Margaret Morse Nice facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Margaret Morse Nice
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Nice studying a nest of baby field sparrows (1956)
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| Born | December 6, 1883 |
| Died | June 26, 1974 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | American |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ornithology Language acquisition |
Margaret Morse Nice (December 6, 1883 – June 26, 1974) was an American ornithologist. This means she was a scientist who studied birds. She also studied animal behavior (ethologist) and how children learn (child psychologist).
Margaret Nice is best known for her long and detailed study of the song sparrow. She wrote a famous book about it called Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow (1937). She also noticed how chickens form social groups, like a "pecking order." This was many years before the term became popular. After she got married, she even studied how her own children learned to speak. She wrote many research papers about her findings.
Contents
Early Life and Love for Nature
Margaret Nice was born on December 6, 1883, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father, Anson D. Morse, was a history professor. Her mother, Margaret Duncan (Ely), taught her about wildflowers. Margaret was the fourth of eight children.
She loved nature from a young age. Her mother read her books about birds. One special Christmas gift was Bird-Craft by Mabel Osgood Wright. This book had colorful bird pictures. It inspired Margaret to start writing notes about local birds when she was just twelve.
She kept very careful notes. When she was 13, she recorded how many young birds survived. Years later, she could compare her notes from 1896. She looked at American robins, chipping sparrows, and least flycatchers.
Margaret went to Mount Holyoke College and earned her B.A. in 1906. She later got her M.A. in biology from Clark University in 1915. At Clark University, she was one of only two women graduate students. She was influenced by two professors there. G. Stanley Hall sparked her interest in child psychology. Clifton Fremont Hodge encouraged her love for conservation. For her master's degree, she studied the diet of the northern bobwhite quail.
Later Life and Research
At Clark University, Margaret met Leonard Blaine Nice. They married in 1908. The family moved to Norman, Oklahoma, where Blaine became a professor. They had five daughters: Constance, Marjorie, Barbara, Eleanor, and Janet. Sadly, Eleanor died at age nine.
From 1913 to 1927, Margaret studied the birds of Oklahoma. Her work was published as "Birds of Oklahoma" in 1931. During this time, she also became very interested in child psychology. She published 18 articles on this topic.
Studying Children's Language
Margaret studied her own children to learn about language. Her first study was about her daughter Constance's vocabulary. She looked at how many words her children knew. She also studied their sentence length and how their speech developed.
She found that three-year-old children knew about 910 words. By age six, they knew around 3,000 words. This showed that children learn many more words than people used to think.
The Famous Song Sparrow Study
In 1927, Margaret moved to Columbus, Ohio. This gave her a chance to meet more bird scientists. Here, she started her most famous study: the song sparrow. She became one of the world's top bird scientists because of this work.
She studied individual birds for a very long time. She put tiny bands on their legs to identify them. She started with two pairs of birds, named Uno and 4M. Later, she studied 69 banded pairs. For eight years, starting in 1929, she watched these birds. She learned about their interactions, how they nested, their territories, and their songs.
In 1931, she met Ernst Mayr, another famous ornithologist. He was very impressed with her detailed work. He encouraged her to write about her findings. He also helped her publish her research. After her book came out, Margaret was elected the first woman president of the Wilson Club. She also became one of the first women to join the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU).
In 1938, she spent two months in Austria. She studied captive birds with Konrad Lorenz, a famous animal behavior scientist. After moving to Chicago in 1936, she became a leader in local bird societies. She wrote two popular books about her studies: The Watcher at the Nest (1939) and The Behavior of the Song Sparrow (1943).
Margaret was also a strong supporter of wildlife. She worked to protect places like the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge and the Dinosaur National Monument.
It was often hard for women scientists to get funding for their research back then. So, Margaret often paid for her own studies. Margaret Morse Nice passed away in Chicago on June 26, 1974.
Contributions to Bird Science
Margaret Nice studied the "life-histories" of birds. This meant she watched how birds lived their entire lives. At the time, most bird scientists just collected birds or listed where they lived. Her work on the song sparrow was groundbreaking.
Ernst Mayr said that Margaret Nice "almost single-handedly started a new era in American ornithology." Her first research papers were so long and detailed that American journals wouldn't publish them. So, Ernst Mayr helped her publish them in a German journal in 1933 and 1934.
Margaret Nice wrote almost 250 papers about birds. She also wrote 3,000 book reviews and several books. Her autobiography, Research Is a Passion With Me, was published after she died.
Honors and Awards
Margaret Nice received many honors for her work. She was made an honorary member of bird societies in Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
In 1942, she received the Brewster Medal from the AOU. This was for her amazing studies of the song sparrow. She was only the second woman to ever receive this important award. She also received two honorary doctorates from colleges.
A Mexican type of song sparrow was named after her: Melospiza melodia niceae. In 1997, the Wilson Ornithological Society created the Margaret Morse Nice Medal. This award honors people who do great work in bird science.
Images for kids
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See also
In Spanish: Margaret Morse Nice para niños
