[SBB] Rollo Beck ( a brief bio)

[Roger Wolfe <[[email protected]]>]

In a few weeks one of the Santa Clara Valley's native sons will be 
celebrated at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History with a 
permanent exhibit on the life and career of ornithologist and world 
traveler Rollo Beck. See http://www.pgmuseum.org/publicity/rollo2.pdf 
for a photo of Beck and details of what the weekend entails.

On Sunday April 23 Monterey Seabirds in conjunction with the museum will 
host a half day seabird trip out on the bay where Beck collected 
seabirds early in the last century. The trip runs from 10am to 1pm and 
is $45 per person. Don Roberson, author of Monterey Birds and former 
PGMNH director Steve Bailey will be on board along with Beck biographer 
Matt James Ph.D. (Geology Department Chair at Sonoma State University) 
who is working on a book about his expeditons.

This trip would be an excellent choice as an introduction to seabirds 
for those hesitant to be out on the seas all day.

Why is the museum opening a permanent exhibit on the life and career of 
Rollo Beck and who was he? I’ve put together some links and factoids, 
that were cut and pasted from the web and added some of my own text to 
give a brief synopsis of Rollo Beck's life and his remarkable adventures 
with birds.

Beck, Rollo Howard (1870-1950)

There is a brief biography available in PDF from the Santa Clara Audubon 
Society (go to page 18) http://www.scvas.org/pdf/localornithology.pdf

Born in Los Gatos, Santa Clara County, CA, August 26.
* Joined the FB Webster-Harris Expedition to the Galapagos to
collect giant tortoises for Lord Rothschild.
* 1905 2nd expedition to the Galapagos, collecting birds and
tortoises for the CA Academy of Sciences.
* 1906-1908 Collected sea birds off the CA coast near Monterey Bay
and waterfowl in the San Joaquin Valley near Los Banos.
* 1908 Visited Alaska.
* 1912 Rediscovered the Hornby Petrel on the coast of Peru. Head of
the Whitney South Sea Expedition. Spent several years exploring
the islands of the South Pacific and the interior of New Guinea
for the American Museum of Natural History.
* 1936 Published a brief autobiography in Robert Cushman Murphy's 
"Oceanic Birds
of South America."

Not bad for a local boy who never graduated from the 8th grade!

A description Beck’s second expedition to the Galapagos in 1905-1906 
that appeared in the magazine of the California Academy of Sciences - 
California Wild by Kathleen M. Wong with comments from Matt James is at: 
http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/2003spring/stories/galapagos.html

Ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy was curator of oceanic birds at the 
American Museum of Natural History in 1926. His first book was Bird 
Islands of Peru (1925). He organized an expedition to collect oceanic 
and coastal birds under the leadership of Rollo H. Beck.

Murphy's next scientific book was on these large collections, The 
Oceanic Birds of South America (2 vols., 1936), which his biographer 
Dean Amadon calls "noteworthy for its remarkably readable style." The 
scholarly treatise included the effects of climate, currents, and land 
masses on the distribution of oceanic birds, as well as general natural 
history and a detailed account of each bird species and its habits, 
illustrated with photographs, color plates, and maps. The book was 
awarded the John Burroughs Medal for excellence in natural history 
writing and the Brewster Medal of the American Ornithologists Union. 
Cushman writes of Beck in this book:

[In 1912]“ Mr. Beck had not only an extended experience in collecting 
petrels in the northern Pacific Ocean, in the Galapagos Islands, and 
elsewhere, but had established a record for field work among seabirds in 
general which placed him in a class by himself. Subsequent activities 
during the Brewster-Sanford Expedition, a later voyage to Alaska, and, 
finally, the ten year’s campaign of the Whitney South Sea Expedition, 
have served only to enhance his effectiveness and his reputation. He 
stands today as the most successful worker this branch of ornithology 
that the world has known.” - Murphy 1936

After returning from his trip to the Galapagos, Beck ventured out into 
the Monterey Bay in a rowboat to collect specimens. Perhaps most 
impressive to local birders are the 18 Parakeet Auklets he found off Pt. 
Pinos between 1905 and 1908. See Don Roberson’s website: (at bottom of 
page) http://www.montereybay.com/creagrus/MtyBayrarebirds.html

It is hard to imagine seabirding in a rowboat let alone being able to 
get a shot at one!

Beck and his wife Ida joined the Whitney Expedition of the American 
Museum of Natural History in the summer of 1920. Its original purpose 
was to study the birds of the Pacific Islands. The expedition was funded 
by Harry Payne Whitney and his family.

The expedition was unlike any other. Instead of being a single trek, the 
expedition visited thousands of islands, led by many different 
scientists and collectors, over more than a dozen years. Administered by 
a committee at the American Museum, the Whitney Expedition became a 
source of funds and equipment for collecting and research on the Pacific 
Islands.

A map of the expedition’s route and a description of the Beck’s 
contribution of Oceanic cultural artifacts and photographs to the 
Anthropological Department at the California Academy of Sciences and 
photos of the Becks is at:

http://www.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/rollobeck/index.htm

Beck was the leader of the expedition. He hired Ernst H. Qualye and 
Charles Curtis, and together they made most of the botanical collections 
for the expedition. They sailed among the islands on the sailing ship 
France, stopping at islands large and small.

The Whitney South Seas Expedition was an epic scientific adventure, 
which made important contributions to biology, discovered scores of new 
species and provided the American Museum of Natural History with the 
materials for a new hall.

”After sixteen years of arduous adventure in the service of the American 
Museum of Natural History, Mr. Rollo H. Beck and Mrs. Beck had started 
homeward from the Solomon Islands in June, 1928. They looked forward to 
retirement and a well-earned rest in their California home. The heat, 
and danger, and swelter of nearly a decade among the far-flung islands 
of the South Seas, during the period of Mr. Beck's leadership of the 
Whitney South Sea Expedition, was soon to become only a memory in which 
happy episodes would crowd out any less pleasant to remember.

Mr. and Mrs. Beck had not even reached Sydney, Australia, on their 
homeward way, however, before a wireless message overtook them, 
proposing an additional year's work on the mainland of New Guinea. A 
study of the birds of paradise was among the naturalist's temptations 
mentioned in the message and, despite their homesickness, Mr. and Mrs. 
Beck turned northward again as soon as they had outfitted in Australia. 
Some of their experiences during the subsequent year are related in the 
following account, in which Mr. Beck tells of the discovery of a bird of 
paradise new to science, all the more remarkable because it was obtained 
in territory supposedly exhausted of such ornithological surprises.” 
(Robert Cushman Murphy - The Oceanic Birds of South America 1936)

Excerpts from Beck’s book about the New Guinea expedition, “ A Collector 
in the Land of the Birds of Paradise,” along with some of the Becks’ 
photos (see slideshow) from New Guinea can be seen at

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/editors_pick/1929_11-12_pick.html

Beck continued to collect until late in life. His last specimen was 
collected at age 79 in 1950.

Several generations of visitors have enjoyed over 90 of Beck's 
taxidermied specimens in the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History's 
Monterey County bird exhibit, and this new addition to the display will 
introduce viewers to the man behind the birds.

Many of Beck's birds are kept by institutions including The Natural 
History Museum (Tring, England), the American Museum of Natural History, 
and the University of California's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Roger Wolfe,
Soquel
http://www.montereyseabirds.com

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