Birds of the Nashville Area (original 1966; edição 1985)

Page iv: [Recent increases] in professionalism [do] not mean in the least that the days of the amateurs are ended. The finest work in recent years in bird speciation, for instance, was done by J. Haffer, an oil geologist. Modern population ecology often requires that a population be analysed or monitored for many years (10-15 or more) and no Ph.D. candidate has that much time available. Such research can be undertaken only by a permanent research institution, like the Edward Grey Institute, or by an amateur who is able to monitor a local population year after year. For life history studies, faunistics, phenology, and migration research, as well as for much basic census work, the amateur is still indispensable. The recently completed great Atlas of Australian Birds is largely the work of amateurs. It is a pity that so few bird watchers realize how much of a lasting contribution to ornithological science they could make, if they would take up some project in one of these areas.--Ernst Mayr. From the "Introduction" to Perspectives in ornithology: essays presented for the centennial of the American Ornithologists' Union.