When I became a curator at the Bronx Zoo, it was not unexpected for the curator to go in the field, although I guess not very many did to get particular animals for a particular purpose. Those were early days, the late ’50s, early ’60s, and we were interested, I found the Bronx zoo’s bird collection, poor. The species exhibited were of very mild interest interest, the quality of the exhibits was not very exciting. And if we were to excite people about these animals, I couldn’t see how we could do it with the way the collection stood at that time, I discussed this with will Beebe and Lee Crandall and anybody else who would listen. And we’ll Beebe said, “Why don’t you see if you can catch the mossy-throated or sometimes called the bearded bellbird in Trinidad?” Well, the society had a research station. So he had discovered the nests of this bird, but had never seen one close up. Even though it was a relatively abundant forest bird, it was completely unknown in collections. There were none in zoos.
