Menace of the Unknown

Birding in the wild lands of America was combined with the acute danger of hostile Indians and with the menace of the unknown. It is somehow amazing to picture these men on the government expeditions-Sir John Richardson with the Hudson's Bay Company in the fur countries of northern Canada; Lewis and Clark in the Oregon Country; John K. Townsend and Thomas Nuttall naming birds from Massachusetts to San Diego; John James Audubon traveling, ever bird-hungry, along the Wabash and the Ohio and down to New Orleans and Florida, into the far West, and up into Labrador.

Intrepidly, they all braved terrible traveling conditions even risked death, for the sake of new birds. And they found them. Richardson found the delicate, azure-colored bluebird at Fort Franklin one July day in 1825; Schoolcraft, studying Indians near Sault Sainte Marie, found, on a chilly April day in 1823, the first evening grosbeak. The gabbling, elusive Bell's vireo was cornered in Dakota territory by the Audubon party, which was traveling to the Yellowstone River.

Gambel, hearing a scolding and fussing in a field of dead mustard stalks in California, discovered the first wren tit. Among naturalists like these there were many exchanges of compliments by naming birds for friends. It was not proper to name one's new bird for oneself. Therefore, when the hitherto unknown solitaire was shot near Astoria, Washington, the bird was brought to Dr. Townsend, who gave it to his friend, Audubon, at that time birding in the West.

Audubon described the new bird and gave it the name of Townsend's solitaire, which it bears today. Other naturalists, in turn, named Audubon's caracara and Audubon's warbler for that ardent bird explorer. For Thomas Say, who found the Arkansas kingbird on Long's expedition into the Rockies in 1820, the Say's phoebe was named, and a sparrow, a woodpecker, and several other species were named for retiring Dr. Nuttall.

But sometimes men who found new birds determinedly gave their own names to their finds. Prince Maximilian of Wied did this when, in the West, he found a new bird that he labeled Maximilian's jay. Today, however, as if in punishment for this burst of ego, the exploring prince is not represented in the American bird list. His bird was renamed the pinyon jay.

By the middle of the 19th century, still more birdmen went West, some with the Sitgreaves expedition to the Zuni and Colorado rivers, others on the Pacific Railroad expeditions, the Hayden expeditions, on those sent by the Smithsonian Institution, and with certain private exploring parties.