author
Robert Morrow Mengel
b. 1921
A lifelong bird scholar and natural history artist, this Kentucky-born ornithologist helped shape the study of birds in the Midwest. His best-known work, The Birds of Kentucky, remains a notable contribution to American ornithology.
1 Audiobook
Studies of Birds Killed in Nocturnal Migration
by Harrison Bruce Tordoff, Robert Morrow Mengel
About the author
Born in Kentucky in 1921, Robert Morrow Mengel developed an early interest in both birds and natural history art. University of Kansas archival material describes him as someone who studied and painted natural history subjects from a young age, later completing master’s and doctoral degrees in zoology at the University of Michigan after military service during World War II.
Mengel came to the University of Kansas in 1953 to work on a bibliography of the Ellis Collection of Ornithological Books. He served as a research associate at the Museum of Natural History and later became curator of ornithology there in 1967. His career joined careful scholarship with field knowledge, illustration, and museum work.
He is especially associated with The Birds of Kentucky and other ornithological writing, and archival collections preserve his papers, research notes, correspondence, photographs, and bird paintings. Those records suggest a scientist who was also deeply attentive to the visual beauty of the natural world.