Grace Coit Meleney: Home

Born January 17, 1896, Grace Coit Meleney studied Zoology at Mount Holyoke College (1918) and Columbia University (1922). She learned and observed animal specimens including cat dissections and chicken embryology. By 1924, Meleney ventured into bird banding and captured the first bird that flew down her chimney, a chimney swift (1).

The bird banding process involved several steps and Meleney had two methods to capturing and banding birds, “The older method is the use of traps batted with bird seed. When the bird enters the trap, it releases the door which closes behind it. This method works very well for seed eating insects are not available”(5). With the bird in her hands, Meleney recorded data about the bird's age, gender, wingspan and sent the information to the Fish and Wildlife Service - Department of the Interior in Washington. After banding and releasing the birds, they'd migrate to different areas and, “If another bander catches one of Miss Meleney’s birds anywhere in North or South America, she receives a punch card from Washington with all the pertinent data…” The data was useful, helping Meleney and other ornithologists study bird identification, migration, life span, movement and behavioral patterns. Based upon agricultural and climate changes, these environmental factors greatly affect the bird population.

Conserving birds was not the only thing on Meleney’s agenda. During the 1970s, she volunteered at the New York Botanical Garden, assisting NYBG’s paleobotanist, Dr. Herman Becker. At the age of 75, she compiled the lectures of former NYBG curator, Dr. Arthur Hollick and catalogued the fossil plant collection. In 1974, she wrote to the Vineyard Gazette newspaper and reported about her tasks after the museum’s building renovation and transport of the fossil collection, “Because of this moving, all the index cards have had to be retyped. It has been a most meticulous and boring job, but once in awhile something interesting turns up. I was still in the early part of the alphabet, when I typed a card for a fossil from Spitsbergen, Norway. The next card was for one from Grahamland, Antarctica!"(2). After inquiring about a boxed label, she raved about inventorying the collection, “Anyone who looks at the [Gardens] Vineyard collection will know that someone who loved the Vineyard worked on these fossils.”

Meleney worked with Dr. Becker for 14 years and post retirement, she did not refrain from hosting bird banding demonstrations at the Garden’s Earth Week 1971 event (3). During the event, she caught, weighed, measured and gently released the birds from the invisible nets. She closely observed the birds, turning it over on its back and allowed the children attendees to pet them. Working with children wasn’t new for Meleney, she was a docent at the Brooklyn Children's Museum and a science and biology teacher in New York City’s Morris High School and Theodore Roosevelt High School. Following the footsteps of her father, Clarence Edmund Meleney (Associate Superintendent of New York City Schools), Grace was an education advocate and taught for over 30 years. She retired in 1959 and later volunteered as a clerk for the Humanitarian aid organization, UNICEF (4).   

Out of 2,000 banders in the United States and 10 in Westchester, Grace Coit Meleney encouraged science education and raised environmental awareness. Having banded thousands of chickadees, blue jays and cardinals, she provided scientists the foundation to banding data - crucial insight to the birds they discovered. A member of the Torrey Botanical Club, the Scarsdale Audubon Society and the Eastern Bird Banding Association, Meleney offered a greater appreciation for bird science and as a steward for future conservationist projects, her contributions make the world a better place.