Kenneth Carroll Parkes

Kenneth Carroll Parkes (born August 8, 1922 in Hackensack , New Jersey , † July 16, 2007 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania ) was an American ornithologist. His best-known works include studies of bird plumage and moulting.

Live and act

Born in Hackensack, New Jersey, Parkes spent his childhood and youth in New York City . He attended elementary and high school at Lincoln School of Teachers' College in New York and graduated in 1939. He then studied at Cornell University , where he in 1943 his Bachelor of Science in 1948 his Master of Science and in 1952 his Ph.D. attained. From April 1943 to February 1946 he served in the United States Army . While at Cornell University, Arthur Augustus Allen was his mentor, who also trained him to curate the Cornell University bird collection between 1947 and 1952. Parkes' master's thesis is entitled A Survey of Published Colored Illustrations of North American Birds and his doctoral thesis was on The Birds of New York State and Their Taxonomy . Although the latter study was never published in its entirety, Parkes used parts of it for several of his scientific papers, and John Lewis Bull dealt with aspects of this study in his 1974 work Birds of New York State . Trained in both taxonomic and museum work, Parkes became assistant curator of the bird department at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1953 . The bird collection was founded in 1899 by Walter Edmond Clyde Todd , who was the chief curator of this department until 1945. Todd had already been retired for 8 years when Parkes took the position. Parkes took over a collection of more than 100,000 study objects as well as assembled exhibition specimens and some anatomical specimens. The carefully preserved collection of 9,000 eggs (with full dating, collected prior to World War II and the effects of DDT ) was in the care of Todd until 1969. Under Parke's care from the mid-1990s, the bird collection increased to 170,000 specimens, most of which were study specimens. Parkes received 16,000 specimens through exchanges, gifts and transfer payments to educational institutions. In addition, there were over 14,500 skeletons, 6,500 preparations preserved in alcohol, and 10,220 sets of eggs added to the new computerized catalog system. After moving to Pittsburgh, Parkes expanded his research outside of the United States. In 1956 he made his first overseas excursion to the island of Luzon in the Philippines . In the 1960s he began to fill in the gaps in the Carnegie Museum's neotropical collection. In 1961 he accompanied Philip Strong Humphrey and William Henry Partridge on a collective expedition to Argentina . Between 1963 and 1981 he collected in eight different parts of Mexico, with various colleagues such as Allan Robert Phillips , Robert William Dickerman , John William Hardy and Joseph Reiher Jehl, jr. accompanied. In addition, he broadened his ornithological horizons through frequent participation in meetings in the United States, at international congresses and on bird-watching excursions. He was often accompanied by his wife Ellen. Parkes visited approximately 35 countries throughout his career. From 1967 he spent several summers on Great Gull Island , New York for a tern study for the American Museum of Natural History . Parke's research interests lay well within avian classification and distribution. Most of his taxonomic studies have included ratites, herons, owls, swallows, warbler hybridization, and the group of New World songbirds with nine-hand wings in general. While performing routine work on the specimens, Parkes always paid attention to interesting deviations and puzzling specimens. One of the best-known objects was part of a feather from the mysterious double-banded Argus pheasant , which some of Parkes' colleagues believed to be an extinct species in its own right. Parkes himself, however, believed that the feather was an abnormal specimen of the Argus pheasant . The IOC followed this view in 2011 and BirdLife International in 2012 and deleted the double-banded Argus pheasant from the list of valid bird taxa. Parkes wrote over 400 scientific articles. One of his best-known contributions was the article An approach to the study of molts and plumages (German: "An approach to researching the moulting and plumage"), which appeared in 1959 in the journal The Auk and which Parkes wrote together with Philip Strong Humphrey. Among his numerous first descriptions including the Puerto Rican Warbler ( Angelae Dendroica ) that Fuchsscheitelvireo subtype Hylophilus ochraceiceps pacificus , the cisticola subtype Cisticola juncidis nigrostriatus that Luzonralle ( lewinia mirificus ) (together with Dean Amadon ), the Philippines stubborn - Subspecies Pachycephala philippinensis boholensis , the yellow-throated bush timalia subspecies Sterrhoptilus capitalis euroaustralis and S. c. isabelae that Weißstirn tits subtype Parus semilarvatus snowi (in honor of David William Snow named), the Panther tits subspecies Periparus elegans gilliardi and P. e. bongaoensis and the Rotnackenliest subspecies Todiramphus winchelli nesydrionetes and T. w. mindanensis .

Memberships

Parkes was a member of the Wilson Ornithological Society and its president from 1972 to 1975. He had a lifetime membership of the American Ornithologists' Union and was its vice chairman from 1975 to 1983. Parkes was also a member of the Cooper Ornithological Society, the Linnaean Society of New York , the Federation of New York State Bird Clubs, Trustee of the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, and a member of the Delaware Museum of Natural History ’s Board of Directors. He was also a member of at least 35 other ornithological and conservation organizations and was associated with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for life.

Dedication names

To Parkes some subspecies are named, including Zosterops montanus parkesi ( mountain Brillenvogel subtype of Palawan ), mulleripicus funebris parkesi ( Philippines Specht subtype of Polillo Archipelago ), Ixos philippinus parkesi ( Rotbrustbülbül subtype of Burias ), the American Yellow Warbler subtype Dendroica petechia parkesi and the golden- billed altator subspecies Saltator aurantiirostris parkesi .

literature

• Mary Heimerdinger Clench: In Memoriam: Kenneth Carroll Parkes, 1922-2007 . In: The Auk . tape 125 , no. 2 , 2008, p. 499-501 .
• Richard Charles Banks: Obituary: Kenneth Carroll Parkes, 1922-2007 . In: Ibis . tape 150 , no. 2 , 2008, p. 442–443 ( online [PDF; accessed June 8, 2012]).