In Memoriam: Thomas Dearborn Burleigh

Abstract

FEW people are so completely dedicated to the study of birds or devote so much of their lives to that activity as did Thomas Dearborn Burleigh. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 24 November 1895, son of Dr. and Mrs. William Thomas Burleigh. An interest in studying birds in his native western Pennsylvania hills developed at an early age and when 15 years old he published his first paper, entitled Warbler (1910, Oologist 27: 117). The paper described a Yellow Warbler's nest in which a cowbird egg and an egg of the warbler had been covered over with nest lining material above which three well-incubated warbler eggs reposed. In his second paper Nesting birds of Harmarville, Pa. (1911, Oologist 28: 155) Burleigh listed the dates, contents, and localities of the nests of 31 species of birds that he had examined. His mention of four eggs found in a Broad-winged Hawk's nest 75 feet from the ground indicated considerable agility in climbing trees in those days. Three other notes by Burleigh that appeared in The Oologist in 1911, all on nesting birds, were the forerunners of a lifelong progression of publications numbering 171 titles, 3 of book length. He shared the pages of The Oologist in that early period of his life with Richard C. Harlow who later became his friend and instructor in egg collecting and later still a famous football coach at Harvard. In all of his teenage writings, Burleigh showed a keen interest and enthusiasm in observing the habits of birds during his daily tramps, as he called them, in the western Pennsylvania hill country. During his student days at Pennsylvania State College, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1919, he published accounts of the birdlife in central Pennsylvania, including the first record for the state of the Boreal Chickadee. Before completing his studies at Penn State, the scene of Burleigh's bird observations shifted suddenly in 1918 from Pennsylvania to southwestern where he served during World War I with the American Expeditionary Force in the 10th Engineers. It was a forestry regiment engaged in cutting pilings, ties, and other necessary items of lumber. Even under those wartime conditions, he was able to find time for birding, as is evidenced by his 17-page paper Bird life in southwestern France (1919, Auk 36: 497). In 1920 Burleigh's activities shifted again to the Pacific Northwest. While securing his Master of Science degree in forestry from the University of Washington in Seattle, he made extensive notes on the birds of that region, including the first Eastern Fox Sparrow to be identified from