The Museum of Natural History began collecting birds before bird guides existed, at a time when identification took place through the barrel of a shotgun filled with “dust” to reduce damage to the specimens. In 1899, the museum hired W.E. Clyde Todd as an assistant in charge of all recent vertebrates, though he was shamelessly devoted to birds. He built that collection from the ground up, accessioning 136,295 specimens —a remarkable 66% of today’s holdings. Todd described 397 holotypes, or birds new to the world. He produced two major works, Birds of Western Pennsylvania (1940) and Birds of the Labrador Peninsula and Adjacent Areas (1963), the latter of which focused on an area of eastern Canada and earned him the distinction of being the only ornithologist to date to win a pair of Brewster Medals, in recognition of an exceptional body of work on birds of the Western Hemisphere. The prestigious honor from the American Ornithological Society dates to 1921 and was bestowed on Todd for the first time in 1925 for his co-work on the birds of Santa Marta, Colombia.
Brewster Medal (times two)
The Museum of Natural History began collecting birds before bird guides existed, at a time when identification took place through the barrel of a shotgun filled with “dust” to reduce
