Animals: Birdmen

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There is no sentiment in a bird's sex life. Most people think the male struts and flaunts his plumage to take the female's fancy. What he is really attempting is intimidation. So reported Cornell University's Ornithologist Arthur Augustus Allen to some 400 colleagues gathered in Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History last week for the golden jubilee meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union.

Between chilly field trips and genial banquets the birdmen found time to read each other some 60 papers. Dr. James Bond (Philadelphia) lashed out at ''so-called scientists and collectors" who have almost annihilated some species of birds. Dr. Clarence Cottam (U. S. Biological Survey) heightened the birdmen's concern over the decrease in North American waterfowl (see col. 3) by telling them how brant and Canada geese have suffered from the strange disappearance of eel grass during the past three years (TIME, Aug. 21).

Miss Phoebe M. Knappen (U. S. Biological Survey) reported that when the Washington Monument was new, hundreds of birds dashed themselves to death against it at night. In time they learned to avoid it and all went well until two years ago when floodlights were trained on its sides. Since then at least 618 dead birds of some 50 species have been picked up at the monument's base.

W. I. Lyon, a Waukegan, Ill. realtor, said he had used his spare time to band some 58,000 birds, had found that no species ever migrates due north or due south. Most fly from northeast to south-west and vice versa, rarely return by the route they go. Why, Realtor Lyon did not say.

One of the first things the American Ornithologists' Union did after its organization in 1883 was to advertise for volunteer observers of bird migrations. From a young New Jersey bank clerk named Chapman came an enthusiastic response. Each weekday morning from early March to late May of 1884 Volunteer Chapman got up at dawn, gulped a cup of coffee, set out with notebook and field glasses to tramp the woods & fields around his home. He had to catch a 7:39 a. m. train to get to his Manhattan job, but when the spring reports were in Chapman's were judged best in the Atlantic district.

Last week the Ornithologists' Union found itself once more honoring this same bird-lover. To him went the Brewster Medal for the year's best book on American birds. The prize was awarded for a revised edition of his Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, first published in 1895.

When, at 22, Frank Michler Chapman got to be head of his bank department, he resigned. Banks were all right, but he liked birds better. In 1888 he went to work in Manhattan's American Museum. For the past 25 years he has been the Museum's curator-in-chief of birds. He has done as much as any man living to teach his countrymen to know and love birds. He originated the Museum's brilliantly realistic habitat groups; founded a magazine Bird-Lore; lectured widely; composed standard guides and handbooks for amateurs.