Feathery Tribe: Robert Ridgway and the Modern Study of Birds

by Daniel Lewis

Amateurs and professionals studying birds at the end of the nineteenth century were a contentious, passionate group with goals that intersected, collided and occasionally merged in their writings and organizations. Driven by a desire to advance science, as well as by ego, pride, honor, insecurity, religion and other clashing sensibilities, they struggled to absorb the implications of evolution after Darwin. In the process, they dramatically reshaped the study of birds.   Daniel Lewis here explores the professionalization of ornithology through one of its key figures: Robert Ridgway, the Smithsonian Institution’s first curator of birds and one of North America’s most important natural scientists. Exploring a world in which the uses of language, classification and accountability between amateurs and professionals played essential roles, Lewis offers a vivid introduction to Ridgway and shows how his work fundamentally influenced the direction of American and international ornithology. He explores the inner workings of the Smithsonian and the role of collectors working in the field and reveals previously unknown details of the ornithological journal The Auk and the untold story of the color dictionaries for which Ridgway is known.

Genres: Birds

369 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

I work as a full-time endowed senior curator of the history of science and technology at the Huntington Library, Art Museum & Botanical Gardens in Southern California—and in a related vein—am a writer, college professor, and environmental historian. At the Huntington, I manage the documentary heritage (rare books, archival collections) related to modern (>1800) history of science and technology, working broadly across the natural and physical sciences.

I write mostly about the biological sciences and their intersections with evolution, policy, culture, history, politics, law, and literature. I hold the PhD in History and have had postdocs at Oxford, the Smithsonian, the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, and elsewhere. My 2012 book (The Feathery Tribe, Yale) was about the study of birds in the late 19th century and what it meant to be a professional after Darwinian evolution provided the mechanism for biological change. My 2018 book (Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai'i, also with Yale) is an environmental history of extinction and survival among the avifauna of my native state, told in four species; it questions notions of purity among humans and animals. My new book (Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of our Future) is a conservation and climate change story, published by Simon & Schuster in March 2024. I'm also a consulting author for McGraw-Hill Education's K-7 social studies textbooks. I'm represented by Wendy Strothman of the Strothman Agency in NYC for my writing projects.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good resource for information about Ridgway's life and works, together with an account of the emergence of a professional class of ornithologists in the late 19th century. Lewis provides interesting details, for instance, the importance of collections of study skins and changes in museums' lending policies. He proposes the interesting hypothesis (p. 97) that the health problems suffered by Ridgway, Elliot Coues, and others can be attributed to low levels of arsenic poisoning, as this toxic chemical was used to preserve specimens.