| Activity | Beck made four collecting trips to the Galapagos Islands between 1897 and 1906, but it was his role as chief collector on the 1905-06 trip aboard the schooner Academy on behalf of the California Academy of Sciences that both cemented his position in Galapagos history and propelled him headlong into a long and productive life of scientific collecting for the Academy as well as the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and the American Museum of Natural History. Beck’s skill at collecting reptiles and his particular specialty, sea birds, was not matched by his record of publication. A particularly poignant event during the 1905-6 trip involved Beck’s collecting the only specimen of giant tortoise from Fernandina Island. An ironic taxonomic counterpoint to Beck’s indefatigable collecting efforts is the subspecific epithet of the race of giant tortoise that might prove to be the genetic talisman for the tortoise known as Lonesome George from Pinta Island. Beck was not only himself an endangered species in the world of scientific collectors (he was placed in a class by himself in this regard), but he also played an important role in our knowledge of endangered species in the Galapagos. His papers are held in Californian Academy of Sciences Special Collections.
In 1920 Beck and his wife Ida set off on a voyage across the Pacific to collect bird specimens for the American Museum of Natural History. The expedition was financed by Harry Payne Whitney. The Becks returned to the United States in 1929 with over 40,000 bird skins and a large anthropological collection. He shot the last known Guadalupe Caracara.
Tring correspondent |