3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

Emigration to the United States and Life in New York City 109
logical Society under E. Stresemann was “far more scientific, far more interested
in life histories and breeding bird species, as well as in reports on important recent
literature. Most members of the German society were amateurs like those of the
Linnaean Society, but somehow a very different tradition had become established”
(Mayr 1999j: 3).
The activities of birdwatchers in the New York area and beyond had been
influenced by Ludlow Griscom (1890–1959), an assistant curator at the AMNH. He
dominated the meetings of the Linnaean Society (until he moved to Cambridge,
Massachusetts in 1927) and was the acknowledged leader in field identification of
birds. He inspired R. T. Peterson to prepare his first field guide which appeared in
1934. Griscom introduced the game of correctly identifying a maximum number of
bird species in a minimum of time based on a thorough knowledge of the diagnostic
differences of all similar species of birds. Millions of people enjoy it. However, as
Mayr (1995k) pointed out, “Griscomites hardly ever make any contributions to the
serious study of birds. […] List-chasing à la Griscom does not produce amateur
naturalists of the tradition of Selous and Howard.” The one thing “birders” in the
Griscom-tradition never do is to watch a bird carefully and describe its behavior. 7
This was precisely what Ernst Mayr now asked the birdwatchers to do. He wanted
to lift their hobby of birding above the level of list-chasing.
He arranged an Ornithological Seminar alternating with the formal Linnaean
Society meetings and similar to Stresemann’s “Fachsitzungen” where Mayr had
participated in Berlin. At first, he himself reviewed “Some problems of bird migration”
and other topics from the “biological” bird literature like papers by G. Schiermann
and K. Lorenz, an article by himself on B. Altum and the territory theory
and others by Eliot Howard and Edmund Selous: “The ornithological seminar
appears to be quite successful. There were 17 people present the first time, and
22 the second time. The meeting is on the first Tuesday every month” (letter to
F. Chapman, 13 March 1933). Attendance later decreased to a core group of 8–10
young birdwatchers. “Everybody should have a problem to work on,” Mayr used
to say, which meant that each one should work on a research topic that is on a gap
in scientific knowledge that they as bird students should attempt to fill.
“Once a pattern had been established, I asked members of our Ornithological
Seminar to review short papers from the American literature and very much encouraged
them, eventually, to adopt themselves a ‘problem’ and try to solve it by
field work. Dick Kuerzi undertook a life history of Tree Swallow on a colony he
himself had founded [Proc. Linn. Soc. New York 53:1–52, 1941]. Irv Kassoy did
a superb study on nesting Barn Owls [never published]. Bill Vogt did a life history
of the Willet nesting in New Jersey [Proc. Linn. Soc. New York 49:8–42, 1938],
Dick Herbert did a census of occupied Peregrine Falcon eyries in New Jersey and
southern New York state [Auk 82:62–94, 1965], and Jack Kuerzi a faunistic survey
of the rarer breeding birds of Connecticut [on which he published several short
7 After Mayr had moved from New York to Cambridge (Massachusetts) he wrote to Stresemann
(Berlin): “Ornithologically, the Boston region was quite deteriorated, particularly
under Griscom’s unfortunate influence. ‘List-chasing’ had become the main activity”
(4 January 1958).