Bernard Master


Bernard F. Master is an American birder and conservationist after whom the Chocó vireo was named. Master is the first American to have seen a representative of all 229 bird families in the world and has observed more than 7,800 birds in the wild. He is the author of No Finish Line: Discovering the World's Secrets One Bird at a Time.

Biography

Master's passion for birding started when he was four years old, at the encouragement of his father Gilbert with whom he'd accompany on bird walks. His family's vacation home in North Wildwood, New Jersey was near Cape May Bird Observatory, a birding mecca and in the path of the largest fall migration in the eastern North America. Master graduated from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine on June 11, 1966 and began his medical career.
In 1968, Master was drafted into the Vietnam War where he served one year as a battalion surgeon in an Army combat unit and one year as post-surgeon for the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence School. Following discharge, Master spent the next 35 years as a primary care physician in the inner city of Columbus, Ohio.
During his medical years, Master often watched birds at Green Lawn Cemetery, a popular birding spot in Columbus, Ohio, He became a founding board member of the Ohio Ornithological Society in 2004.
In 1994, Bernard Master bid for and won the right to assign the scientific name for a new species of vireo from the Western Andes of Colombia. He named the species Vireo masteri.
Master's contributions to world bird conservation were later honored by the late Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who helped found the World Wide Fund for Nature.