Charles Barney Cory was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 ornithologist and golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

er.

Biography

Cory was born in Boston. His father had made a fortune from a large import business, ensuring that his son never had to work. At the age of sixteen Cory developed an interest in ornithology and began a skin collection. Due to his ability to travel anywhere he wished this soon became the best collection of birds of the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 and the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

 in existence.

Cory was a director in many corporations. He briefly attended Harvard

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and the Boston University School of Law

Boston University School of Law

Boston University School of Law is the law school affiliated with Boston University, and is ranked #22 among American law schools by US News and World Report magazine. It is the second-oldest law school in Massachusetts and one of the first law schools in the country to admit students regardless...

 but soon left to continue his travelling. In 1883 he was one of the forty-eight ornithologists invited to become Founders of the American Ornithologists' Union

American Ornithologists' Union

The American Ornithologists' Union is an ornithological organization in the USA. Unlike the National Audubon Society, its members are primarily professional ornithologists rather than amateur birders...

. When Cory's collection of 19,000 bird specimens became too large to keep in his house he donated them to The Field Museum

Field Museum of Natural History

The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...

 in Chicago, and he was given the position of Curator of Ornithology. Cory's collection of 600 ornithological volumes were purchased by Edward E. Ayer

Edward E. Ayer

Edward Everett Ayer was an American business magnate, best remembered for the endowments of his substantial collections of books and original manuscripts from Native American and colonial-era history and ethnology, which were donated to the Newberry Library and Field Museum of Natural History in...

 in 1894, and in turn donated to the museum. Cory lost his entire fortune in 1906, and took a salaried position at the museum as Curator of Zoology, remaining there for the rest of his life.

Cory wrote many books, including The Birds of Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

 and San Domingo (1885), The Birds of the West Indies (1889) and The Birds of Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 and Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

(1909). His last major work was the four-part Catalogue of the Birds of the Americas, which was completed after his death by Carl Edward Hellmayr

Carl Edward Hellmayr

Carl Eduard Hellmayr was an Austrian ornithologist.-Life and work:Hellmayr was born in Vienna and studied at the University of Vienna, although he did not finish his degree...

.

Cory was the first person to describe Cory's Shearwater

Cory's Shearwater

The Cory's Shearwater is a large shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae.This species breeds on islands and cliffs in the Mediterranean, with the odd outpost on the Atlantic coast of Iberia. The nest is on open ground or among rocks or less often in a burrow where one white egg is laid,...

 as a species. It had previously been described by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli was an Italian physician and naturalist.-Biography:...

 in 1769, but he had believed it to be a race of another shearwater

Shearwater

Shearwaters are medium-sized long-winged seabirds. There are more than 30 species of shearwaters, a few larger ones in the genus Calonectris and many smaller species in the genus Puffinus...

.

Cory participated in the 1904 Summer Olympics

1904 Summer Olympics

The 1904 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the III Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States from 1 July 1904, to November 23, 1904, at what is now known as Francis Field on the campus of Washington University...

 as a golfer. He competed in the individual event

Golf at the 1904 Summer Olympics - Men's individual

The men's individual was a golf event held as part of the Golf at the 1904 Summer Olympics programme. It was the second time the event was held at the Olympics, though it took a much different format than the 1900 golf tournament. 75 golfers from 2 nations competed...

but did not finish.

Works

• Birds of the Bahama islands; containing many birds new to the islands, and a number of undescribed winter plumages of North American species (Boston, 1880).
• Catalogue of West Indian birds, containing a list of all species known to occur in the Bahama Islands, the Greater Antilles, the Caymans, and the Lesser Antilles, excepting the islands of Tobago and Trinidad (Boston, 1892).
• The birds of eastern North America known to occur east of the nineteenth meridian (Field Columbian Museum, 1899).
• The birds of Illinois and Wisconsin (Chicago, 1909).
• Descriptions of new birds from South America and adjacent islands (Chicago, 1915).
• How to know the ducks, geese and swans of North America, all the species being grouped according to size and color (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1897).
• How to know the shore birds (Limicolæ) of North America (south of Greenland and Alaska) all the species being grouped according to size and color (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1897).
• Hunting and fishing in Florida, including a key to the water birds known to occur in the state (1896, Nachdruck 1970).
• The mammals of Illinois and Wisconsin (Chicago, 1912).
• Montezuma’s castle, and other weird tales (1899).
• Notes on little known species of South American birds with descriptions of new subspecies (Chicago, 1917).
• Southern rambles (A. Williams & company, Boston, 1881).
• Descriptions of new birds from South America and adjacent Islands... (1915).
• Descriptions of twenty-eight new species and subspecies of neotropical birds...
• Notes on South American birds, with descriptions of new subspecies... (1915).
• Beautiful and curious birds of the world (1880).
• The birds of the Leeward Islands, Caribbean Sea (Chicago, 1909).
• The birds of the West Indies (Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1889).
• Descriptions of apparently new South American birds (Chicago, 1916).
• Descriptions of twenty-eight new species and sub-species of neotropical birds (Chicago, 1913).
• Hypnotism and mesmerism (A. Mudge & Son, Boston, 1888).
• A list of the birds of the West Indies (Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1885).
• A naturalist in the Magdalen Islands; giving a description of the islands and list of the birds taken there, with other ornithological notes (1878).