Waldron DeWitt Miller

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Waldron DeWitt Miller (born August 4, 1879 in Brooklyn , New York City , † August 7, 1929 in New Brunswick , New Jersey ) was an American ornithologist .

He was an associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History . Together with Alexander Wetmore he developed a scheme for the classification of birds for the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU Check-List) .

Life

Miller, son of a major , grew up in Plainfield and began watching birds and their living conditions like the Western Forest Bully while attending school there . He then moved to the East Greenwich Academy and, after graduating, started working for an insurance company in New York City. By reading the works of the literary naturalist John Burroughs , his interest in ornithology continued to grow and in 1896 he became an associate member of the American Ornithologists' Union and in 1900 a corresponding member of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club in Philadelphia . He was also a co-founder of the John James Audubon Society of New Jersey in 1897 and its vice-president until his death.

Through a neighbor, Miller met the banker and ornithologist Frank Michler Chapman , through whose mediation he was able to take up a position as an assistant in the department of mammalogy and ornithology of the American Museum of Natural History in 1903. While he was mainly concerned with the birds of the east coast of the United States , he dealt from then on by reading the works of Elliott Coues with general ornithology. In the following years he worked as a taxidermist in particular with the processing of birds that came from expeditions in Mexico and Panama .

Miller, who became a member of the American Ornithologists' Union in 1906, became an assistant curator in 1911 and eventually an associate curator at the American Museum in 1917.

Shortly afterwards, in 1917 he undertook a field study on the study of bird life in Nicaragua with Ludlow Griscom , who had started his position as assistant curator at the American Museum at the time . This resulted in a comprehensive report on the living conditions, local occurrences, relationships and food of the birds there.

He also dealt with the classification of feathers based on the description of kingfishers and woodpeckers . In 1922 he became a foreign member of the British Ornithologists' Union (BOU). Together with Alexander Wetmore he developed a scheme for the classification of birds for the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU Check-List) . This list began in 1926 with the classification of ravens and crows .

He also dealt with the cataloging of hawks and general bird studies in the state of New Jersey. In 1928, together with Willard Gibbs Van Name, he undertook an extensive field study in the forest areas in the western United States and also dealt with questions of forest protection . In addition, he also wrote an extensive treatise on the snake occurrence in New Jersey.

Miller died in St. Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick as a result of a road traffic accident that he had suffered on August 4, 1929.

Publications

  • List of Birds Collected in Southern Sinaloa, Mexico, by JH Batty, During 1903-1904 , 1905
  • List of Birds Collected in Northwestern Durango, Mexico, by JH Batty, During 1903 , 1906
  • A Review of the Manakins of the Genus Chiroxiphia , 1908
  • A Revision of the Classification of the Kingfishers , 1912
  • Notes on Ptilosis: With Special Reference to the Feathering of the Wing , 1915
  • Three New Genera of Birds , 1915
  • Descriptions of Proposed New Birds from Central America, with Notes on Other Little-known Forms , co-author Ludlow Griscom, 1921
  • Further Notes on Ptilosis , 1924
  • Variations in the Structure of the Aftershaft and Their Taxonomic Value , 1924
  • Descriptions of New Birds from Nicaragua , co-author Ludlow Griscom, 1925
  • Notes on Central American Birds, with Descriptions of New Forms , co-author Ludlow Griscom, 1925
  • Field Notes of Waldron DeWitt Miller on the Snakes of New Jersey , 1926, reprinted 1937 (editor Adelaide Bertha Heyen)
  • A Crisis in Conservation: Serious Danger of Extinction of Many North American Birds , co-authors Willard Gibbs Van Name and Davis Quinn, 1929
  • The Scansorial Foot of the Woodpeckers, with Comments on the Evolution of Perching and Climbing Feet in Birds , 1931, new edition 1959 (editor Walter Joseph Bock)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark V. Barrow, Jr .: Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology , ISBN 0-22603-815-7 , 2011
  2. ↑ Global Plants (JSTOR)
  3. ↑ Walden DeWitt Miller: The Genera of Ceryline Kingfishers . In: The Auk of July 1, 1920
  4. ↑ Tim Birkhead, Jo Wimpenny, Bob Montgomerie: Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin , p. 94, ISBN 1-40084-883-0 , 2014
  5. ↑ Maurice Broun: Hawks Aloft: The Story of Hawk Mountain , p. 6, ISBN 0-81172-790-4 , 1999
  6. ^ John Kieran: A Natural History of New York City: A Personal Report After Fifty Years , p. 16, ISBN 0-82321-086-3 , 1982
personal data
SURNAME Miller, Waldron DeWitt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1929
Place of death New Brunswick , New Jersey