Martha Bergland, author of the recently published book: “Birdman of Koshkonong,” will be the featured speaker at the Dwight Foster Public Library, Saturday, Dec. 11, at 1 p.m., according to information recently released by the library.
The Dwight Foster Public Library is located at 209 Merchant Ave., Fort Atkinson.
The program will be held in the FCCU Community Room on the library’s first floor.
According to the release, Thure Kumlien was one of Wisconsin’s earliest Swedish settlers and an accomplished ornithologist, botanist, and naturalist in the mid-1800s, though his name is not well known today.
He settled on the shore of Lake Koshkonong in 1843 and soon began sending bird specimens to museums and collectors in Europe and the eastern United States, including the Smithsonian. Later, he prepared natural history exhibits for the newly established University of Wisconsin and became the first curator and third employee of the then new Milwaukee Public Museum.
For all of his achievements, the release continued, Kumlien never gained the widespread notoriety of Wisconsin naturalists John Muir, Increase Lapham, or Aldo Leopold. Kumlien did his work behind the scenes, content to spend his days in the marshes and swamps rather than in the public eye.
The release quoted Kumlien, noting “he once wrote that he was not ‘cut out for pretensions and show in the world.’ Yet, his detailed observations of the Midwest’s natural world — including the impact of early agriculture on the environment — were hugely important to the fields of ornithology and botany.”
About Bergland
Martha Bergland is coauthor, along with Paul Hayes, of “Studying Wisconsin,” a Society Press biography of famed Wisconsin naturalist Increase Lapham, which won the Milwaukee County Historical Society’s Gambrinus Prize. She taught for many years at Milwaukee Area Technical College. She lives in Glendale, according to the release.
For more information about the upcoming presentation, contact Amy Lutzke: 920-563-7790.
The above photo of Thure Kumlien is shared through Wikipedia.org. The photo is listed as public domain, created before 1898, with original sourcing attributed to the “Hoard Museum, Fort Atkinson, Wis.”
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