Helmut Sick

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Maximilian Friedrich Helmut Sick (born January 10, 1910 in Leipzig ; † March 5, 1991 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a German-Brazilian ornithologist who is one of the most outstanding experts on Brazilian avifauna . He was nicknamed Sicki by the Brazilians .

Life

Helmut Sick was already fascinated by the world of birds as a child and adolescent. At 18 he joined the “Association of Saxon Ornithologists” and at 21 he became a member of the German Ornithological Society . In 1933 he went to Berlin and studied ornithology with Erwin Stresemann in 1936 . His dissertation, published in 1937 in the Journal für Ornithologie , was a study of the functional morphology of the fine structure of feathers .

In 1939 he followed Stresemann's suggestion and undertook an expedition to research the red-billed hokko in Brazil, which was originally supposed to last three months. Helmut Sick then carried out further research in the states of Espirito Santo , Rio de Janeiro and Mato Grosso, and so he lived in hiding in Espirito Santo until 1942. After Brazil declared war on Germany in 1942, Sick was imprisoned. He was released in 1945 but stayed in Brazil. In 1952, Helmut Sick became a Brazilian citizen.

In 1957 his book "Tukaní" appeared about the first successful geographic and ornithological expedition in 1943 to central Brazil ( Mato Grosso , Pará ), which became very well known. From 1946 onwards, Sick joined the Fundaçao Brasil Central (FBC), an organization founded in 1943 and funded by the government to explore central Brazil, on this expedition, which led across the rivers of the Rio Roncador , the Río Xingú and the Rio Tapajós . Over 500 species of birds have been reclassified and several Indian tribes have been discovered that lived unnoticed by the outside world as in the Stone Age.

The main focus of Sick, however, was the research of the Lear's macaw ( Anodorhynchus leari ). After almost 25 years of searching (1954–1979) and five expeditions, Professor Sick and his expedition members spotted the first Lear's macaws in the wild on January 10, 1979 in Raso da Catarina, in the north of the state of Bahia . The bird species had previously only been known through captured specimens and feathers for 120 years.

In 1984 he published his two-volume old work "Ornitologia Brasileira" (English edition: Birds in Brazil: A Natural History , 1993), which, with 1635 described bird species, is one of the most extensive identification books on the Brazilian bird world. The book was written with the collaboration of José Fernando Pacheco , Jürgen Haffer and Herculano F. Alvarenga and was illustrated by Paul Barruel and John Patton O'Neill . In addition, Sick published over 200 publications.

The following bird species were first described by Helmut Sick :

Dedication names

Olivério Pinto and Hélio Ferraz de Almeida Camargo honored Sick in 1952 in the epithet of the subspecies Schistochlamys ruficapillus sicki of the cinnamon tangar . In 1983 Dante Martins Teixeira and Luiz Pedreira Gonzaga named the black-backed ant catcher ( Terenura sicki ) after Helmut Sick.

Works

  • Tukaní - Among the animals and Indians of Central Brazil on the first crossing from SE to NW. Parey, Hamburg 1957.
  • Axel Amuchástegui: Studies of birds and mammals of South America. With texts by Helmut Sick. John Murray in association with The Tryon Gallery, London 1967, (English).
  • Ornitologia Brasileira. Linha Grafica Editora, Brasilia 1984, ISBN 85-230-0087-9 , (Portuguese).
  • Birds of Brazil. A natural history. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1993, ISBN 0-691-08569-2 .

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sick, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sick, Heinrich Maximilian Friedrich Helmut (full name); Sicki (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Brazilian ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1991
Place of death Rio de Janeiro