Barbara Snow

Barbara Kathleen Snow, (born Whitaker; 21 February 1921 in Evershot, Dorset – 2007), was a noted English ornithologist and a trained geologist. She and her husband, David Snow, formed a close team, becoming among the most influential British ornithologists of the 20th century.

In 1958 Barbara, who had been the Warden of Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, married David William Snow, a highly renowned British ornithologist, in Trinidad. From 1957 to 1961 the Snows worked for the New York Zoological Society at the society's Tropical Research Centre headed by the famous American naturalist, William Beebe. The centre was later expanded and is now known as the research centre in Trinidad.

Here David Snow began his studies of the oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis), and their echolocation abilities which enabled them to navigate to their nests in complete darkness using high-pitched clicks audible to humans (unlike the echolocation sounds of many bats). Barbara joined him in 1957 and from then on they worked together as a close-knit partnership. He and Barbara also began detailed studies of three bird families, the hummingbirds, the cotingas and the manakins, all associated with plants. This work extended over many years in Central and South America and led to important discoveries on the co-adaption between the birds and plants, providing food for the birds while ensuring the fertilising of the plants' flowers and dispersal of their seeds - "an early breakthrough in the integration of behaviour and ecology."

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