3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

CuratorofOrnithologyattheAmericanMuseumofNaturalHistory 127
In the course of his efforts to introduce experimental biology, ecology and
ethology into American ornithology, Mayr encouraged Margaret M. Nice (1883–
1974) to write her two-volume monograph of the Song Sparrow, which made
her famous. They had met at the annual AOU meeting in Detroit (October 1931):
“Thus started a warm and enduring friendship that became exceedingly important
to me,” she wrote in her autobiography (Nice 1979: 109). Mayr was delighted to
find an American “interested in more than faunistic records and pretty pictures”
and started her reading the German Journal für Ornithologie. Mrs.Nicelived
in Columbus, Ohio where she had no chance to discuss her studies with other
naturalists for she was excluded from the strictly masculine Wheaton Club. Mayr
was present when, on his suggestion, she visited Berlin and the Museum of Natural
History for ten days during the summer of 1932. Stresemann, similarly impressed
with her work, published a detailed progress report in German in Journal für
Ornithologie (1933/34). Mayr considered her Song Sparrow monograph “the finest
piece of life-history work ever done.” As the editor, he offered to publish the
final manuscript in the Transactions of the Linnaean Society of New York (1937,
1943). He also persuaded N. Tinbergen to send him his observations of the Snow
Bunting in spring for publication. At the AMNH Mayr established a seminar for
birdwatchers in the New York area (p. 109) and cooperated closely with G.K. Noble
(1894–1940) who pioneered in behavioral experiments with free-living birds and
other vertebrates (Mayr 1990h). Noble’s sudden death was particularly shocking
because he was such a vital person, but died within three days by a throat infection.
Similarly, Ernst Mayr encouraged and influenced the work of David Lack, Konrad
Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen in Europe, as pointed out by Burkhardt (1992: 300,
1994: 360). The Austrian ethologist Lorenz worked in Germany during most of his
career. He supported Mayr’s lifelong interest in animal behavior. In fact, about half
of Mayr’s PhD students did their theses in behavior rather than either evolution or
systematics (p. 262). Mayr wrote in his autobiographical notes:
“In 1951, Gretel and I visited the Lorenz’s at Buldern, Westphalia. There we
had very long discussions, even controversies. At this period, Lorenz always talked
about the Greylag Goose in a strictly typological sense. By contrast, I insisted that
every Greylag Goose was different from any other one. ‘If a Greylag Goose becomes
widowed,’ he said, ‘he or she will never marry again.’ I asked him on how many
cases his statement was based, but he had only a vague answer. At any rate my
insistence that every goose should be treated as an individual eventually resulted
in Lorenz hiring a special assistant to keep track of the activities of every single
individual in the flock. Each goose had its own card in the cardfile and all about
each goose was recorded daily. Needless to say, within the first year he already had
one or two cases of widowed geese remarrying. Many other sweeping statements
about the Greylag Goose were likewise refuted by individual records. […]
When Lorenz went to Seewiesen [in 1956] I visited him several times and
gave seminars to his investigators. Our friendship, of course, continued after his
retirement [1973] when Gretel and I visited the Lorenz’s at Altenberg, Austria.
With part of the money for his Nobel Prize Konrad had built a very large seawater
aquarium with the most wonderful coral reef fishes. There he went after breakfast