Emil K. Urban, 1934–2014

Abstract

Emil Urban and The Birds of Africa will always be synonymous. Stretching over 40 years, with a publication span of more than 20 years, this project represents his life’s great work and his enduring ornithological legacy. However long, difficult, and complicated, this was a project he believed just had to get done. He was the only lead author–editor involved in all 7 of the original volumes. And it was he who, through diligence, patience, communication, and keen mediation skills, kept the project together, held collaborators on target, negotiated through a succession of publishers, and saw each volume to its publication deadline. I wonder how many such complex serial collaborations actually reach their intended endpoint. Emil made sure this one did. The project was the inspiration of Leslie Brown, who involved Emil in 1964. In 1978, they invited as third author Ken Newman, who was replaced by Hilary Fry in 1980. Stuart Keith joined the team the same year, after Brown’s death. Until the final of the original volumes was published in 2004, Emil led the team to fulfill Brown’s and his dream, as they churned through the mass of previously scattered information to produce the definitive comprehensive treatment of the avifauna of Africa. Including the 2013 volume on Africa’s islands done by others, these 8 volumes stand as the standard work on Africa’s birds. They were recently reissued by Christopher Helm/Bloomsbury. Emil Urban became, by choice and circumstance, a scholar of Africa—both its birds and its culture—and spent the first segment of his career, 1964–1975, at Haile Selassie I University (now Addis Ababa University) in Ethiopia, as a professor, as department chair, and as a field ornithologist. Born on May 27, 1934, he grew up in Milwaukee and Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, and discovered birds when a biology teacher insisted on an early-morning field trip, during which they happened to encounter an impressive warbler migration. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1956 and headed for the University of Kansas for his master’s degree, where he was mentored by Bud Tordoff and Richard Johnson in a faunistic study of the birds of Coahuila, Mexico. Back at the University of Wisconsin, he first became enamored by bird migration under the influence of Franz Sauer, who was a visiting professor at the time. In the summer of 1960, they set up camp at Boxer Bay, St. Lawrence Island, to study Pacific Golden Plover migration orientation, which ended up requiring a 23-hour walk-out when their supplies failed to arrive. Emil thrived on difficult fieldwork, a trait that would prove quite helpful in Africa. After Sauer left Wisconsin, Emil obtained his Ph.D. on lizard locomotion, under John Neese. He and Lois Lee, who also enjoyed the challenges of being in the field, were married in 1963. He received his doctorate in 1964. Their daughter, Kristine, was born in 1966. By then, the family was in Ethiopia. Raising a family in Addis Ababa in the 1960s and 1970s was certainly a challenge. Addis Abada was a diverse and complicated city to live in, and the countryside was even more so. Yet Emil was always ready to head to the field to see new things. From Kristine’s first field trip at about 8 months of age, the family’s field studies and explorations, often with visiting ornithologists and birders in tow, continued for nearly a decade. Field ornithology in Ethiopia was both difficult and rewarding. Difficult, because as an official ‘‘guest’’ of the country one was not in control of anything. Rewarding, because it offered exposure to the diverse landscape, avifauna, and cultures of the country. Adventure, deeply felt learning experiences, and close bonds among those sharing such experiences would have been reward enough. But the goal of these treks was the birds. Emil focused his field studies mostly on biology and behavior of waterbirds, including pelicans, cormorants, ibis, ducks, and cranes, which resulted in many of his more than 80 professional papers. Simultaneously, his interest in African birds in general served as the foundation for The Birds of Africa. Along the way, filling in a blank space on the map, he and Brown compiled the Checklist of the Birds of Ethiopia in 1971. The same year, he spent an academic sabbatical year in residence at the University of Miami, as a guest of Oscar T. (Bud) Owre, which is where I first met Emil while we toiled in parallel, preparing papers on ibises and other waterbirds. He then returned to Ethiopia, to his professorship and research. The sabbatical sojourn