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Alexander Skutch
Summary
Alexander Frank Skutch (May 20, 1904 – May 12, 2004) was a naturalist and writer. He published numerous scientific papers and books about birds and several books on philosophy. He is best remembered ornithologically for his pioneering work on helpers at the nest.
Alexander Skutch was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He received a doctorate in botany from Johns Hopkins University in 1928. He then found employment with United Fruit Company, which had a problem with banana diseases, for which it needed the expertise of a botanist. After an initial stay in Jamaica, Skutch traveled to Guatemala, Panama and Honduras. During this time he fell in love with the tropics and also acquired a deep interest in birds. He began studying their habits. Skutch collected plants for museums to make money, but observing birds remained his life's main focus.
In 1941 Skutch purchased a farm in Costa Rica. There, as an author of one of his obituaries wrote:
A lifelong vegetarian, Skutch grew corn, yucca and other crops, and, without running water until the 1990s, bathed and drank from the nearest stream. He believed in "treading lightly on the mother Earth". With his wife Pamela, daughter of the English naturalist, botanist, and orchidologist Charles H. Lankester, whom he married in 1950, and their adopted son Edwin, he stayed there for the rest of his life.
Skutch wrote over 40 books and over 200 papers on ornithology, preferring a descriptive style and eschewing statistics and even banding. He died eight days before his 100th birthday, in the same year that he received the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award. He is universally regarded as one of the world's greatest ornithologists.
As well as numerous contributions to the scientific literature, books and book-length papers authored or coauthored by Skutch include:
1954 – Life Histories of Central American Birds I: Families Fringillidae, Thraupidae, Icteridae, Parulidae and Coerebidae. (Pacific Coast Avifauna No.31). Cooper Ornithological Society: Berkeley.
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