In Memory of Eduard J. Hamilton

Abstract

I saw Elvis in Tijuana. It was Elvis in his decline, heavyset, in that iconic white high-collared suit glittering with rhinestones. His hair was a brilliant orange yellow. But all that garishness did not compare to the burden he bore:

Five boxy wooden cages, each with at least a dozen male Painted Buntings, strung down his back. It was the end of the day, and this bird seller was heading home. In those pre cell-phone days of the early '80's, I sorely wished I had a camera.

My guide was Ed Hamilton. Most of my visits to Mexico were in his company, including my first one in 1980. They were definitely aviculturally edifying. In those days there were stacks of cages along the street, filled with Painted and Indigo and Rainbow Buntings, and Northern Cardinals. There were also Emerald Toucanets and Green Jays. There might be a few Silky Flycatchers, ornate relatives of the Phainopepla. Those were usually sold by the same person who offeredJilgueros (Brown-backed Solitaires) and Clarinos (Slate-colored Solitaires), prized songbirds. In 1980, I found it disturbing that the value of these Solitaires, right there on the street in Mexico, was eighty US dollars, and wondered how long they could withstand such demand. Somehow, these two species (Myadestes occidentalis andM unicolor) managed to do so, and today neither is considered at risk by conservationists.

 On the other hand, the Green-cheeked (or Red-fronted) Amazon is today unarguably endangered, with a Mexican wild population ofless than 2,000. In 1980, Ed showed me cardboard boxes full of half-grown chicks, their feathers treated with hydrogen peroxide, resulting in bright yellow heads combined with the red foreheads they already had. While munching an enormous pork rind he had bought out of another cardboard box on the sidewalk, Ed explained that because the Green-cheek was not valued as a talker, they were thus disguised and sold as "Azteca" Parrots. Similarly treated were the cages of Half moon (Orange-fronted) Conures, masquerading as Carolina Parakeets. Every so ofi:en some of these "enhanced" birds would appear over the border and cause some minor excitement. 

I understand this is now a thing of the past in Tjjuana, but as an avicultural historian, I appreciate having seen it. It was also most instructive to accompany him on trips to Los Angeles wholesalers and, in those days before the Wild Bird Conservation Act, view rooms full of Alder (Tucuman) Amazons and Great-billed Parrots. My only visit to the Pomona Gamebird Show, in 1988, was in his company, affording me my first look at Zenaida Doves, Sulawesi Ground Doves, Madagascar Partridges, and the White-winged subspecies of the Common Pheasant.

Other adventures with Ed were of a more academic nature. In 1983, on my one visit to the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, I admired a series of recentlycollected study skins from Malaysia. My only visit behind the scenes at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, was to the Ornithology Department, in 2000, in the company of George Smith, the English psittacine authority, who, typically, kept Ed and me well entertained on the drive from the AF A National Convention and back.

For years Ed was a fixture at AFA convention exhibit halls, where he was known as a source for birds that were otherwise not often seen by aviculturists. I remember especially the San Diego National Convention of 1991, where he offered Great-billed and Grand Valley Mannikins (Lonchura grandis and L. teerinki) and other rare finches from Indonesian New Guinea.

Ed applied his immense knowledge of the rules and regulations regarding the international bird trade to creating his own company, South American Imports in the early 1980's. He established contacts in Guiana and imported a number of Red-billed Toucans and Black-necked Aracaris which I saw at his apartment in San Diego. He also provided birds from Paraguay. He supplied the core collection for the Graham Amazon Gallery at the Vancouver Aquarium, and was present at its opening in March, 1983, when he was presented to Her Majesty the queen.

In 1989 he traveled to New Zealand and brought back Slender-billed Corellas and Leadbeater's Cockatoos that had been bred by aviculturists there. Ed also made collections in Puerto Rico, exporting Ridgeway's Troupials, which were feral there, as well as the first Ruddy Quail Doves I'd seen. Of particular interest were Black-faced Grassquits (Tiaris bicolor), which Luis Baptista, Chairman of the Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy of the California Academy of Sciences, was most grateful to receive. These modestly patterned relatives of the Cuban Melodious Finches are common throughout most of the Caribbean, but the birds Ed supplied from Puerto Rico were the first Luis was able to obtain.

Dr Baptista's integration of aviculture with ornithological research, involving such seed-eating birds as Pearlheaded Mannikins, White-crowned Sparrows and Cuban Melodious Finches is well known and fondly remembered. He was especially eager to work with Black-faced Grassquits as he believed they very closely related to the common ancestor of all the Galapagos Finches, the quintessential examples of adaptive radiation, with which the Academy has had a long history.

I got to accompany Dr. Baptista to the San Francisco Airport to pick up the Grassquits Ed shipped from San Diego in 1981. It took a while for the birds to arrive at the freight office, so Luis and I sat in his car eating ice cream while...