Ned Keith Johnson, a past President (1996-1998) and Life Member of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU), died on 11 June 2003 at his home in Orinda, California, after struggling with leiomyoscarcoma for 15 years. He joined the AOU in 1951, became an Elective Member in 1964, and a Fellow in 1971. His passing ends a lifelong career dedicated teaching and research on birds. Ned was born in Reno, Nevada, on 3 November 1932. Although raised in a Mormon family, he eschewed religion early in favor of two childhood passions: birds and fishing. He got hooked on birds at the age of seven and nurtured his love of the outdoors by birding, hiking, or fishing in the mountains and desert near Reno, and by taking meticulously labeled photographs of birds when still a teenager. As an undergraduate at the University of Nevada-Reno (UNR), Ned tagged along with his older brother Kay-a retired fisheries biologist with the Nevada Division of Wildlife-on field trips and got a job working in the UNR bird collection as a curatorial assistant. Here Ned met his mentor Ira LaRivers, a UNR professor and expert on insects and fishes of LaRivers added him as a subpermittee on his scientific collecting permit and took him on numerous collecting trips throughout Ned soon realized the importance of scientific collecting for careful documentation of avian distribution and variation; he collected and prepared over 7,200 specimens, most of which are deposited in the UNR museum and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley. Ned was known as a true champion of museum collections and specimen-based research. He spread this word his students, emphasizing the value of specimens for studies of natural history, evolution, and conservation. Although he had a deep conservation ethic, he felt a growing frustration in later years toward increasingly negative attitudes against scientific collecting, purportedly in the name of conservation and animal welfare. He was especially disturbed by resistance toward collecting by biologists, even when specimens were crucial for answering particular questions. Ned received his B.S. in biology from the UNR in 1954, married, and was drafted serve in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1954 1956. After returning, he enrolled as a graduate student at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. Although courted by E. Raymond Hall attend the University of Kansas, Ned chose Berkeley so that he could study birds with Alden H. Miller. By that time, Ned already had published 10 papers in The Condor, Journal of Mammalogy, and Great Basin Naturalist, the first in 1949 when he was only 17 (Loggerhead shrike steals shot sparrow). The topics of those early papers ranged from new distributional records for birds and mammals of Nevada, natural history notes, such as Dipper eaten by brook trout and Food of the Long-eared Owl in southern Washoe County, Nevada. Never daunted by a challenge, Ned chose study the biosystematics of Empidonax flycatchers for his Ph.D dissertation, becoming the leading authority on this difficult and controversial group of birds. He completed his degree in zoology in 1961 and immediately joined the faculty at UC Berkeley where he remained until his death only two weeks before his planned retirement. As Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology (formerly Zoology), he also held the title of Curator of Birds at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Although Ned's initial passion was learn everything about the birds of Nevada, he soon branched out into systematics and speciation, biogeography and avifaunal change, molt, migration, bioaccoustics, plumage pigmentation, evolution of feathers, and sexual size dimorphism and food habits in raptors. Ned's papers were scholarly and detailed, and, as John Hubbard wrote, he showed an eagerness to embrace and apply new concepts and techniques in ornithology, while never discarding the good features of the old ways. He published 123 papers, including two monographs on the systematics of Empidonax, co-authored the Check-list of North American Birds, 7th edition, and co-edited a book, A Century of Avifaunal Change in Western North America. His work
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May 17, 2023
Paul R Krausman 
Open Access
