Frank Chapman (ornithologist)

Chapman was born in West Englewood, New Jersey and attended Englewood Academy.[2] He joined the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in 1888 as assistant to Joel Asaph Allen. In 1901 he was made associate Curator of Mammals and Birds and in 1908 Curator of Birds.

Chapman came up with the original idea for the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. He also wrote many ornithological books such as, Bird Life, Birds of Eastern North America, and Life in an Air Castle. Chapman promoted the integration of photography into ornithology, especially in his book Bird Studies With a Camera,[3] in which he discussed the practicability of the photographic blind and in 1901 invented his own more portable version of a blind using an umbrella with a large 'skirt' to conceal the photographer that could be bundled into a small pack for transport along with the other, at the time very bulky, paraphernalia of the camera gear.[4] For his work, Distribution of Bird-life in Colombia, he was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1917.[5]

In the winter seasons, starting from his mother's home in Gainesville, Florida, he made numerous field trips to collect small mammals and birds; thus he went to various localities in Florida, Texas, Cuba, Trinidad, B. W. I., Yucatan and Vera Cruz, Mexico, and later to many countries in South America. The story of his local expeditions in the United States and of his one visit to England is told in his Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist (1908) and much later his many expeditions to Mexico, Central and South America are dealt with in his all too brief, authentic Autobiography of a Bird Lover (1933).[6]

Chapman fathered one child, Frank Chapman, Jr., who first married playwright Elizabeth Cobb and had a daughter, actress and TV personality Buff Cobb,[7] and after divorcing married mezzo-soprano opera singer Gladys Swarthout.

Chapman was interred at Brookside Cemetery.

As well as numerous papers in scientific journals and magazines such as the National Geographic Magazine, books and major reports authored by Chapman include:

• (1894). Visitors' Guide to the Local Collection of Birds in the American Museum of Natural History.
• (1895). Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America.
• (1897). Bird-Life: A Guide to the Study of Our Common Birds.
• (1898). Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin. (by Mabel Osgood Wright, with Frank Chapman as editor and Ernest Seton Thompson as illustrator)
• (1899). Descriptions of five apparently new birds from Venezuela. Bull. of the American Museum of Natural History 12 ( 9): 153-156
• (1900). Bird Studies with a Camera.
• (1901). The Revision of the Genus Capromys.
• (1903). Color Key to North American Birds; (1912) revised edition
• (1903). The Economic Value of Birds to the State.
• (1907). Warblers of North America.
• (1908). Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist.
• (1910). The Birds of the Vicinity of New York City: A guide to the Local Collection.
• (1915). The Travels of Birds.
• (1917). The Distribution of Bird-life in Colombia.
• (1919). Our Winter Birds.
• (1921). The Habit Groups of North American Birds.
• (1921). The Distribution of Bird Life in the Urubamba Valley of Peru. A report of the birds collected by the Yale University - National Geographic Society's expedition.
• (1926). The Distribution of Bird-life in Ecuador.
• (1929). My Tropical Air Castle.
• (1931). The Upper Zonal Bird-Life of Mts Roraima and Duida.
• (1933). The Autobiography of a Bird-Lover.[8]
• (1934). What Bird is That?.
• (1938). Life in an Air Castle: Nature Studies in the Tropics.

• Sterling, Keir B., ed. (1997). "Chapman, Frank Michler". Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists. Greenwood Press.
• Vuilleumier, François (2005). "Dean of American Ornithologists: The Multiple Legacies of Frank M. Chapman of the American Museum of Natural History". The Auk. 122 (2): 389–402.
• "Frank M. Chapman," in Tom Taylor and Michael Taylor, Aves: A Survey of the Literature of Neotropical Ornithology, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Libraries, 2011.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frank Chapman (ornithologist).

• Obituary
• Works by Frank Michler Chapman at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Frank Chapman at Internet Archive
• Works by Frank M. Chapman, at Unz.org
• Chapman, Frank Michler (United States 1864-1945), Western Kentucky University