Ornithology Department
About the Department
History
1859-1862
The Ornithology Collection at Harvard University can trace its beginnings to the decade before the founding of the MCZ in 1859: one of the first accessions to the collection was a series of 25 bird specimens bought by Louis Agassiz at the Boston Market in the winter of 1847. However, significant additions to the collection were not made until the arrival of Addison Emery Verrill in 1859. In 1862 Verrill, a Harvard student appointed by Agassiz to oversee the bird collection, reported in the first annual report on the Ornithology Collection that the collection had grown by 2274 specimens, representing more than 450 species. Verrill left in 1862, eventually becoming the first Professor of Zoology at Yale University.
1862-1885
Joel Asaph Allen succeeded Verrill as the head of the Ornithology Department in 1862. He had come to Harvard University as a student of Agassiz and with significant experience in natural history, having grown up collecting birds in western Massachusetts. Allen oversaw a period of extensive specimen acquisition, through both purchase and donation, and also organized and sometimes participated in collecting trips to Florida, Lake Ontario, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. In 1865, Allen, along with Agassiz, participated in the Thayer Expedition to Brazil, which yielded more than 1400 bird specimens for the collection. By the time Allen left the MCZ in 1885 to become the first Curator of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History, the MCZ’s Ornithology Collection had grown to over 33,000 specimens and was one of the most respected collections in the United States.
1885-1932
Following the departure
of Allen and continuing into the 1930s,
the period under Curators William Brewster
and Outram Bangs saw the greatest expansion
of the Ornithology Collection. By the
end of that period the collection had reached
250,000 specimens, including 1316 type specimens.
This expansion was mainly due to the bequeathing
of several large private collections to
the MCZ: those of William Brewster (40,000
specimens), Outram Bangs (24,000 specimens)
and John Thayer (28,000 specimens). These three
men played enormous roles as both curators
and benefactors of the museum. In particular,
Brewster and Bangs oversaw the welfare
of the collection and many of its upgrades
for almost four decades.
Another noteworthy
addition to the collection at this time was
a large donation from the Boston Society of
Natural History, which included the 19th century
Lafresnaye Collection (comprising nearly 9000
specimens and over 300 type specimens) and
the remnants of Charles Willson Peale’s collection,
which contained, among other treasures,
specimens used by Alexander Wilson for his publication
American Ornithology (1808-1814) and specimens
collected on the US Exploring Expedition. Also
noteworthy were the donations of the private
collections of some of the most renowned American
ornithologists of the times, including Thomas
Penard’s neotropical collection of over 2000
specimens, Frederic Kennard’s extensive North
American collection numbering over 5000 specimens,
C. F. Batchelder’s collection of 7,500 specimens
and Arthur C. Bent’s collection of some
12,000 scientific specimens representing nearly
every North American taxon.
The LaTouche collection
of over 8,000 birds from eastern China,
and J. L. Rock’s collection of over 1,000 birds
from western China were also received
in this period, as were the collections from
Africa made by Selah Merrill, J. C. Phillips
and Arthur Loveridge, from the Philippines
by W. C. Forbes and Indonesia by O. Bryant.
1932-1952
After this period of great expansion,
responsibility for the collection was
taken over by James L. Peters who had
worked under Outram Bangs at the MCZ for
over 15 years. Much of that time was spent
in the field collecting for the MCZ and
included a year long trip to Argentina
which resulted in an impressive collection
of over 1,200 specimens. The first five
years of Peters’ curatorship saw the continued
expansion of the collection, averaging over
4000 specimens per year, but much of his
focus was transferred to his monumental publication,
Check-list of Birds of the World (1931-1987).
Although Peters never saw the project’s
completion, this systematic checklist still
remains the basis of organization for many
ornithological collections throughout the
country. Peters also initiated specimen exchanges
with many European, Asian, and American museums.
The egg and nest collection in the Ornithology
Department also received some much deserved
attention during this period. Winthrop
Sprague Brooks was appointed the collection’s
first Custodian of Bird’s Eggs and Nests
in 1928 and spent the next 5+ years rearranging
and upgrading the storage of the collection
which, by that time, numbered over 35,000
specimens. Responsibility of the collection
later fell to Richard C. Harlow, who was
Harvard’s football coach at that time.
1952-2000
This period was overseen by Curators
James C. Greenway, Jr. (until
1961) and Raymond A. Paynter,
Jr. Much of the focus during these
years was on the curation and upgrading
of the collection and the completion
of the Check-list of Birds of the
World, finished in 1987. Following
publication of each volume, the MCZ
collection was rearranged to conform
to the Check-list. The transfer
of skin specimens from wooden to
metal cases was also begun during
this time and the skeleton collection
was transferred to new boxes.
Some of the significant acquisitions made
during this period include collections
from Vietnam, Laos, and the West Indies
made by Greenway, and from India, Pakistan
(including Bangladesh), Nepal, Mexico
and Ecuador by Paynter, who also supervised
the transfer of 6,300 birds from the Boston
Museum of Science. Dr. Paynter also wrote and
edited, with Melvin A. Traylor, Jr., the 11-volume
Ornithological Gazetteers of the Neotropics,
based partly on the ornithological collections
of the MCZ and the Field Museum, and in
1991 he began entering the collection into
a database.
2000-Present
Following the retirement of Dr. Paynter
in 2000, Douglas Causey was brought in
as interim curator. During his four years
here, Dr. Causey organized and led multiple
collecting trips to Costa Rica and Alaska,
oversaw the expansion of office and work
space, the acquisition of new cases and
the transfer of the database to a new
platform. He also hired the department’s
first Curatorial Assistant (now Curatorial
Associate), Jeremiah Trimble.
In 2003,
Scott V. Edwards joined Harvard University
as Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology
and Curator of Ornithology. Dr. Edwards
has revitalized the study of Ornithology
at Harvard University on the graduate
level bringing in a number of students
dedicated to work in Ornithology. His work
has included a number of collecting expeditions
to Australia organized around his research
and the research of his students. In 2007,
the Ornithology Department was awarded a three-year
NSF grant to complete the databasing of
the collection. As of May 2008, nearly 280,000
specimens or nearly 70% of the collection
had been databased.
