M. Philip Kahl

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Marvin Philip Kahl, Jr. (born September 28, 1934 in Indianapolis , Indiana , † December 4, 2012 in Sedona , Arizona ), commonly known as M. Philip Kahl , was an American biologist and wildlife photographer .

Life

Kahl was the son of Marvin Philip Kahl senior and Kathleen Black Kahl. In order to distinguish himself from his father, who was an alcoholic, Kahl left the first name Marvin and the junior deleted and called himself M. Philip Kahl throughout his career. In 1948 he graduated from Orchard School, a private elementary school , and from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1952. Since he had limited financial support, Kahl attended the nearby Butler University as a day student and received a Bachelor of Science degree in botany and zoology there in 1956 . After graduation, Kahl went to Florida , where he befriended Robert Porter Allen , the research director for the National Audubon Society in the Florida Keys . Kahl devoted himself to studying the forest stork , the only species of stork that also breeds in North America . Thanks to the support of Allen, Kahl received an Audubon Research Fellowship, with which he was able to carry out a long-term study in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary , the largest forest stork breeding colony in the United States, starting in 1959 . The result of this work formed the basis for his dissertation Food ecology of the Wood Stork in Florida: a study of behavioral and physiological adaptations to seasonal drought . In 1957, Kahl was drafted into the United States Army , where he worked in the medical library of a military facility in Atlanta . However, he received an early release to enroll at the University of Georgia at Athens . He graduated with a Master of Science degree in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1963. PhD. This was immediately followed by a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation for a two-year research project on storks and related species at Makerere College (in collaboration with the University of London ) in Kampala , Uganda . It was the first of 18 different trips he made in 34 years on the African continent.

Between 1959 and 1969, Kahl studied the breeding behavior of all eleven known stork species in the world. This work took him to eleven countries on five continents. He completed research projects over the forest Stork (Florida), the glutton ( Kenya ), the Painted Stork ( India ), the milky stork ( Indonesia , Cambodia ), the Asian Openbill (India, Thailand ), the openbill (Kenya, Uganda), the Abdim's Stork (Kenya , Ethiopia ), the woolly stork (Kenya, India), the white stork ( Poland ), the black stork ( South Africa , Poland), the maguaristorch ( Argentina ), the giant stork (India), the saddle stork (Kenya, Uganda), the Jabiru (Argentina ), the Great Adjutant (India), the Marabou (Kenya, Uganda) and the Sunda Marabou (India). These behavioral studies led to his revision of the classification of the stork family (Ciconiidae) in 1972, in which the number of species was increased to 17. His second interest was in the flamingos , of which he studied and photographed all five species both in the wild and in human care over a period of 16 years. The third group of birds he dedicated himself to were the spoonbills , of which he photographed all six species between 1979 and 1989.

Kahl was also a renowned wildlife photographer who photographed or filmed bird behavior in the United States and 83 other countries. His photos found u. a. Used as the cover of the magazines National Geographic Magazine , Audubon , International Wildlife and Natural History and large-scale productions such as the television series Im Reich der Wild Tiere (1973, 1974) or the documentary The Pairings of Animals (1974) showed footage by Kahl.

In 1988 Kahl was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship . The US $ 320,000 prize pool paid out over a five-year period enabled him to switch to studying elephant behavior. Kahl and his companion Billie Armstrong spent 1991 to 1997 in Africa to observe the behavior of elephants and to record their observations on film and tape. Most of their study looked at the visual communication of wild elephants in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe .

Fonts (selection)

  • Peter H. Capstick: Death in the Long Grass: A Big Game Hunter's Adventures in the African Bush , 1977 (photographs by M. Philip Kahl)
  • Wonders of Storks , 1978 (German: Welt der Störche , 1978)
  • with James A. Hancock: Storks, Ibises and Spoonbills of the World (illustrations by Alan Harris and David Quinn)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kahl, M. Philip
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kahl, Marvin Philip, Jr. (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biologist and wildlife photographer
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Indianapolis , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 2012
Place of death Sedona , Arizona