Aviculture at Tulsa Zoo

Abstract

1929, like 1066, 1492, 1865, 1941, 1945, 1969, or 2001, is a year more likely than most to mean something to a significant number of people. On 24 October, "Black Thursday" initiated the stock market crash which brought in the Great Depression. Times were prosperous before that day, however, and 1929 was also the year that the Tulsa Zoo opened its first major building, the Bird Hall and Museum.

The Tulsa Zoo is one of at least nineteen zoos and aquariums opened in the US in the 1920's (Kisling, 2001). Although the Tulsa Zoological Society was organized in 1927, the animal collection had begun in 1926, when the City authorized the Superintendent of Parks to purchase "three American Bisons, three elk and several black-tailed deer" (Kawata, et al, 1978, 25). Lions would not be received until 1930, and the zoo had no chimp until 1950, no elephant until 1954, no giraffes until 1962, no Polar Bear until 1964, and no rhinos until 1974. However, when the Bird Hall and Museum opened in 1929, it featured "200 birds, more than 200 reptiles, and a complete collection ofT ulsa County bird eggs" (Kawata, et al, 1978, 5). This building "drew some 2,000 visitors each weekend and between 500 and 600 on weekdays". A mounted Whooping Crane was included among 800 preserved North American birds which staff member Eugene Mott, an amateur taxidermist, exhibited at the Zoo, commencingJuly, 1931 (Kawata, et al, 1978, 6, 25).

Through the difficult depression years, exhibits ofliving birds kept pace with the stuffed ones. On 1 November, 1930, a bid of $1,922 was approved for a pheasantry, "a large wire structure with 20 runs and a native stone shelter in each pen" (Kawata, et al, 1978, 6, 25). Two 6-week-old ostrich chicks were part of a collection obtained from Fort Worth Zoo in August, 1934 (Kawata, et al, 1978, 26.). In 1937 an exhibit oflocal birds of prey was created to educate the public and combat the "prejudice and ignorance ... imbedded in the minds of citizens". Tulsa Zoo played its part in the eventually successful effort to largely end the gratuitous shooting of raptors (Kawata, et al, 1978, 7).

Conservation education was taken very seriously by the Zoo's dynamic young Director, Tulsa native Hugh Davis, who served in that office from 1932 to 1966, having joined the staff in 1929. In 1937, the Zoo participated in surveying birds in the cypress swamp in Oklahoma's McCurtain County, in an effort to preserve that endangered habitat. The Zoo was involved in a duck-banding program inaugurated in 1939, trapping, banding and releasing more than 10,000 ducks in Mohawk Park in 1940 (Kawata, et al, 1978, 7). "It was discovered that ducks flew from Tulsa to virtually every point along the Gulf Coast and into Mexico, to all parts of Canada and to Alaska; most of them, however, were killed in Oklahoma"(Kawata, et al, 1978,8). The Zoo sponsored young per- son's field trips and classes in birdhouse building, and loaned mounted specimens to schools .. In 1941, Hugh Davis was elected President of the Tulsa Audubon Society, and with the Daughters of the American Revolution and local garden clubs, campaigned to end the "importation of wild bird plumage for millinery purposes" (Kawata, et al, 1978,8).

Hugh Davis, who was only 22 when he assumed his directorship, was equally devoted to enlarging Tulsa Zoo's bird collection. In the depths of the Depression, the most interesting birds at the Zoo were ones he collected himself.

In preparation for a collecting expedition of his own, Hugh Davis took part in two expeditions led by celebrities of the time. During almost all of 1933, he was one of the six member Sixth African Expedition of Osa and Martin Johnson. In 1935 he joined Bruce and Sheridan Fahnestock (both younger than himself) in Central America, collecting zoological and anthropological specimens for museums (Kawata, et al, 1978, 26). Although details are not now clear, it appears he was able to collect "25 parrots from Guatemala" for the zoo (Kawata, et al, 1978, 26).

Finally, in June, 1936, Hugh Davis directed a seven member expedition to the Caribbean, on the Eden, a 62-foot, 22-foot beam, 4Yi-foot draft boat with a 12-cylinder motor" (Davis, 1936a). The crew of seven included his wife, Melba, and two Tulsa school teachers. Along with living animals and plants for Tulsa Zoo, preserved marine life was collected for the zoo's education programs and "Eastern Museums" (Davis, 1936c). Davis was also expected to collect animals for "Eastern Zoos" (Davis, 1936c), and did send 30 Plumed Baslilisks (Baslilscus Plumifrons) and a series oflarge Meso-American Sliders (Trachemys Venusta) to San Diego Zoo, coinciding with the opening of Reptile Mesa there (Davis, 1936d). These activities were documented as movies by Davis himself (Davis, 1936d). Substantial financial support came from the Tulsa Junior Zoological Society (Martin, 1936c).

The Eden departed from Florida to the Bahamas, where four species of cactus...