Google doodle June 9 2016: who is birdwatcher Phoebe Snetsinger?
Today Google celebrates the birthday of prolific bird watcher Phoebe Snetsinger who would have turned 85.
Snetsinger made it her life's mission to document the world's birds, travelling across the seven continents and surviving shipwrecks and earthquakes in the process.
By the time of her death in 1999, aged 68, she had documented more than 8300 species of birds. There are about 10,000 known species according to experts.
She started bird watching in May 1965 when she spotted a Blackburnian warbler through a neighbour's binoculars. But her hobby turned into an all-consuming obsession when she was diagnosed with melanoma aged 50.
Told she only had one year to live, the bored housewife from Missouri in the United States decided to travel to Alaska to watch birds. She returned home to find the cancer in remission.
Armed with binoculars and a telescope, she scoured the globe to study birds, using the fortune inherited from her father Leo Burnett, an advertising magnate.
In Kenya alone she saw 500 different bird species.
Snetsinger saw birding as "intricately intertwined with survival". In the pursuit of her dream, she suffered life-long injuries, including a crippled arm.
While she was near an isolated lagoon in Papua New Guinea she was gang-raped by five men.
One of the last birds she saw was the small and stocky red-shouldered vanga in Madagascar.
She was travelling to another birding site when the van she was in flipped, killing her instantly. She was 68.
Google's animation features Snetsinger watching several birds, including the blackburnian warbler, which sparked her passion, and the red-shouldered vanga.
"Today, we celebrate the courage of Ms Snetsigner, and the beauty of life - however hidden it may be," said Google.
No comments:
Post a Comment