An American Avicultural Legend: Kenton C. Lint (March 19, 1912 - December 3, 1992 Part I)

Abstract

In assessing a great life, it is often fitting to begin with details. While attempting to decide where to begin in writing this appreciation, I was leafing through the AFA Watchbird for December/January 1993, when I came across the editor's note appended to an article on a still-alltoo- infrequenr breeding of the Gould's or Sparkling Violet-ear Hummingbird (Colibri coruscans) (Bieda, 1993). Our editors request that "if any person has knowledge of any species of South American hummingbird being successfully parent reared in captive conditions in North America, we would welcome this information:' In 1970, the San Diego Zoo hatched two Sparkling Violet-ears and reared one. The same thing happened there the next year. Finally, in 1973, both the chicks that hatched at San Diego reached adulthood. I extracted these dry facts from the august pages of the International Zoo Yearbook (Zoological Society of London, 1972b, 1973 & 1975). The 1970 hatching is far more engagingly documented in the pages of the San Diego Zoological Society's Zoonooz, where staff photographer Ron Garrison's typically magnificent pictures accompany a detailed, unsigned account of a U.S. first breeding (Anon., 1970). Uncredited as it may be, the style of this article is familiar, especially to long-time readers of Zoonooz, as its author, K.C. Lint, wrote or co-authored 98 articles for this magazine, from 1939 to 1991 (Lindholm, 1993). K.C. Lint came to work at the San Diego Zoo in 1936. Though it was always his intention to work with birds, until 1938 he managed the cats and bears. In 1938, he effected a transfer to the Bird Department as a keeper, and, with the exception of his WWII service in the Pacific, he did not leave until 1976, when he retired as Curator of Birds, to which he had been appointed in 1947. K.C. loved hummingbirds. For many visitors, the highlight of a visit to the San Diego Zoo was always the Hummingbird House. Designed by K.C. (Lint, 1966), its initial inhabitants were 105 hummingbirds of 23 species, collected by K.C. and Augusto Ruschi, the famous Brazilian ornithologist, and brought back by K.C., his wife  Marie, and his son Roland in 1964 (Lint, 1965). Through the '60s, before Newcastle's quarantine and government export restrictions, the hummingbird collection was rich and varied, and shared its exhibit with more than 20 species of tanagers, a wonderful array of shorebirds (Lint, 1971), and a startling variety of other softbills. Less than two years after its opening, Black-necked Stilts, Indian White-eyes, and Golden, Silverthroated and Lady Wilson's Tanagers had bred there. The first captive breedings of the Orange-breasted Cotinga (Lint & Dolan, 1966), and White-naped Honeyeater (Lint, 1968a) were other early successes in a building which continues to this day to be a site for important reproduction of softbilled birds. K.C. also loved Albatross. As long as the zoo had any, through the '70s, he personally handfed them their daily squid. K.C. loved boobies and terns and todies and hoopoes and pittas. There will never again be an American bird collection on the scale that K.C. maintained at San Diego for years. In 1947, the year he became Curator of Birds, 1,266 birds of 319 species and subspecies were inventoried. A year later, there were 1,335 specimens of 361 taxa. December 31, 1959, there were 2,109 specimens of 559 taxa. December 31, 1962, San Diego's species and subspecies count was rapidly catching up with the New York Zoological Park's; 2,185 specimens of 635 taxa at San Diego, 1,533 specimens of 646 taxa at the Bronx. For more than 50 years, the Bronx Zoo had the largest collection of bird taxa in the Western Hemisphere. This was to change in 1963; at year's end, there were 1,543 specimens of 622 taxa at New York, and San Diego Zoo (the Wild Animal Park was still nine years from opening) held 2,234 specimens of 698 taxa. A year later, San Diego's taxon count stood at 854. Until Walsrode, in Germany (entirely devoted to birds), shot ahead in 1973, San Diego would remain the largest collection of birds in the world, and it has never lost its first place in the Western Hemisphere (with a count, at present, of somewhat under 500 species). San Diego's year-end collection statistics reached an all-time high December 31, 1969, with 3,465 birds of 1,126 species and subspecies. And what a collection it was! A quick scan through my childhood memories of visits in the late '60s and early '70s calls up Black-footed...

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