THE MAN WHO LOVED BIRDS

Biography of America's Bird Man, Explorer, Author, Museum Innovator, and Father of the Christmas Bird Count

Chapman was a great ornithologist… He loved birds. He loved them as Audubon loved them. He also loved them as St. Francis loved them.” Guy Emerson, Audubon Society, 1949. Dr. Frank M. Chapman of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City was the father of the Christmas Bird Count but was also the most popular bird writer of his era, an influential editor, South American explorer, museum innovator, pioneer bio-geographer, educator, early bird photographer, spell-binding speaker, author of 17 books and several hundred popular and scientific articles, and owner-editor of Bird-Lore (1899-1934): the first popular magazine for birdwatchers and forerunner of today’s Audubon. Some have called him the father of the modern American birdwatching (birding) movement.

This self-taught bird man left an imperishable legacy as a daring pioneer ornithologist whose adventures included dodging rattlesnakes and tornados in frontier Texas, barely surviving a savage Caribbean hurricane aboard a small sailing craft, negotiating with armed revolutionaries in the South American jungle, and riding mule back along narrow, treacherous trails high in the Andes mountains. A close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt he spent 54-years at the American Museum of Natural History winning many laurels for his landmark contributions to the museum and ornithology. His life story is the history of American ornithology from 1886 through 1942—an epic era of enormous change and memorable achievement.