Iowa Heritage Illustrated

English

Iowa Heritage Illustrated, vol.82 no.3, Fall 2001

Heege, Karen

Master & Apprentice: Passing on Cultural Knowledge

Sherman, William L

May Francis Championed the 'Smallest School Unit'

The Iowa Standard School Lae: A Turning Point for Country Schools

Vermaas, Lori

The Rocket That Ignited Union Park

Saltzman, Rachelle H

Celebrate Traditions at Festival and Institute

Kaufmann, Jeffrey A

This was a community affair': Rural Teachers Recall Teaching in 1930s Iowa

Horton, Loren N

World War II and Iowa's Rural Schools

Kent, Thomas H

American Kestrel and Red-tailed Hawk
This adult rufous morph Red-tailed Hawk is a rare variant of the species. 
Savage’s son W alter  identified the specimen as a Harris’s Hawk, based on a de ­
scription by ornithologist Elliott Coues. William Savage labeled it Black Warrior. 
However, Coues equates Black W arrior  with Harlan’s Hawk, which is today con­
sidered another  variant of Red-tailed Hawk.This puzzling hawk along with the 
Gray Star Buzzard (page 72), sparked the au tho r’s interest in the William Sav­
age collection of paintings and diaries.
names assigned by Savage; any
Two Ornithologists,
a Century Apart
*
For more than 15 years I had 
known about the William Savage 
paintings, but I had never seen 
them. What attracted me to them 
were two possible rarities, which 
Savage's son had reported as 
Harris's Hawk and Gray Hawk 
and were labeled Black Warrior 
and Gray Star Buzzard. When I 
looked at the actual paintings, I 
realized that the Savages had 
misidentified those birds. Yet I 
was surprised by the quality and 
details of the paintings and be­
came intrigued by the story be­
hind them, which was partially 
unveiled by Savage's diaries. I set 
three goals: to accurately identify 
all the birds in the paintings, to 
summarize the information in a 
logical order, and to photograph 
each painting in color.
Although most of the birds 
were easily identified from 
Savage's representations, many 
had never been labeled. Few of 
the paintings bore dates or loca­
tions, although the diaries revealed 
many clues. If species names did 
appear on the paintings, they 
were often inaccurate based on 
today's authorities. (It is also 
possible that Savage labeled 
some of the paintings years after 
he painted them; on July 27,1894, 
he wrote in his diary: "write 
names on more pictures" before 
exhibiting them in Fairfield.) The 
grouping of some species is often 
quite illogical to the modern ob­
server. Savage may have copied 
single birds into composite paint­
ings, which he was fond of mak­
ing in his later years.
The end product of my three-
year project is a two-volume com­
pilation of all known information 
pertaining to all 245 paintings 
(which depict 397 birds of 255 
species, plus 22 mammals of 13 
species). A color representation of 
each painting (electronically 
scanned from the slides) is followed 
by the accurate common names 
of the birds represented (based 
on the American Ornithologists' 
Union Check-list of North American 
Birds, Seventh Edition [1998]); the
other information written on the 
painting or relevant to it (includ­
ing quoted diary entries); and notes 
on the quality and condition of 
each painting. 1 have donated these 
volumes and a complete set of 
color slides to the museum collec­
tions of the State Historical Society
*
of Iowa (Des Moines), where they 
can be accessed by researchers in­
terested in Savage, his paintings, 
or ornithology. —Thomas H. Kent
NOTE ON SOURCES
The primary sources for this article are the paintings, original diaries ( 1856-1908). and typed transcripts ( 1863- 
1908). all housed at the State Historical Society of Iowa (Des Moines).The paintings are in the museum collec­
tions; the diaries and other written or printed material (including a few hand-written speeches) are in Special 
Collections. The diaries for March 1856 through October 1863 were serialized in the Annals o f Iowa (Oct. 1933. 
Jan. 1934, Oct. 1934. Oct. 1935, Oct. 1936, and Jan. 1937). Lewis D. Savage made available in original and 
' typescript form the diary of his father, David L. Savage, and guided me on a tour of the farm site and surround­
ings frequented by William Savage. Both Dr. Alfred D. Savage (David’s grandson) and Lewis D. Savage provided 
many personal documents, photographs, and newspaper clippings about William Savage and the entire Savage 
clan. Thanks also to these State Historical Society staff: curator Bill Johnson, registrar Jodi Evans, and audio-visual 
archivist Mary Bennett. They facilitated my photographing the Savage paintings over several days.
Summer 2000 87


Two Ornithologists, a Century Apart

Iowa Heritage Illustrated, vol.81 no.1, Spring 2000