3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

22 1 Childhood and Youth
Zimmermann died in his 60s from cancer of the throat, which I attribute to his
life-long smoking cigars.” 5
The Duck with a Red Bill
As a reward for just passing the high school examination (Abitur), in February
1923, Ernst’s mother gave him a pair of binoculars. For several weeks, he went on
dailyexcursionsintothehillyneighborhoodsofDresden,tothelakesofMoritzburg
(a hunting chateau of the Saxon kings), or to the gravel banks of the Elbe River,
where he worked out the differences in call notes of the two common plovers (Mayr
1925a). It was on one of the lakes of Moritzburg, the Frauenteich, on 23 March 1923,
that the first major historical accident in his life occurred: He discovered with his
new binoculars a pair of ducks, the male with a red bill that was totally unknown to
him and that he determined at home with the help of his bird books as Red-crested
Pochard (Netta rufina). This bird had not been seen in Saxony since 1845 and,
therefore, arguments over the reliability of the identification of these ducks arose
among the members of the local bird society in Dresden. To settle the issue, Dr.
Raimund Schelcher (1891–1979), at that time a pediatrician in Dresden, suggested
that Mayr visit his former schoolmate Erwin Stresemann during a stop-over on
his way to Greifswald where Mayr was to begin medical studies. Schelcher wrote
a letter of introduction, thereby establishing the fateful link between these two
scientists. Dr. Stresemann, already a leading ornithologist in the country, after
a detailed “cross examination” and an analysis of Mayr’s field notes accepted his
observation as valid and published a brief note on it (Mayr 1923a). 6 Stresemann
was so taken by the enthusiasm and knowledge of his visitor that he invited him to
work between semesters as a volunteer in the ornithological section of the museum:
“It was as if someone had given me the key to heaven,” Mayr (1997d: 176) recalled
this event many years later. The contact with Stresemann was to change the course
of his life very soon.
“In the next university’s vacation, I worked at the museum. On the very first
day, Dr. Stresemann handed me two or three trays full of little brown treecreepers.
There are, in Europe, two species which are so similar that until a generation
ago all the leading ornithologists insisted that they were only one. It was not
until their songs became known that their specific distinctness was recognized.
The specific differences between the two are so minute that it requires a lengthy
5 Rudolf Zimmermann and Ernst Mayr appear standing side by side in the group photograph
taken on the occasion of the annual meeting of the German Ornithological Society
in Berlin in October 1925 (see Haffer et al. 2000, p. 434). An obituary of R. Zimmermann
was published in the J. Ornithol. 92, 1944; (see also H.C. Stamm, Mitt. Landesverein Sächsischer
Heimatschutz 1999, pp. 57–61; Mayr 2003a). Ernst Mayr is mentioned repeatedly
in the letters exchanged between R. Zimmermann and R. Heyder from the 1920s to the
1940s which were published recently (Stamm, H. C. & J. Hering, Mitteilungen des Vereins
Sächsischer Ornithologen, vol. 10, Sonderheft 1, 2007).
6 The year of the observation was 1923, not 1922, as incorrectly given in the published note
(pers. comm.).