- Elliott McClure
Dr. H. Elliott McClure, (
April 29 , 1910, Chicago-December 27 , 1988, Camarillo,California ) was an Americanornithologist andepidemiologist who worked on bird transmitted diseases inAsia , particularlyJapanese Encephalitis .Yoshii, Masashi, Kuroda, Nagahisa, 1999. In memoriam: H Elliott McClure, 1910-1998. The Auk. Oct 1999 [http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v116n04/p1125-p1126.pdf PDF] ]Life and work
McClure was born in Chicago, Illinois and the only child of Howe A. and Clara Phillips McClure. He studied in Seattle (Washington), Lewisville (Texas), and Danville (Illinois), obtaining his B.S. degree in 1933 with High Honors, Phi Beta Kappa, and his M.Sc. in 1936 at the University of Illinois, Urbana.
His masters work was in entomology and he studied wind dispersed insects. He them worked on a Ph.D. in wildlife management at Iowa State University with studies on the Mourning Dove. He started bird banding in 1938 and personally banded close to 100,000 birds of 550 species, and may possibly hold the record for number of species ringed.
He became a member of the
American Ornithologists' Union in 1942, an Elective member in 1973 and a Fellow in 1990.After World War II, when Dr. McClure served in the U.S. Navy, he was hired by the State of California to study an outbreak of encephalitis in horses in Bakersfield. As a result of this work, Walter Reed Institutes of Research sent him on a mission to Japan in 1950. McClure went to
Japan to study arthropod borne diseases. This work was supported by the US Army, 406 Medical General Laboratory. The work involved collecting bird blood samples for testing viruses.In 1958 to Japan where he worked as an ornithologist for the US Army Medical Research Unit. This led in 1963 to a major project to study migratory birds in Asia with funding by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). This was called the Migratory Animal Pathological Survey (MAPS) and it went on for 8 years and in 18 countries, including Thailand and Japan. This was continued until his retirement in 1975. The program banded 1,165,288 birds of 1,218 species of which 5,601 individuals of 235 species were recovered. O. L. Austin (Auk 92:626) favorably reviewed McClure's "amazingly productive" 478-page report, Migration and Survival of the Birds of Asia (U.S. Army component, SEATO, 1974). Lord Medway in his review (Ibis 117: 119-120) said
McClure went back to Camarillo, California, teaching non-credit classes at Moorpark and Ventura Community Colleges, lecturing to various groups, and continuing to band birds. His publications included more than 150 articles and eight books, including Bird Banding (1984) and Whistling Wings (1991). He also wrote an autobiography "Stories I Like to Tell: An Autobiography" (published privately in 1995), which included many photographs of his family and collaborators.
Legacy
The Conejo Valley Botanic Garden along with the Conejo Valley Chapter of the Audubon Society has dedicated a trail to him by naming it the "The Elliott McClure Birding Trail". [ [http://www.conejogarden.org/Tour/BirdHabitat/birdhabitat.html Conejo Valley Botanic Garden] ]
References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
