March 5, 1954 
THE PANAMA CANAL REVIEW 
5 
Dr. ALEXAJ.NDE.tt W El MOKE 
The Canal Zone, being as it is the low 
point of the Isthmus of Panama, is the 
natural dividing point between the 
mountain systems of North and South 
America and the dividing point for the 
bird forms of the two continents. Conse¬ 
quently birds found in Chiriqui may not 
necessarily be found in Darien, although 
each is as truly Panamanian as the other. 
Scientists deplore generalizations and 
like to say: “All generalizations are false, 
including this one.” All of which means 
that there are exceptions to everything. 
Birds peculiar to one section may sud¬ 
denly and inexplicably, Dr. Wetmore 
says, turn up in another area. One 
species of mocking bird native to Colombia 
is now common in Panama Possibly it 
could have been brought in as a caged 
bird. However it came, it is now seen in 
many sections of the Canal Zone. 
Canal Zonians who want to learn more 
about the birds which live here are fortu¬ 
nate if they are able to find a copy of 
Bertha B. Sturgis’ book, Birds of the 
Panama Canal Zone , Dr. Wetmore says. 
Famed Authority Describes Panama 
As Paradise For Ornithologists 
The Isthmus of Panama, according to 
Dr. Alexander Wetmore, is an ornitholo¬ 
gist’s paradise. There are more different 
species of birds in Panama than in all of 
North America north of Mexico, he told 
The Panama Canal Review. Of Pana¬ 
ma’s approximately 1,200 kinds, between 
400 and 450 are found in the Canal Zone. 
Dr. Wetmore is a voice of recognized 
authority on birds and bird lore. Since he 
was seven years old the tall, lanky, and 
completely charming biologist has been 
fascinated by birds and bird life, and has 
devoted as much of his busy life. as 
possible to studying birds and their habits. 
He has written of birds in South 
America, Central America, and the West 
Indies; he has made more than a dozen 
lengthy field trips to Panama; he spent 
six weeks in January and early February 
this year in the Venezuelan territory of 
Amazonas where the party with which he 
was working “happened upon” a 7,000- 
foot mountain not shown on any map 
and previously unknown apparently to 
any but the native Indians; and he has 
headed ornithological expeditions in the 
Pacific and Spain, among other places. 
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian 
Institution for 19 years and its Secretary 
for eight, he is happy now to be away from 
the administrative work which tied him 
down to a desk and free once again to 
prowl highways and byways on the look¬ 
out for the vast number of unclassified 
birds which he knows can be found by 
someone who knows where to look and 
what to look for. 
Ten Trips Here 
At the present time Dr. Wetmore and 
his wife are in Chiriqui, on the tenth field 
trip he has made to Panama. Out of these 
trips—and future trips, he hopes will 
come a book on the birds of Panama, but 
for that he is not yet ready. He is collect¬ 
ing birds for the National Museum in 
Washington and taking his own black- 
and-white photographs as he goes along. 
Although he has visited Panama every 
year except one since 1944 and although 
he has covered much of the Republic’s 
28,000 square miles, Dr. Wetmore is still 
finding what he calls “bird forms which 
have been unrecognized scientifically. 
Two years ago he classified several such 
forms on Taboga Island. Surprisingly, 
they were related to known species from 
the Pearl Islands some 40 miles away and 
not to species on the comparatively 
nearby mainland. 
Just how and when birds came to the 
Isthmus of Panama, Dr. Wetmore says, 
is a matter for scientific speculation. 
Before what geologists know as the Ice 
Age, when the world was in the Tertiary 
Period, South America was an island. 
North American and Asian fauna had a 
passage-way through what is now the 
Bering Sea in those days when the climate 
was much milder, well into the Arctic 
circle, than it is today. Each continental 
group had its own forms of life. 
Land Bridge 
About a million years ago—to a scien¬ 
tist a million years is a fairly brief span 
of time—the Isthmus of Panama was 
formed. Birds and animals from the 
northern continent crossed the new land 
bridge into South America and the South 
American species went north. Or so 
scientists infer. 
The book has been out of print for some 
time but is found occasionally in second¬ 
hand book stores and a number of copies 
are available at the Canal Zone library. 
He considers the work an excellent one. 
Bird Watching 
A novice at bird lore can, he says, 
attract to his home a good many species 
of the more common birds—and an occa¬ 
sional unusual one—if he sets up a bird 
feeding stand and keeps it supplied with 
wet bread, fruit, and water, important at 
this time of the year. 
Such a tray should attract the more 
common forms of tanagers, blue, gray, 
and red, the big brown robins, the pea¬ 
cock-feathered, red-legged honeycreepers, 
the little yellow and black birds called 
“picogordos,” and the crested ant shrikes, 
the males of which are barred like Plym¬ 
outh rock chickens, and which incident¬ 
ally are not found north of Mexico. 
If he is fortunate he may even be able 
to watch the antics of the blue-black 
grassquits which spend their waking 
hours sitting on a fence, or something of 
the sort, making sudden and repeated 
vertical flights a yard or so into the air, 
and settling down just about where they 
started from, all for the edification of 
demurely-colored females of the species. 
Private Zoo 
With all of his exploration of bird life 
here, there is no Panama bird which has 
been named for Dr. Wetmore. In a sec¬ 
tion of his card file, back home in Wash¬ 
ington, he has what he calls the Wetmore 
private zoo. 
These cards list newly discovered 
species of one thing or another which his 
scientific friends have named for him. 
There is a louse and a cactus, a bat and a 
flea, two or three lizards, a fish, half a 
dozen birds from various countries, some 
fossil birds, a shell or two and even a 
glacier—which he has never seen—on 
Palmer Peninsula in the Antartic. But 
to date there is no Panama bird wet- 
moriensis . Possibly some day someone 
will find a new species and honor the 
ornithologist by giving it his name. Then 
it will hold an honored place in the card 
catalogue of the Wetmore private zoo 
SENA TE VISITORS 
MEMBERS OF THE Senate Appropriations Committee learned some of the intricacies of operating 
the Panama Canal Locks during their visit to the Canal Zone early last month on an official business tup. 
The four Senators spent three days here to familiarize themselves with conditions preparatory to hearings 
on Canal appropriations for the coming fiscal year. ~ <7 i u . 
In the picture above taken during their visit to Miraflores Locks, left to right, are: Governor qp\ bo ( 
Kenneth Bousquet, Clerk of the Appropriations Committee; Senator Allen J. Kllender, Democrat, o 
Louisiana; Senator Milton R. Young, Republican, of South Dakota; Senator Henry C Dworshak, Repub¬ 
lican, of Idaho; Senator John L. McClellan, Democrat, of Arkansas; and Col. C. J. Hauck, Jr., escort 
f f\v* fho fmn 
