The successful new movie Hidden Figures brought to mind a recent book, Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America’s First Female Rocket Scientist.
The California condor makes unexpected appearances at the beginning and end of this story. Here are some excerpts from the book.
During a recent pass through my California condor bibliography, I happened to notice 5 items authored by different women in each of the years 1900–1904. In this post I note the important contributions these 5 women made to the human-California condor saga.
The feature-length silent film The Night Cry premiered in 1926. The star and hero of the movie was the famous dog Rin Tin Tin, who had top billing. The villain was a California condor, who received no acknowledgment by name or photograph in the movie’s credits or on the movie’s poster.
A masters or doctoral thesis is evidence of 2 achievements: the further education of the author of the thesis and a new contribution to human understanding.
The California condor has been the subject, or a significant aspect, of a number of graduate theses.
Here I note 2 more early-20th century poems that, as I explain below, concern the California condor.
A quarter-century after the release of its first California condor postage stamp in 1971, the U.S. Post Office released a new condor stamp. The 1996 version shows a full-color close-up photograph of an adult condor’s head:
Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-1887) was a distinguished zoologist, educator, and scientific administrator. He served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1878 until his death.
Baird’s last major publication was A History of North American Birds, 3 volumes that were co-authored with Thomas Brewer and Robert Ridgway. The entry for the California condor is in the last volume and includes this illustration by Edwin L. Sheppard of a condor chick:
“BBR”, as this book is sometimes known (the initials of the authors’ last names), was published in 1874. It is the end of a string of comprehensive works about birds by Baird. In this post I present what appears to be the beginning of that string.
Continue reading “The beginning of Baird’s catalogs of birds”
