Director Hornaday was very proud of young "Mr. Beebe" and thought he had what it took to be a first rate ornithologist. However, Hornaday did not want to lose Beebe to Col. Kuser. He thought that Beebe should stay on as curator of birds and not go out in the field bushwhacking for months on end. Osborn and the Society's executive committee were all for sending Beebe.

At first Hornaday gave his permission for Beebe to go for four months, but knew  very well that it would take longer than that, including the many months it would take Beebe to do further research and writing of the manuscript. Hornaday then said that if Mr. Beebe went on the trip, that he'd be looking for someone to fill his curator position and that he would not return as curator of birds.

(When Beebe did return from the 17-month-long expedition, he was made Honorary Curator of Birds and Director Hornaday welcomed him home with open arms and ultimately high praise for the Monograph.)

Beebe was determined to seize this opportunity to conduct extensive field studies in the Far East. He was feeling his usual restless self and felt that studies in the field would be more valuable than studies in his laboratory.

(Beebe during pheasant expedition-note white furry stuff around his ankles to ward off angry ants.)

Beebe writes in his first paper for the Park's scientific publication Zoologica: "The collecting of thousands of skins will be of no service nor will the study of those now in our museums be of any direct use. We must have careful and minute tabulation of the ecological conditions under which the phenomena under discussion appear."

"It is this distinguished note of direct observation of natural processes, under natural conditions, which is needed to-day in biology to supplement the note of the laboratory and of experiment. Living birds and living mammals have as much to teach us in their natural surroundings as they taught Darwin and Wallace and we must endeavor to keep the eyes and minds of these great naturalists in our modes of vision." (Science, "Second Award of the Elliot Medal," Nov. 21, 1919, p.473)

In 1913, Beebe authored chapter 20 of Hornaday's book, "Our Vanishing Wild Life." In it, he describes the wanton hunting of birds:

Beebe also writes about the burning and clearing of vast stretches of the country for the rubber tree industry:

"The East seems rubber mad, and whether the enormous output which will result from the millions of trees set out month after month will be profitable, I cannot say. I can think only of the vanishing of the entire fauna and flora of many districts which I have seen as a direct result of this commercial activity." (page 201)

Tragopan Pheasant feathers and Tiger (left is from Hemera Photo Objects)

"Once, for many days we studied the wonderful life of a jungle which stretched up to our very camp," wrote Beebe. "Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings and nights full of interest."

(Tragopan Pheasant)

"And then, one day without warning came the sound of an ax, and another and another. From that moment the songs, cries, chirps and roars of the jungle were seldom heard from our camp. Every day saw new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen, or half suspended in their rigging of lianas. The leaves withered, the flower petals fell and we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wind."

"Then the pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us; now a baby flying lemur, flung from its hole by the falling of some tree; young tupaias, nestling birds; a few out of the thousands of creatures from insects to mammals which were slain so that a Chinaman or Malay might eke a few dollars, four of five years hence, from a grove of rubber trees."

(Beebe circa 1917)

From 1910 through May of 1911, Blair accompanied her husband on the pheasant expedition-every step of the way. They divorced bitterly and publicly (in Las Vegas) in 1913. She remarried the next day to an architect Robert L. Niles and changed her name to Blair Niles and went on to fame and fortune as a writer in her own right. However, Beebe never mentions that Blair was along with him in pheasant books.

Blair steps from the famous Darjeeling Toy Train

"I had started out after jungle fowl," wrote Beebe, "but nature has a contrary habit of offering the unexpected; so I was greatfull enough and began crawling along after him."

(Four Javanese trading beads from the 1600's. They are palm nuts.)

"There is something essentially undignified in such a pursuit as this; but work in the field has nothing to do with dignity or with anything except patience, concentration, and eternal vigilance. All that I had to do was to get that peacock within range, and to keep out of sight."

Upon returning from seeing the peacock, Beebe wrote that he almost stepped on a Russell's viper, but was warned by his tracker. "I should have stepped on him if I had been alone, and my pheasant work would have come to an abrupt end. It was not a pleasant experience."

In Malaysia Beebe wrote of the envy his fellow man must feel towards his situation:

"I clapped twice, and my Cinghalese boy Aladdin appeared with a lime-squash; and as I sipped it, I thought of envious friends at home. But I wondered how many of them would have enjoyed earning this luxurious hour by the day's tramp through swamps, crawling through leech-infested thorn thickets, with heat and gnats and crackling leaves hindering the noiseless approach to a flock of peafowl, or a solitary argus, or family of peacock pheasants. Only aching muscles and excited memory of new facts achieved could make perfect the enjoyment of such an evening."

Of course from Beebe'e writings, one would never have known that his wife, Blair was by his side through the leeches, the gnats and heat...and headhunters. And she did all of this bushwacking dressed in skirts and blouses and maybe even corsettes.

"Thus throughout the whole country," Beebe wrote, "if you find favor in the eyes of a tribe, you are formally presented with an egg on the day of your arrival in their village...when the ceremony of landing was fully and properly achieved, Narok and his chief led us to his tribal house, where one by one, we climbed the steep, notched pole that was the sole roadway between a high veranda and the earth, some ten feet or more below."

While in Borneo, Will and Blair visited the chief Dyaks' Lamin, or longhouse. These Lamin houses are built on stilts along the banks of rivers and may house 50 or more families. The Lamin consists of long passageways, lit with bowls of resin, and may have 200 doors. Today, headhunting is not officially practiced...yet still goes on intertribally.

The Dyaks were happy to be hired to help bring back pheasants and other animals. They also helped Beebe hunt for local pheasants, showing him the birds' haunts and dancing arenas.
Sampans and Indonesian Beetle (Hemera)

Along the way, Blair helped many natives with health problems with her medicine-kit. She had no training as a doctor or nurse.

Beebe writes of how they gave medical care to the natives who "came oftener to my bungalow to be treated for the diseases which ran rife in the small, community. Antiseptics and mercury were needed in most of the cases; for many there was nothing to do but give a little morphine. And even then little could be accomplished, for, despite all threats and warnings, every pill and powder would be sallowed the instant it was received, the theory being that the greater the amount of medicine consumed, the quicker the cure."

Beebe also mentions that Cholera was running rampant through the tropical environment: "With dead cholera victims floating past, children and others, and two hundred cases dying down river out of every two hundred, I dared take no risk. Our drink was the universal Japanese mineral water Tan-san, or thrice-boiled river water."

(Impeyan Pheasants and Dyaks)

Will and Blair also traveled to the Himalayas. Beebe wrote: "From high overhead in the tracery of foliage came a low chuckle. Probably no sound in the world could have affected me as that. It meant that somewhere near by was a roosting pheasant."

"And it was to find this that I had come half round the world. I was to become intimate with these birds that I had traversed the fiery Plains and had penetrated deep into the heart of this wilderness - these Hills of Hills."

"So it was that on this first night I was so wholly absorbed in a desire to penetrate some of their secrets that the sudden indication of their presence, invisible but close at hand, shook me like strong emotion. I sat breathless, tense in every muscle."

Will and Blair Beebe view Mount Everest.

It was in the Himalayas that they encountered a heavy hail storm.

"Pheasants called in a way which they should not have done except in early morning; small creatures rustled here and there among the leaves. I picked up my gun and walked toward camp...From the Tibetan snow-peaks in the distance billowed a breath of cold air-icy, unfriendly-and a dark cloud swept across the sun. "The mist grew thicker and closed down. The birds and forest creatures became silent as death, and for as long as two minutes the silence was oppressive. Then in the distance, dimly though the fog, the trees bent and straightened, the mist yellowed and a drop of rain fell. Finally, came a sound as strange as any in the world, the noise of ice falling on flowers and leaves, a mitrailleuse volley of hail such as only the great Himalayas knew. Lashed by the ice, our horses whinnied with pain and fright, and although wild mountain ponies, crowded close to us beneath the shelter of the dak...their coats were covered with welts as if from heavy blows of finely divided thongs of a whip."

A Monograph of the Pheasants is made up of four volumes, each around 150,000 words. The first run was 600 copies at $250 a set. An abridged version sans scientific details, came out in 1926 as "Pheasants, Their Lives and Homes." It was reprinted in 1936 into a single volume. A more dramatized version of the expedition was the book "Pheasant Jungles," published in 1927.

The journey occupied seventeen months, extended over twenty countries, and resulted in a rare abundance of material, both literary-concerning the life histories of birds-and pictorial, photographs and sketches."

"This  (Monograph) is a profound study of the living pheasants in their natural environment in various parts of eastern Asia. There are nineteen groups of these birds; eighteen were successfully hunted with the camera, with field-glasses, and when necessary for identification, with the shotgun."

- HF Osborn

(Pheasants Book Cover; Henry Fairfield Osborn (1920s))

Other Information

Be sure to check out section about Mary Beebe.

Hornaday, William T. "Our Vanishing Wild Life: It's Extermination and Preservation" New York Zoological Society, 1913. Beebe wrote chapter 20 "The Destruction of Birds in the Far East"

MacKinnon, John Borneo The World's Wild Places-Time-Life Books, Amsterdam, 1975 Chapter 5 "The Sacred Birds," p.108-117

Site last updated March 2004; copyright Catharine Hines