'Bird Man' left legacy of avian lore

James Newman Clark became known as the "Bird Man of Meridean" because of his vast collection of birds. It was not unusual for Clark to walk miles to obtain a species he did not yet have. Newman's collection is now on display at UW-Eau Claire.

     Many people through the years have become familiar with birds of the area.
     Farmers can name and identify marauders of their field and chicken coop, and hunters can pick the best species for succulent dining.
     But Meridean's James Newman Clark, farmer and moneylender died in 1928 leaving a collection of 747 specimens representing about 436 different species of birds.
     Clark's heirs offered the collection to the University of Wisconsin in 1959. It is now housed in a museum setting at L. E. Phillips Science Hall.
     But the collection of Chippewa Valley birds tells nothing of the quiet, grizzled man who came to know bird life of the area so well, and who recorded comings and going of nature in his voluminous diaries.

Born in New York in 1842

     Clark, born in Catteraugus County, N.Y., in 1842, was seven when his family moved to Wisconsin's Fond du Lac County. Soon after, the family moved farther west, establishing a farm in Dunn County.
     In 1868 Clark purchased his own farm near Meridean.
     The birdman was perhaps a bit ahead of his time as a farmer. While most of his contemporaries plodded along in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers, Clark was soon writing away for early scientific farming journals and keeping careful records of crop yields, produce prices, and notes on insect pests, crop loss and estimated harvests.
     In these years, he began keeping careful records of his farm and of weather and animal life around him. An entry on Feb. 3, 1886 reports the thermometer was frozen solid at -56 degrees F.

Began to help neighbors

     Under Clark's careful eye, the farm flourished and the birdman began lending money to friends and neighbors, with livestock and land being taken in security. Hired men were soon doing a good portion of the farm work, and Clark began to find time for other enterprises.
     His interests broadened and he began cultivating medicinal plants, ginseng and goldenseal. The fleshy roots of ginseng are believed by the Chinese to have extraordinary curative powers, and extracts from the goldenseal yielded alkaloids used in the production of tonics.
     While both of the plants were indigenous to the area, cultivating them was difficult. Careful attention from Clark, however, had the products flourishing, but he always packaged small quantities of the roots and shipped them to different buyers, so as not to disturb their illusion of buying wild root.
     In 1900 ginseng was selling for $5.10 for the dried root, and by 1911, price was $6.50 per pound. In 1925 the price jumped to $10.
     From his earliest years, Clark was a trapper. As a youth he sold pelts to supplement meager income from his parents' farm. When he had his won farm, he continued trapping for bounty and fur. His reward was in hours afield, not financial gain.
     His efforts in later years became more practical, and when he was in his 80s, Clark established a mink ranch.

Activities drew him outdoors

     Many activities drew Clark outdoors.
      Family outings for berries were seasonable social events. Bee hunting was especially popular as some of the honey was sold and the rest enjoyed by the family.
     In the spring smoke from the sugar bush wafted across the fields and family and workers were busy gathering sap and stoking fires.
     Fish in plentiful supply came from the Chippewa River and nearby riverbed lakes and bayous. When fall ice was thick enough in the marshes to support the weight of a man, it was time for muskrat spearing.
     Even in winter, after chores were done, Clark would draw on his snowshoes, shoulder his shotgun and set out for a day of hunting.
     Although the farmer-hunter's life was common enough in the area, this versatile man had a very pronounced and rather eccentric bent. As a graduate of Washington Park Academy in Eau Claire, he had some formal schooling. In earlier years he taught at Cranberry Creek School.

No one could understand

     His children have recalled with amusement that no one else in the family could understand the books Clark read. One book mentioned in his diary was the Geology of Wisconsin, which he had ordered through the mail.
     As a collector of both insects and fossils, Clark spent many hours in gathering, cleaning, mounting and studying specimens. As a skillful field botanist, he was adept at naming local plants, but his all-encompassing love was ornithology and taxidermy.
     His interest in birds did not begin suddenly, but notations appear throughout his journals on comings and goings of various species as on 7 April, 1881: "Meadowlarks make their first appearance, robins two days ago."
     Then, however, he soon became extremely active in observing and collecting birds and stuffing and trading skins. Some mention of birds or related activities can be found in just about every diary entry following the late 1880's.
     According to his daughter, Clark's health broke and his doctor suggested that he take up some vocation for relaxation.
     There was however, little lessening of the daily routine of farm chores. Raymond, Clark's eldest son, often told of his father pausing in the middle of fieldwork to seize his shotgun and kill a passing bird. Then, with bird in hand, he would go vaulting off across the meadows to the farmhouse to get the specimen on ice before the skin spoiled - hardly "taking it easier."
     Clark's initial taxidermy attempts were directed toward bluejays which he collected in his barnyard. He had no formal training in the skill, but combining a high degree of natural talent with what he was able to glean from encyclopedias, he soon mastered the art.
     Supplies for the collector-taxidermist became an item on every shopping list. His mounted specimens have stood the test of time and many of them are still on display.
      Dr. W. J. Breckenridge, former director of the Minnesota Museum of Natural History, judged Clark's mount of the male passenger pigeon to be the finest of that species he had ever seen.

House became a museum

     By 1900 there was an immense collection of birds on hand-carved perches. The Clark farmhouse became a museum of some renown, people coming to Meridean to see the birds. Indeed, his diary entries throughout the years resemble a guest register.
     Clark was an exacting self-trained scientist. He possessed an insatiable appetite for study of birds and all their activities. His dogged determination to make written records of everything paid off.
     Every specimen Clark took was carefully measured and data catalogued. Arrival and departure times for migrants were handled similarly.
     Perhaps the best indicator of the man's zeal can be found in a few scattered remnants of his field notes:
     Scribbled on several 1 ½-by-4-inch sheets of coarse paper is a careful account of the nesting habits of the great horned owl, telling how, during one unusually cold spring, Clark succeeded in locating two owl nests in the Chippewa bottoms.
     Climbing the trees in which the nests were located (he was then 48 years old) he spent no small amount of time describing the defense of the nest by the adult owl, examining materials which lined the nest and carefully measuring the eggs. He then sagely concluded that certain birds appear to nest at a particular time of the year without regard for weather conditions.
     The recorded morning temperature the day these observations were made was -30 degrees F.

Became a business venture

     Like other facets of his life, Clark's birds soon became a business venture. He sold or traded skins and eggs to collectors in many parts of this country and abroad. While his collection was mainly of fauna of the valley of the Chippewa River, it soon came to include many exotic specimens.
     These include a splendid Central American quetzal, Australian lyrebird and emu wren, Indian peacock and long-tailed parrot and others from South America, Europe and Japan.
     Clark became a legend to neighbors who watched him roam incessantly across their farmlands. His scrawling script meticulously recorded scientific details of birds and their habits in the Chippewa Valley, and yet his terseness on other subjects can be pointed out in his three-word diary entry Dec. 25, 1881, "Durand burned today."
     Obviously Clark's mind held little room for other than avian subjects at the time.

--David Crowe, UW-EC Biology Dept.

Extracted from the Eau Claire Leader Telegram
Special Publication, Our Story 'The Chippewa Valley and Beyond', published 1976
Used with permission.