Margaret Morse Nice (December 6, 1883 – June 26, 1974) was an American ornithologist, ethologist, and child psychologist who made an extensive study of the life history of the song sparrow and was author of Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow (1937). She observed and recorded hierarchies in chickens about three decades ahead of Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, who coined the term "pecking order". After her marriage, she made observations on language learning in her children and wrote numerous research papers.

Early life

Nice was born on December 6, 1883, in Amherst, Massachusetts. The daughter of Anson D. Morse, professor of history at Amherst College, and Margaret Duncan (Ely), she was the fourth child, with two older brothers, Ely and William; an elder sister Sarah; a younger sister, Katherine; and two younger brothers, Harold and Edward.

As a child, she took an interest in nature; her mother, who had studied botany at Mount Holyoke College when it was Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, taught her the names of wildflowers. Her first book dealing with birds was Jenny and the Birds (1860) by Lucy Guernsey, which was read out by her mother. She later came across John B. Grant's Our Common Birds and How to Know Them (1891). In her posthumously published autobiography Research Is a Passion With Me (1979), she wrote that "the most cherished Christmas present of my life came in 1895. Mabel Osgood Wright's Bird-Craft." This book had color illustrations of birds and it guided her to keep notes on local birds when she was twelve years old. With careful note-making she was even able to use her notes taken when she was 13 years old to compare the rates of fledgling success of young American robins, chipping sparrows, and least flycatchers then and 61 years later.

She received her B.A. in psychology from Mount Holyoke College in 1906 and her M.A. in biology from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1915.

Later life

Margaret met Leonard Blaine Nice, commonly referred to by his middle name, at Clark University; they married in 1908. Blaine served as an instructor in physiology at Harvard Medical School for two years, following which the family moved to Norman, Oklahoma, where Blaine had accepted a faculty position in physiology and pharmacology at the university. They had five children, Constance, born 1911; Marjorie, 1912; Barbara, 1916; Eleanor, 1918; and Janet, born 1922. Eleanor died of pneumonia at age nine in Columbus, Ohio.

From 1913 to 1927 she studied the birds of Oklahoma, finally publishing her research in "Birds of Oklahoma" in 1931. During her time in Oklahoma, she also became very interested in child psychology, concerning which she published 18 articles.

She studied her own children, their vocabulary, sentence length, and speech development. Constance was the subject of her first study as part of her M.A. thesis "Development of a Child's Vocabulary in Relation to Environment" (1915). Nice published Marjorie and Eleanor's vocabularies in the Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Sciences (1927). She noted that 19 three-year-old children averaged vocabularies of 910 words and reaching 3000 by six years. This contradicted an old idea that a laborer had a vocabulary of less than 300 words.

She also studied mourning doves and wrote about them in several pieces. She attended meetings of the National Association of Audubon Societies and came to know many ornithologists in the region. Ornithologist Althea Sherman, 30 years older than Nice, served as a mentor for Nice early in her career.

In 1927 she moved to Columbus, Ohio, where Blaine had accepted a professorship at the Ohio State University. This move gave her an opportunity to meet more ornithologists in the vicinity. At an American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) meeting in 1927, she was greeted as "Mrs Mourning Dove Nice" by Florence Merriam Bailey. and later 69 banded pairs. Beginning in 1929, she spent eight years studying these birds and focused on interactions, breeding, territoriality, learning, instinct and song. encouraged her to write, and arranged the publication of the results of her studies. Nice was subsequently elected the first woman president of the Wilson Club and became the fifth woman to receive membership in the AOU, followed by a fellowship in 1934. As a supporter of wildlife and conservation, Nice fought to preserve the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, the Dinosaur National Monument, and the California redwoods, among other projects.

Margaret Morse Nice died in Chicago on June 26, 1974, from arteriosclerosis, two months after the death of her husband.

Contributions to ornithology

thumb|[[Song sparrow]]

Nice worked on the life-histories of birds at a time when most of the focus was on collection, description and geographic listing. Her work on the song sparrow in particular is considered a landmark, and her work in general was considered "so vast and difficult that the mind boggles at the time and patience required". Ernst Mayr wrote that Nice "almost single-handedly initiated a new era in American ornithology and the only effective counter movement against the list-chasing movement." Her first research paper was published with the help of Mayr and Erwin Stresemann in the German Journal für Ornithologie in 1933 and 1934 because American journals would not accept such long articles.

Ornithologist Robert Dickerman named a Mexican subspecies of song sparrow (Melospiza melodia niceae) after her.

  • Ornithologist Althea Sherman, a mentor for Nice early in her career.