Georgia Ornithological Society

ABOUT US

Long-time members of the society are familiar with the story of how GOS was founded by a gathering of 22 members of the Atlanta Bird Club (ABC; now the Atlanta Audubon Society) and Georgia members of the American Ornithologists’ Union at an Atlanta restaurant in December 1936. The goal of the founding members was to create a statewide, science-based bird club. They elected Herbert Stoddard, a noted quail biologist and fire ecologist, as the first president, and Stoddard promptly set the tone for the development of GOS as an organization steeped in science, rather than becoming a bird watching club. The founders bestowed an honorary membership on Roger Tory Peterson, the featured speaker at an ABC gathering the night preceding the charter meeting and one of those in attendance at that historic meeting. This was nearly 20 years before Peterson undertook his famous year-long, nationwide trip with James Fisher, counting more than 500 bird species and effectively kicking off the “birding bug” with the publication of his book, Wild America.