Bird watching has never included a more diverse or passionate bunch of odd ducks than it does today. The Internet is so full of the musings of bird lovers it has become perfectly clear that observing birds is not just something that your cousin or neighbor down the way is into. Many people develop such a passion for birds at an early age that it becomes a lifelong hobby. For others it turns into a serious obsession that must be made a career, just to be around it as much as possible. And then there are those who make significant contributions to the field of Ornithology in some capacity that offers little to no personal economic gain.
Margaret Morse Nice is a familiar name throughout the ornithological community, particularly in North America. Born on December 6, 1883 in Amherst, Massachusetts, she is among the most famous of young bird lovers turned notable contributor to the scientific study of birds without ever taking a paid position in academia. Nice's efforts were considerably influenced by her academic upbringing. Not only was her father a history professor at Amherst College, but Margaret received a bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College and a Master's degree in biology from Clark University where she conducted the first studies of Northern Bobwhite diet at a time when very few women were attending graduate school. She married her college boyfriend and moved away from Massachusetts when her husband became a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma and Margaret became a mother of five children, all the while maintaining her interest in birds. She is probably best known for her long term natural history study of Song Sparrows, published in 1937 and entitled Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow.
What makes this contribution so significant is not only the depth of detail and insight that it presents, but the fact that it was published during a period when ornithologists were primarily concerned with taxonomy and defining the geographic limits of birds. Nice's detailed descriptive style essentially ushered in a new era of American Ornithology by considerably expanding the common scope of the discipline. Her influence was not so readily accepted at first however. In fact, in 1924 Nice had to publish her first scientific paper in a German ornithology journal with the help of two famous German ornithologists, Ernst Mayr and Erwin Streseman, because it's descriptive nature and great length were not considered acceptable to any of the American ornithology journals.
Over the course of her lifetime, Margaret Morse Nice published almost 250 scientific papers, several books and a huge number of book reviews. Aside from her book about Song Sparrows, Nice is well known for her Birds of Oklahoma, published in 1924, and another book about her observations of life-history behavior titled The Watcher at the Nest, published in 1939. Her contributions to ornithology were so important that she was made an honorary member of several European ornithological societies, received two honorary doctorates, and various other honors and awards. She was also recognized by having a subspecies of Song Sparrow named after her (Melospiza melodia niceae) Furthermore, an award to recognize the academic contributions of leading contemporary ornithologists was established in 1997 by the Wilson Ornithological in her name.
