Theodore A. Parker III - Identification Skills

Identification Skills

According to Zimmer (1993), "Voice, microhabitat, and behavior are the keys in neotropical forests, and Ted was not only the first to recognize this (his seminal paper on foliage-gleaner identification that appeared in the April 1979 issue of Continental Birdlife should be required reading for all students of tropical birding), but also honed his discrimination of these essential cues to a finer degree than anyone else." Zimmer adds that as knowledge of these matters was limited, "any field problems… took weeks of patient effort for Ted to work out for himself."

If another ornithologist played Parker a tape of an unknown bird, he could usually recognize it and could often identify other species in the background noise. He might then, by his knowledge of bird ranges, state where the tape had been made—Zimmer gives the example of "south bank of the Amazon between the Rios Madeira and Tapajos".

He could identify bird calls and songs even in the presence of many other birds, as when the bird was a member of a mixed-species flock. On more than one occasion, he identified a bird new to him by its call, since he recognized the genus and knew what species lived in the area. Once, hearing a recording of a dawn chorus in Bolivia, he realized that one of the sounds was an antwren of the genus Herpsilochmus—but since he knew all the sounds of those birds, he knew he was hearing a previously unknown species. The following year, the new species was discovered.

The scale of this knowledge is given by the presence of over two thousand bird species in the Andes and Amazonia, where Parker did most of his field work; each species typically has at least three vocalizations. He kept them straight not only from each other but from the region's monkeys, amphibians, and insects as well.