Contemplating the Tundra
CELEBRATING THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN ORNITHOLOGY Until the 1970s, few women could have called themselves ‘professional’ ornithologists no matter how great their contribution to the study of birds. As …
Magda and Kaethe
CELEBRATING THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN ORNITHOLOGY In one of my earliest memories—I must have been about 6 years old—it is summer and I am sitting in my grandfather’s garden …
More Than Generous Help
CELEBRATING THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN ORNITHOLOGY A recent study [1] of papers published from 1970 to 1990 in computational population genetics in the journal Theoretical Population Biology found that women …
Not Just a Bird in a Cage
CELEBRATING THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN ORNITHOLOGY This month—March 2019—is Women’s History Month in the USA, Australia, and the UK [1]. As President Jimmy Carter said in 1980: “Too often …
And the Oscar Goes To…
…The Private Life of the Gannets, for Best Short Subject (One Reel). It is 1938, and this film is the first movie about wildlife to win an Academy Award. Julian …
Mr. Cairngorms
In 2013, while compiling information for a chapter on the contributions of ornithology to evolutionary biology, I carried on a lively correspondence, by email, with Adam Watson. Watson was a …
In the Shadow of Men
In 1973, I was stranded for several days on a small island in Witless Bay off the southeast coast of Newfoundland. I had gone there several times already that summer, …
Dirty Birds
As a teenager, in the 1960s, I spent much of my spare time during the school year hanging out at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), not far from my family’s …
The Nice Bird Club
When I took first-year Zoology at the University of Toronto, in the 1960s, our lab instructor/coordinator was Dr J. Murray Speirs. Speirs was a kindly gentleman with a bit of …
A Very Queer Little Fish
Twenty years ago when I was writing The Red Canary—the story of how in the 1920s a bird enthusiast and a biology teacher created a red canary—I needed to include …