Searching for Bird Life in a Former ‘Ocean of Forest’

A century after museum collectors surveyed Colombia’s avian fauna, a new generation of researchers returns to see what remains, and what has changed.

FLORENCIA, Colombia — In June 1912, Leo Miller, a collector with the American Museum of Natural History, arrived in the Caquetá region of Colombia, where the eastern foothills of the Andes melt into the forested lowlands of the Amazon basin. Miller was working for Frank Chapman, the celebrated curator of birds at the museum. Chapman suspected that Colombia’s wildly varied topography had given rise to an unusual density of species, and sent collectors like Miller to bring him birds from all corners of the country to study. Miller set up camp on a farmstead called La Morelia, surrounded by what he described to his mentor as “a perfect ocean of forest stretching out ahead as far as the eye can see.” There, he and his Colombian assistants worked day and night, beleaguered by rain, malaria and insects. By the end of July, they had collected more than 800 birds for Chapman, who was thrilled.