Methods
Don Stap describes Parker's method: walking slowly down a trail, pausing after every step, and watching and listening. In this way he gained his knowledge of both detail and "common patterns in behavior or vocalizations or community structure across the continent", which led Jon Fjeldså and Niels Krabbe to call him "by far the greatest specialist on the life histories of neotropical birds there ever was". Stap also notes that Parker generally did not shoot birds for study, a normal method of field ornithology.
When leading tours, Parker would lure flocks in by recording their sounds as he heard them and then immediately playing the tape back; he would predict where the flock would come into sight and arrange his clients to give each a good view. The flock would appear as predicted.
Read more about this topic: Theodore A. Parker III
Famous quotes containing the word methods:
“The greatest part of our faults are more excusable than the methods that are commonly taken to conceal them.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely DESPERATE. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds... Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that “usually rather.” Safe generalizations are quite boring.”
—Joseph Epstein (b. 1937)