Misplaced Pages

Elizabeth L Kerr was an American ornithologist, who collected hundreds of birds for the American Museum of Natural History bird surveys in Colombia, in the first decades of 20th-century.

Frank Chapman, the organiser of the early 20th-century surveys and the museums curator of birds, used the Mrs. Kerr Collection to help with the distribution of Columbian birds. He relegated Kerr's contribution to a footnote in his The Distribution of Bird-Life in Colombia. A Contribution to a Biological Survey of South America. In 1915 he named the Choco tinamou, Crypturellus kerriae (Chapman, 1915) after her.

A group of female ornithologists surveying Colombian birds, consider Kerr an inspiration for 21st-century female ornithologists. Of the ninety species found by the 2020 expedition, twenty-six species were documented by Kerr.

References

1. Soto-Patiño, Juliana; Certuche-Cubillos, Katherine; Díaz-Cárdenas, Jessica; Garzón-Lozano, Daniela; Guzmán-Moreno, Estefanía; Niño-Rodríguez, Nelsy; Pérez-Amaya, Natalia; Ocampo-Peñuela, Natalia (10 April 2023). "The once-invisible legacy of Elizabeth L. Kerr, a naturalist in the early 20th century, and her contributions to Colombian ornithology". Ornithological Applications. 125 (2). doi:10.1093/ornithapp/duad006.
2. Peters' Checklist, Mayr & Cottrell (1979), v1 ed. 2, p. 32 BHL
3. Afzal, Pareesay (29 September 2023). "Two Expeditions Highlight the Work of Women Ornithologists in Colombia and Brazil". TheCornellLab. Retrieved 16 November 2023.

This article about ornithology is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• 19th-century births
• 20th-century deaths
• American ornithologists
• Women ornithologists
• Ornithology stubs