Ornithologist and birding legend Chandler S. Robbins died yesterday at the age of 98. Birders are probably most familiar with Chandler Robbins as the author (with Bertel Bruun and Herbert Zim) of the groundbreaking Birds of North America: A Guide to Field Identification, illustrated by Arthur Singer, published in 1966 - often called by birders, the "Singer Guide" or the "Golden Guide". Chan joined the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a biologist in 1945 and retired in 2005 from the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel Maryland, after sixty years with the Service. He organized and for decades ran the annual North American Breeding Bird Survey. He was also an active bird bander and in 1956 banded a Laysan Albatross on Midway Island in the Pacific that has come to be nicknamed "Wisdom". The albatross is now the oldest banded wild bird in the world and in 2017 was still nesting on Midway. Since the bird was an adult when it was banded, it is at least 66 years old. Chan was awarded the Eisenmann Medal by the Linnaean Society of New York in 1987 for "excellence in ornithology and encouragement of the amateur". Since Chan was based in Maryland for most of his career, many New York birders may not have known him personally, but all have been influenced by his life and work, whether they knew him or not. Those who had the fortune to meet him know what a great person he was. A true legend.
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