Amateurs studying local wildlife have repeatedly outdone professionals in discovery.

Evidence

Thus Margaret Morse Nice, an amateur ornithologist, studied song sparrows in her back yard. She has become a world-authority on bird behavior, and has out-thought and outworked many a professional student of social organization in birds. Charles L. Broley, a banker, banded eagles for fun. He discovered a hitherto unknown fact: that some eagles nest in the South in winter, and then go vacationing to the north woods. Norman and Stuart Criddle, wheat ranchers on the Manitoba prairies, studied the fauna and flora of their farm, and became recognized authorities on everything from local botany to wildlife cycles. Elliott S. Barker, a cowman in the New Mexico mountains, has written one of the two best books on that elusive cat: the mountain lion. Do not let anyone tell you that these people made work out of play. They simply realized that the most fun lies in seeing and studying the unknown. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 647

Categorization

• CANDY: Charles Broley, a banker who banded eagles for fun and discovered they winter in the South then vacation northward, is a delightful odd specimen of amateur science.
• SEED: The Maple-Broley-Nice gallery of citizen scientists prefigures modern community science — a ready hook for an essay on how local observation pedagogy (‘study what lives in your backyard’) historically produced major discoveries.
• XREF: connects to: Wildlife research is a new sport that outflanks mechanization and multiplies cultural value. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 644