1. 1 Herbert Gardner, Come Duck Shooting with Me (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1917), 119–23. Dating this encounter is problematic. Gardner, who published the story in 1917, reported that Jimmy told it to him three years after it happened. By that reckoning, the latest it could have taken place was 1914, although that would require Gardner to have both written it and published it the year he heard it. Alexander Wetmore, however, did not begin his studies of lead poisoning until 1915; that Jimmy remembered him speaking about his experiments on that issue means that the two men could not have met until that year at the earliest. I have opted to place the encounter in 1915—the closest date to 1914 (that is, a minimum of three years before 1917, as suggested by Gardner’s account) that Wetmore could talk about lead poisoning.
2. 2 The following biographical sketch is compiled from John K. Terres, "Smithsonian 'Bird Man': A Biographical Sketch of Alexander Wetmore," Audubon Magazine 50 (1948): 160-67
3. Paul H. Oehser, "In Memoriam: Alexander Wetmore," The Auk 97 (July 1980): 608-15
4. and S. Dillon Ripley and James A. Steed, "Alexander Wetmore, 1886-1978: A Biographical Memoir," National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1987), 597-626.
5. 3 Oehser, “In Memoriam,” 608.