William Earl Dodge Scott and John Wyley Atkins will need to have had some attention-grabbing correspondence, as evidenced by a letter Atkins as soon as despatched to Scott.
“I’ll ship you shortly the top of a Key West Quail-dove (Geotrygon martinica). The Dove was shot right here (Key West) by a boy on Dec. 8, 1888, and was introduced by him to the telegraph workplace to indicate me. Sadly I used to be absent. Once I returned, one of many workplace boys informed me of the ‘pink dove.’ Moving into search I discovered the Dove had been bought with some Carolina Doves to a person close to by. l arrived at his place to seek out that it had been picked with the others, and solely succeeded in acquiring the top and a few wing and tail feathers,” Atkins wrote.
The fowl elements truly turned out to be from a ruddy quail-dove, which was truly a very good bit rarer than a Key West quail-dove, which was fairly uncommon in itself.
Scott began out as a boy with a limp and an immense curiosity in regards to the world of birds. He was an old-school naturalist, and within the days earlier than binoculars and cameras, one studied wildlife by taking pictures it. Then you definately’d taxidermy it. Nobody actually thought something about it.
Scott gained his footing on this planet by gathering birds, the depth of his pursuits incomes him entry to Cornell College, then to Harvard, the place he contributed many specimens to the Museum of Comparative Zoology, which remains to be a thriving a part of the college.
For a short time he labored as a taxidermist for the millinery commerce, arranging birds in engaging poses that might later enhance girls’s hats. He took a brief gig buying birds for the brand new assortment at Princeton College (then referred to as the Faculty of New Jersey), staying on and ultimately rising to be the top of the ornithology division there.
Scott made his first gathering journey to Florida in 1875. There weren’t many roads on the time and he recollects using to Silver Springs by way of a rickety stern-wheeler on the Ocklawaha River and having an edenic expertise. He noticed fowl species he had by no means seen earlier than wherever he appeared – white ibis, anhingas, roseate spoonbills, Carolina parakeets (now extinct), and many others. He wrote, “by no means had my wildest fancy painted, not solely so many sorts of birds at one level, however such huge multitudes of representatives of the a number of sorts.”
When he made his second journey in 1879 the scene was vastly totally different – the populations of birds and different wildlife he’d marveled at alongside the river have been primarily gone. “Such circumstances had resulted from the just about common apply of the (steamboat) passengers taking pictures at every part alive.”
The crew on the boat one way or the other believed it was the fault of the birds.
When Scott made it to the Maximo Rookery in St. Petersburg, the journey was considerably redeemed.
“Conceive, if attainable, this huge meeting of innocent, mild, conspicuous, and exquisite birds throughout the breeding season,” he wrote. “It was a colony of birds that the attention couldn’t soak up at a single sweep. Within the panorama the feathered inhabitants was the predominant function.”
When he returned seven years later, the rookery was a barren panorama, all of the birds gunned down and shipped north for the millinery commerce. (Feathers on the time have been extra beneficial per pound than gold.) Scott wrote a sequence of three articles describing the scenes in indifferent observational language within the ornithological journal The Auk, which sparked the primary set of legal guidelines to guard birds, and in addition impressed the creation of the Nationwide Audubon Society.
He set out for Key West from the Gulf Coast in 1890 on a employed schooner. Alongside the best way, close to Cape Sable, he noticed a flock of what he estimated to be 1,000 American flamingos, spreading out over a mile. Nobody has seen a flock that enormous in North America since.
He spent about three weeks in Key West, gathering specimens of mangrove cuckoo, black-whiskered vireo and nice white heron. Then he headed out to the Tortugas, and again to the Gulf Coast.
Scott had truly met John Atkins beforehand in Punta Rassa, which is now a neighborhood of Fort Myers, someday within the late Eighteen Eighties.
Individuals steeped in Key West historical past could know of Atkins due to his profession because the telegraph operator and chief engineer for Western Union. His greatest declare to fame in that realm occurred on Christmas Day 1900, when he made the primary worldwide phone name to Cuba. It apparently consisted of Scott talking, numerous static, after which the operator on the opposite finish of the road saying, “I don’t perceive you.” However Western Union valued him sufficient to call a cable ship, the John W. Atkins, after him. That ship was the predecessor of the Schooner Western Union, Key West’s flagship that now sits decaying in a Inventory Island boatyard.
There are literally a number of pictures of John Atkins on the Florida Keys Historical past Middle’s Flickr web page. The picture right here is of him leaning towards the Western Union cable hut in 1900. (Warning: Wanting by means of the historical past middle’s large assortment of historic Keys pictures can lead to the lack of a number of hours of labor productiveness.)
It’s unclear what sort of friendship Scott and Atkins had. Atkins goes unmentioned in Scott’s writing about Key West in his memoir, “The Story of a Chicken Lover.” And I haven’t been capable of finding any extra correspondence. However in a paper in regards to the avifauna of the Florida Keys printed in The Auk, Atkins is Scott’s sole supply, having procured and shipped the skins of virtually all of the species he wrote about, in addition to offering all of the details about their habits and habitat.
Scott can also be his sole supply in a extra in depth paper about birds of the Gulf Coast, which included Key West, and contributed details about the behaviors of birds Scott noticed and picked up on the Dry Tortugas.
Scott, in his writings, largely paraphrased Atkins, and the data all the time appears particular and exact. There are just a few direct quotes with very particular particulars, just like the one in regards to the dove head, however it’s exhausting to get a way of Atkins’ voice. Atkins did write one article in The Auk, a observe a few uncommon dove, the bare-eyed pigeon, that confirmed up in Key West. However aside from that he appeared pleased to have Scott take the limelight.
Scott did honor Atkins, although, by naming a subspecies of the white-breasted nuthatch after him.
“This identify is given to file in a slight manner my nice appreciation of the cautious work achieved by my pal Mr. John W. Atkins of Key West,” Scott wrote.
The subspecies was later lumped with two different subspecies.