Biography

American ornithologist, Ludlow Griscom studied the bird life of the U.S.A. and Central America. Particularly talented at identification he was also a knowledgeable botanist. Born in New York to wealthy parents he received a high quality education, travelling to Europe every summer and learning to speak five languages fluently and translate at least ten by the time he was 28. At 15 he passed the entrance exam to Harvard but being too young spent the interim years studying languages and learning to play the piano, achieving a high enough level that he considered becoming a concert pianist.

Griscom's parents had a strong desire for him to study diplomacy and law so at the age of 17 he entered Colombia University and graduated several years later. It was at this point that he decided to follow his own passion for ornithology that had developed since his childhood, and he began a course in ornithology at Cornell University from which he received his masters degree in 1915. Griscom paid his way by teaching at the University of West Virginia during his summers and after his graduation he worked in the New York Museum of Natural History, first with their fish collections and later in ornithology. He immediately displayed a talent for identification and impressed the older generation of local birders by the accuracy with which he could name the species and sex of a distant bird, becoming highly influential in his opinion that birds do not have to be collected in order to be accurately identified.

Dedicated to the observation of his local avi-fauna, Griscom made both scientific observations and listed species as a competitive hobby. As a researcher his interest lay in neotropical species; his first trip to Central America took place in 1917 and he became particularly interested in the birds of Panama, making observations of their distribution and noting the divide in fauna between two distinct regions of the isthmus.

On his return the First World War had begun and Griscom's proficiency with languages and keen ear meant that he was called to work for the army in military intelligence. In 1924 he returned to Panama with a number of influential naturalists and continued his ornithological research, taking time to study the birds he had collected in the latter part of the 1920s and returning twice more to the Yucatan and Panama in 1926 and 1927. In 1926 Griscom met Edith Sumner Sloane, they married and went on to have three children together. The following year Griscom moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to work at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at the University of Harvard and this year he was elected president of the Linnaean Society of New York. He would exercise this role for a decade, developing a strong following of amateur ornithologists, known as the Bronx County Bird Club they used his Birds of the New York City Region (1923) as their bible.

Griscom's botanical knowledge is not to be overlooked either. It is said that he would never stop to examine a plant while out birding, but when asked could identify and recount details of the local flora in both the U.S.A. and Central America. His 40,000 plant specimens were deposited in the Gray Herbarium and in his own private collection and, like his birding, his plant collecting was frantic and competitive; always out to break a record or discover new species distributions, he would emerge from the field covered in insect bites and draped in foliage. In 1949 Griscom suffered from his first stroke and left his job at the Harvard Museum but continued researching, editing and even travelling. Unfortunately he suffered from another stroke in 1956 while in Mexico with his wife, the same year as he was elected president of the American Ornithologists' Union, which he accepted but soon resigned due to his health. Two years later he still maintained the strength to travel to Africa and Europe with his wife, adding several hundred more birds to his list and bringing his total close to 3,000 when he died the following year. During his life Griscom had published guides to the birds of New York, Massachusetts and Martha's Vineyard in the U.S.A. and Guatemala, Panama and Mexico, as well as numerous scientific research papers. The American Birding Association's 'Ludlow Griscom Award for Outstanding Contributions to Regional Ornithology' was created in honour of him.

Sources:
Heckadon-Moreno, S., 1998, Naturalistas del Istmo de Panamá. Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales.
Peterson, R. T., 1965, "In Memoriam: Ludlow Griscom" Auk 82: 598-605.