Elizabeth L Kerr was an American

ornithologist Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is a branch of zoology dedicated to the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related discip ...

, who collected hundreds of birds for the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

bird surveys in

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

, in the first decades of 20th-century. Frank Chapman, the organiser of the early 20th-century surveys and the museums curator of birds, used the ''Mrs. Kerr Collection'' to help with the distribution of Columbian birds. He relegated Kerr's contribution to a footnote in his ''The Distribution of Bird-Life in Colombia. A Contribution to a Biological Survey of South America''. In 1915 he named the

Choco tinamou The Choco tinamou or Chocó tinamou (''Crypturellus kerriae'') is a type of tinamou found in lowland forest and montane forest in subtropical and tropical regions of Colombia and Panama. Description The Choco tinamou is approximately in length ...

, ''Crypturellus kerriae'' (Chapman, 1915) after her. A group of female ornithologists surveying Colombian birds, consider Kerr an inspiration for 21st-century female ornithologists. Of the ninety species found by the 2020 expedition, twenty-six species were documented by Kerr.

References

19th-century births 20th-century deaths American ornithologists American women ornithologists {{ornithology-stub