Margaret Morse Nice was a pioneering ethologist, bird-bander, and ornithologist who researched animal behaviour for 50 years from the 1910s to the 1960s.
Seeing the world as animals do is impossible, yet scientists try to do it all the time. Here's what Margaret Morse Nice - born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1883 - once observed: "The invader, puffed out into the shape of a ball, fluttered one wing straight up in the air. He sang constantly and softly, incomplete songs in rapid succession. The defender, silent, hunched his shoulders in a menacing attitude, closely following every move of his foe."
This close observation, describing the territorial “ceremony” of two song sparrows, was made by a little-remembered scientist in the early 20th century, reports The Conversation. She was a pioneering ethologist, bird-bander, and ornithologist who researched animal behaviour for 50 years from the 1910s to the 1960s. “Territorial behaviour” may be a common term today but, at the time, describing animals from the inside out was a radical departure from the “objective” methods of a dissection table or scientific lab.
Nice’s work in animal behavior, understanding animals by watching what they did and why, was part of a new branch of science called ethology. Her research was relatively obscure by contrast to her male contemporaries. But recently, Nice’s standing in the field and history of science has garnered greater attention with the publication of a biography about her life, For the Birds: American Ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice by Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie.
By any measure, Nice’s career was astoundingly successful. But in the context of her life, her many scholarly achievements were even more remarkable. She was a wife and the mother of five daughters. As her husband’s academic career advanced, their family moved frequently.
Yet, even without a Ph.D. or institutional support, she excelled in a male-dominated field. By the end of her life in 1974, she had produced an impressive body of work, publishing hundreds of articles and thousands of reviews, and presented her work around the world. Her peers acknowledged her as an innovator in field ornithology and ethology.