[Maine-birds] Who was Steller?

With all of the excitement many of us have had in the past few weeks, I thought you might be interested in reading this.

Who was Steller?

There is a delightful book called "Whose Bird?" by Bo Beolens and Michael Watkins which tells you the story about the people that a bird's name commemorates.

So who was Steller? He was clearly stellar –

I quote -

"Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1746) was a German naturalist and explorer in Russian service. He studied medicine at Halle, between 1731 and 1734, and was a physician in the Russian army in 1734. He became an assistant at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1737 and accompanied Vitus Bering on his second expedition (1738-1742) to Alaska and Kamchatka. Between 1742 and 1744 he worked in Petropavlovsk but died on the return trip to St. Petersburg. John Latham, the English naturalist, first described the Steller's Jay in 1781 based on Steller's detailed journals and on a skin from Vancouver Island collected by Cook's expedition. Steller published a  Journal of a Voyage with Bering 1741-1743. Johann Gmelin (1748-1804) named the jay in his honour in his description. Steller himself discovered the eagle and eider."

Enjoy and happiest of new year's,

Dana Duxbury-Fox

North Andover, MA

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