3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

24 1 Childhood and Youth
a diagnosis of his illness in time? This thought and the family tradition on both
his father’s and mother’s side led him almost automatically to choose a medical
profession. He had selected Greifswald on the Baltic Sea not because of its academic
reputation but because of the excellent birding areas nearby, and the Darss spit and
the islands of Hiddensee and Rügen not far away (1980n). He went birdwatching in
the forests and along the beach of the Baltic Sea almost every day, mostly alone or
in company with his friends Herbert Kramer (1900–1945), a student of zoology, or
WilhelmBredahlandWerner Klein,fellowmedicalstudents.They bandedlapwings
and dunlins in the marshy Rosenthal area and found the Red-breasted Flycatcher
(Ficedula parva) commonly breeding in the beech forests of the Elisenhain in
Eldena (Mayr 1923b), saw the fairly rare Middle Spotted Woodpecker (Picoides
medius) and watched Little Gulls (Larus minutus) at the seashore (Mayr and Klein
1924a). Hans Scharnke (1931), a younger schoolmate from Dresden, later published
many of Mayr’s and Kramer’s records together with his own field observations in
the Greifswald region. Mayr had a glorious time, summer and winter and felt truly
exhilarated on his birding excursions, especially those in the early morning. Some
of his discoveries he still remembered with excitement 80 years later, e.g., the nest
of a snipe in a bird-rich marsh, nests of both treecreepers (Certhia familiaris and
C. brachydactyla) permitting a careful comparison of these sibling species, vast
flocks of wintering geese on unused fields, and there were many more! Also, he
enjoyed his studies at the university and his complete freedom tempered by a sense
of responsibility.
Mayr’s considerations about bird study are well reflected by a preserved list of
28 points. This list was probably written during the first half of 1924 (definitely
after September 1923; see point 16). Evidently he was particularly occupied at that
time with the songs and calls of birds as discussed in the publications of the Saxon
ornithologists Rudolf Zimmermann, Bernhard Hoffmann, Bernhard Hantzsch and
Alwin Voigt (1921). These were his questions:
(1) Is the call of the European Jay (hiäh) species-specific, or an imitation of that
of the buzzard?
(2) Which species of birds can imitate?
(3) How different are the vocalizations of closely related species?
(4) How good is the memory of birds?
(5) Song and mating calls.
(6) One should not claim that species have expanded their range when they had
not been observed previously. They might have been overlooked (nocturnal
mammals; see Zimmermann).
(7) Conversely,apreviously observedspecieshasnot necessarily becomeextinct
if it is no longer observed (nutcracker).
(8) One must know the literature before one can make statements about the
status of a species.
(9) Which are the latitudinal and altitudinal species borders?
(10) Which species of plants control the distribution of animals?
(11) How far does a nonmigratory bird roam? (see Bacmeister, J. Ornithol.
1917, II).