Melbourne Carriker

Experiences of an Ornithologist Along the Highways and Byways of Bolivia: Collecting Birds in an Isolated, Magnificent Land in the Nineteen Thirties Melbourne Carriker

Experiences of an Ornithologist Along the Highways and Byways of Bolivia, South America is the extraordinary, fascinating account by intrepid ornithologist, Melbourne Armstrong Carriker, Jr., of his three ornithological expeditions in Bolivia in the 1930s. He and his assistants collected a total of 8,705 bird specimens, including some new species, and many new species of bird lice. His lively, colorful, descriptive, often humorous, piquant accounts make highly entertaining reading. He worked from the steaming jungles to the high mountains, often subjected to tropical diseases, poisonous plants and animals, poor diets, extreme physical exertion, and stress. Incredibly, he survived without major accidents. The disappointments, hardships, occasional adversarial situations, as well as pleasurable experiences, are described vividly, sometimes poignantly.