Davidson, Mary E. McLellan

• Mary Ellen McLellan Davidson Terry

Mary E. McLellan Davidson was a distinguished American ornithologist, mammalogist, and field collector who served as Assistant Curator in the Department of Birds and Mammals at the California Academy of Sciences from 1922 to 1936. During her tenure, particularly throughout the 1930s, she made significant contributions to the study of Pacific and Central American bird life, expanding the Academy’s research collections through extensive field investigations.

Davidson conducted numerous expeditions in Panama, where she assembled an important collection of bird and mammal specimens for the Academy. Her work in Chiriquí Province proved especially influential and was later recognized through the naming of a subspecies of the Chiriquí Yellow-green Finch, Colinus leucopogon mariae, in her honour. After leaving the Academy in 1936, her scientific legacy continued through the preservation of her field notebooks, correspondence, photographic records, and detailed card catalogues. These materials are now housed in the Mary McLellan Davidson Terry Papers at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, providing a valuable record of her contributions to zoological research and collecting. Her travels included Tahiti (1920), Samoa (1921), Mexico (1925), and Panama (1929-1932).

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60445578