Purchase a new Droll Yankees Feeder and help the Lab of Ornithology.

In a salute to Peter Kilham (1905 – 1992), founder of Droll Yankees, the company will donate 10% of all sales to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Kilham was a consummate inventor, whose creativity spanned everything from the design of modern furniture to gun sights for Navy bombers. He combined his love of birds and nature with his expertise in fabrication and design to create the very first tube feeder. Another of his interests was recording bird sounds. His technical knowledge and inventiveness led him to develop a parabolic microphone system that was 72 inches wide, mounted on a swivel, and towed on a trailer. The critically acclaimed recordings he made were sold along with his other Droll Yankees products.

In recognition of Kilham’s dedication to sound recording, Droll Yankees will make a donation to the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library, the world’s largest archive of animal sounds. Macaulay’s North American bird sounds can be listened to online, but there are still the elusive few vocalizations that would help complete the repertoires of certain species. Each year the archive draws closer to having a complete record of the wide variety of vocalizations made by birds, as well as sounds and video of other animals. Many of the archive’s vast holdings of more than 185,000 recordings (with 100,000 of these currently playable online) were contributed by talented recordists like Kilham, who donate their recordings to Macaulay. To obtain those last recordings, volunteer recordists and staff of the Macaulay Library will again partner in a dedicated effort to capture some of nature’s most elusive voices—all for the purpose of a better understanding of these creatures’ natural history. It begins by being in the right location at the right time. The Cornell Lab is grateful to Droll Yankees for helping to make this possible in Peter Kilham’s memory.

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