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December 2015

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From:
Bill Whan <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Bill Whan <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 14:11:31 -0500
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Just a bit of disconnected history that might be of interest. Milton
Trautman and Roger Tory Peterson forged a friendship, and wrote back and
forth for years. Most of these documents are in the OSU Archives, but I
haven't dug into many of them. Here is part of one characteristic early
letter about the Ohio list from MBT to RTP on 12/17/1962:
        "Borror (1950) adds twenty species which formerly occurred in Ohio and
have long been accepted as Ohio birds, but of which there are no
specimens, or of species about which there is some doubt. This includes:
trumpeter swan, man o'war bird, swallow-tailed kite, whooping crane,
long-billed curlew, Eskimo curlew, black-necked stilt, gull-billed tern,
roseate tern, Louisiana parakeet, Bohemian waxwing, red-cockaded
woodpecker. Recent sight records that appear to be rather reliable:
prairie falcon (banded and released by Lynds Jones), sharp-tailed grouse
(unsuccessfully introduced), little gull (several sight records), great
gray owl (seen by me on Starve Island), Audubon's warbler (for a while
reported almost yearly by Clevelanders), Baird's
sandpiper (seen by me at SBI [actually collected by MBT there on
4/15/56, now OSUM #9420, despite Peterjohn's 2001 statement that "there
are no spring records documented by specimens"]). Also sight records
for: Elliot's pheasant (an escaped bird was collected), Reeve's pheasant
(many introduced), Baikal teal (I saw it, consider it an escape?), black
swan (I saw it flying on Lake Erie with whistling swans), black-throated
sparrow. So to be conservative the Ohio list is "approximately 340,"
including the Boh Waxwing and Eskimo C. By accepting most sight records,
it would be approximately 350."
        Trautman and Peterson had a lengthy correspondence about the behavior
of birds migrating over Lake Erie, and probably other ones curated in
the OSU Archives; maybe when I reach my dotage I'll transcribe them.
Bill Whan

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