Ornithology Manuscript Collections in the
Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections

Other Ornithological Collections

Cornell-trained Ornithologists

Other Cornell-trained ornithologists represented in the collection include Olin Sewall Pettingill, who became director of the Lab of Ornithology; Lawrence I. Grinnell, who documented birds throughout the world; Robert A. Johnson; Harrison F. Lewis, chief of the Canadian Wildlife Service; Stuyvesant Morris Pell, a specialist in conservation of natural resources; and James Tanner, who documented the now-extinct ivory-billed woodpecker. There are also administrative records from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as well as phonograph record masters and a microfilm of Cayuga Lake Basin phenological charts.

Other professional ornithologists documented in the manuscript collections include Albert Rich Brand, who worked on bird song recordings; Ludlow Griscom, research curator at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology; Margaret Morse Nice, associate editor of Birdbandin,g and the Wilson bulletin; W. L. McAtee, a specialist with the Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of the Interior who compiled an extensive catalog on common names of birds; George Burritt Sennett concerning late 19th century bird taxonomy and conservation efforts, and George D. Wilder, who did ornithological work in China.

Amateur Ornithologists

The work of amateur ornithologists is also documented in the department. Collections include field journals and other papers of Verdi Burtch in Penn Yan, N.Y.; Isaac Farfel in and around New York City in the 1920s; Virginia Scheetz, who became interested in ornithology through summer school courses at Cornell; and Francis G. Scheider, a Rochester, New York expert birder and field collaborator of the Lab of Ornithology; as well as the research files compiled by Waldemar H. Fries for his book on Audubon.

Ornithological Organizations

Cornell Library's manuscript collections document ornithological organizations including the Cayuga Bird Club, founded ca. 1913, by Arthur A. Allen and Louis Agassiz, with charter members including Liberty Hyde Bailey and Martha Van Rensselaer; and the Federation of New York State Bird Clubs, organized in Rochester in 1946, to serve as a mechanism for birders in the state to share their ideas and experiences and to promote research, education, and conservation.

Collections that relate primarily to other topics but include ornithology field notebooks or related items include the papers of geologist James L. Dyson; Cleveland businessman and naturalist George Lincoln Fordyce; zoologist Hugh Daniel Reed; entomologist Asa Fitch; and electrical engineer Alexander DuBois, who developed specialized photographic equipment for nature photography.

Online guide developed from:

Webpage last revised: 6/10/99 by jfc & clsb.