Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy 123

104 3 The New York Years (1931–1953)
they had purchased a home at 138 Sunset Lane (Fig. 3.4 a, b). Friends who lived
in Tenafly (Professor Franz Schrader at Columbia University) had recommended
a real estate agent to them. When consulted, he asked how large a down payment
Mayr could afford and how large a monthly mortgage payment he could make.
When he had these figures he said “Okay, then let us go to the NW section of
Tenafly, where the $8,000 houses are.” And indeed they liked one of them and
bought it. At that time Tenafly was still relatively rural. Mayr’s house was the only
one on that side of the street, and there was an old abandoned apple orchard where
screech owls and flickers nested and bob-white quail walked around. They tried
to have a vegetable garden, but there were lots of rabbits. In later years, the area
was completely built up. They stayed in close contact with their families and Erwin
Stresemann, and saw all of them on visits to Germany with their two daughters
Christa (born in 1936) and Susanne (born in 1937) after World War II.
In the Tenafly area, Mayr did some serious birding. He noticed the nesting trees
of barred owls, located display grounds of woodcocks, and studied redwinged
blackbirds in a nearby marsh. He always took visiting ornithologists, e.g., Delacour,
Lack, Tinbergen, Stresemann, and Lorenz, to watch the courtship flight of the
woodcock. Occasionally a field trip was organized around New York City, one of
them to the Ramapo Mountains in the early 1930s guided by Ernest G. Holt. He
had collected birds for several museums in South America during the 1920s and,
from 1933 until 1942, worked for the Department of Agriculture, Washington.
Fig.3.4a. Mayr’s home in Tenafly, New Jersey, in 1948 (Photograph courtesy of Mrs. S. Harrison)