific 
Ocean Seabird Project. In spare moments, he 
produced many sundry publications on birds 
in Hawaii, beginning modestly in 1954 with 
Hawaii’s “Green” field checklist. After being 
transferred to the Washington, D.C. area for six 
years. Bob returned to Hawaii in 1975 to man- 
age the Weather Satellite Field Station at the 
Honolulu Airport, the first of its kind. In 1984, 
when he retired. Bob took on part-time work in 
the Vertebrate Zoology Division at the Bishop 
Museum, where he spearheaded construction 
of a database of bird records in the Hawaiian Is- 
lands, now including well over 100,000 entries, 
and an archive of photographs of rare birds as 
well. His grand project, a monograph on the 
status and distribution of all Hawaiian birds, 
was not quite finished at the end of his life, but 
his family and friends, and particularly his son 
Peter Pyle, a noted ornithologist, have taken up 
the work, which should be completed and pub- 
lished in the near future. 
Over six decades of birding across the Pacific 
Basin gave Bob an opportunity to study, closely 
and repeatedly, many Pacific islands’ bird popu- 
lations, but he also found time to bird in Japan, 
Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, 
Antarctica, and South America, as well as in all 
fifty United States. The rarest of birds he en- 
countered were Hawaiian native birds now pre- 
sumed extinct, including the 'O'o and ‘O'u on 
Kauai and the Po'ouli on Maui. He was a metic- 
ulous record-keeper, maintaining an American 
Birding Association region list as well as a world 
list and a special state list for Hawaii, for which 
he was the first person to observe 200 species. 
He participated in his first Christmas Bird 
Count in California in 1944, after which he 
missed only a few seasons, and he participated 
in up to eight counts per year, through Decem- 
ber 2006, the year before he died. 
His work as an educator and enthusiastic 
hobbyist touched countless people in Hawaii 
and beyond, but he also worked tirelessly be- 
hind the scenes, serving as President of the 
Hawaii Audubon Society on four occasions 
between 1955 and 1983 and on its Board of 
Directors on five occasions. In 1995, the Soci- 
ety gave Bob its Lifetime Achievement Award 
and awarded him an Honorary Life Member- 
ship in 2001. He held a bird-banding permit 
from the U.S. Fish and "Wildlife service from 
1950 through 2001, during which time he 
participated in various banding projects, and 
he was president of the Eastern Bird-Banding 
Association for a stretch in the 1960s. In Jan- 
uary 2009, he was posthumously awarded the 
President’s Volunteer Service Award, given by 
the United States President’s Council on Serv- 
ice and Civic Participation. 
Bob is survived by his wife Leilani, his 
daughter Ellen, his sons Peter and Richard, 
and five grandchildren: Rio, Zephyr, Cara, 
Anna, and Owen. We should add, too, that 
his family at North American Birds survives 
him, and misses him immensely. Bob’s work 
as Regional Editor has been taken on full-time 
by Peter Donaldson, who co-edited the 
Hawaiian Islands report with Bob from Win- 
ter 1999-2000 to Summer 2007. 
Aloha e Bob. 
— Edward S. Brinkley 
The American Birding Association encourages those who appreciated Bob's many reports and many years of service to send do- 
nations in his memory to a fund that has been established in his honor at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. To donate, please send 
a check, earmarked in the memo space for the "Pyle Fund," to: The Hawaii Biological Survey, Bishop Museum, 1 525 Bernice 
Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817. The fund will be used in part toward publication of Bob's monograph on Hawaiian birds. 
VOLUME 61 (2008) 
NUMBER 4 
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