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kwinker

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    University of Alaska Museum
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  1. We have a fully funded opening for a graduate position, PhD (preferred) or MS, depending on experience. With support from a graduate Curatorial Assistantship, training and experience in modern museum methods and specimen-based ornithology are assured. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has a strong graduate program in Biology and Wildlife, and the University of Alaska Museum has a vibrant, growing bird collection and research program. Just ten minutes from an international airport, the UAF campus includes outstanding facilities and diverse academic programs. Fairbanks itself is a wonderful place to live. Come study birds on the last frontier! Inquire with Kevin Winker, kevin.winker@alaska.edu .
  2. THIS POSITION HAS NOW BEEN FILLED. We have a fully funded opening for a graduate position, MS or PhD, depending on experience. With support from a graduate Curatorial Assistantship, training and experience in modern museum methods and collections-based ornithology are assured. Research opportunities are available at the nexus of avian evolution and population genomics, ecology and behavior, and migration and disease transport, among other themes. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has a strong graduate program in Biology and Wildlife, and the University of Alaska Museum has a vibrant, growing bird collection and research program. The UAF campus includes outstanding facilities and diverse academic programs, and it is close to incredible outdoor activities and wilderness. Fairbanks itself is a wonderful place to live. Come study birds on the last frontier! Inquire with Kevin Winker, kevin.winker@alaska.edu .
  3. Thanks for this important, detailed update, Ellen. Nice to see a clear summary of this thicket of constant confusion.
  4. I remember the time I first met Joe. Allan Phillips had told me to look him up. I was working on Catharus thrushes at the USNM, and I heard this distinct gait coming, and then, when the walker got close, "Who the fuck is working in my thrushes?!" And I knew right away who it must be, and I stepped around the corner and said "You must be Joe Marshall. Allan Phillips told me I had to meet you. I'm..." Good times. Later, Joe wrote this piece (here copied unedited) for the book I edited, "Moments of Discovery" : "Bird Specimens Collected at Lake Olomega, El Salvador I have been reproached for some disembowelled bird skins collected at Lake Olomega—those from whom the carefully placed cotton stuffing was untimely ripped. The study skins were soaked in a boat accident. To save them I removed the body stuffing and tried to dry them, afraid they would rot in the tropical heat. An example is the Royal Flycatcher (Onychorhyhchus mexicanus) skin, serviceable for study but empty of stuffing. The circumstances are thus. The Vertebrate Paleontology Museum and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology together mounted an expedition to El Salvador in 1941-1942. It was led by Dr. R. A. Stirton from Paleo, who had accompanied Adrian van Rossem on an earlier expedition throughout El Salvador for the Dickey Collection in Pasadena. By January or early February of 1942 we arrived at the Olomega Rail Station for six weeks of collecting in the tropical deciduous forest on the far (south and west) side of the lake. Stirt arranged with the local fishermen to take us across the lake to a farmhouse, part of which (including the shaded porch) was rented from a hospitable farmer. In six or perhaps nine or a dozen huge dugout canoes we crossed the lake with our gear. At the farm house, Stirt paid off the boatmen and arranged for them to paddle us back in six weeks. As an afterthought, he called them back and paid them for that future return trip—apparently so he would not have to interrupt his geology work by returning. Stirt and Bill Gealey (geology) then trekked down river to the coast, returned in a couple of weeks, and went to another part of the country. On the appointed day of return, only one canoe showed up. The boatmen had long since spent their money and had lost interest in us. The one boatman took the personnel across to the station and then went back, presumably to make numerous trips to take our gear and specimens, packed carefully into the prefab pine boxes used by Paleo. But no! Just at sunset the canoe hove into view with all the boxes piled on. Just at the edge of the lake it tipped over, and as the load was carted to the station we could see water sluicing out of some of the boxes. One was a bird box, which I immediately opened and started taking cotton out of the few skins that were already soaked. The six weeks at Lake Olomega were most interesting zoologically. The personnel I remember being there were Milton Hildebrand (mammals), John Davis (herps), Joe Marshall (birds, with emphasis on complete skeletons), John Tucker (botany), and Nate Geer (cook). Old Nate was Stirt's uncle. We scraped aside our skinning tools, formalin, sawdust, and arsenic from the porch table when Nate brought out the meals. Milt Hildebrand kept a photographic history, especially of habitats, from start to finish of the expedition. Lake Olomega, the stream, deciduous forest, swamp forest, and lovely spring at the base of the nearby mountains teemed with wildlife. There were spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), Jabirus (Jabiru mycteria), and King Vultures (Sarcoramphus papa). The lake was full of birds, mostly big ones. Wild Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata) males came into the farmyard to mate with the domestic Muscovy females. On my birthday, 15 February, I hired a boatman to paddle me on the lake, and I shot a wretched excess of specimens. Davis and Hildebrand pitched in and helped me save them. We wore greasemonkey coveralls as protection from ticks and their larvae. The seed ticks started as a spot on the pant leg if you brushed against vegetation, and this pod quickly grew as the thousands looked for a way to get at the skin, where they would burrow in and die. We carried twig whips to beat them off our clothes. Iguanas had the strange habit, when startled by our walking the trail beneath them, of doing a loud belly-flop onto the trail—like a gun shot, then running off. The day Stirt and Gealey returned from the coast, I had shot a crested forest eagle [probably Ornate Hawk Eagle, Spizaetus ornatus, ed.] above the spring that I could not find. Stirt went with me, and I pointed the exact direction it had flown. Stirt plunged into the dense woods, ticks and all, and came back with the gorgeous specimen, smelling of skunk—their favorite food. It turned out later that day that Hildebrand had a skunk in a trap at the spring. By late May 1942 we were all back in Berkeley, where Dr. Alden H. Miller generously arranged a curatorial assistantship for me to fill until I got drafted. Why did I not restuff the specimens at that time? I am clueless. Perhaps they had not yet arrived, as they had to be shipped overland on account of war danger at sea. I did, however, write up the Salvadoran bird novelties (Marshall 1943) for The Condor, which means that they must have arrived before I was drafted in November 1942. Things happened for me in that period after returning from El Salvador. Introduced to Elsie Rader by Paul Illg on a blind date, I married her on 19 August 1942 at the San Francisco Courthouse after a whirlwind, three-week courtship. Illg was best man. Dr. E. Raymond Hall thought I shouldn't rush. Mrs. Hilda Wood Grinnell had Don Hoffmeister take her car with me and our suitcases over to the Shaw Hotel in San Francisco. Elsie and I rented a little apartment on Eddy Street overlooking a park; she continued work at the Civil Service Commission and I commuted to MVZ daily on the Big Red Train into November."
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