Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The improbable importance of everything and other lessons from Darwin's lost notebooks
grrlscientist | February 27, 2006
How important it is to walk along, not in haste, but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out
Yes! No!
-- Mary Oliver
Almost everyone has heard about "Darwin's Finches" -- those dark little birds that live on the Galapagos Islands. But most people don't realize that Darwin didn't set eyes upon those birds until nearly the end of his five year journey. Additionally, when Darwin first stepped aboard the HMS Beagle in 1831, he was neither an ornithologist nor a professional scientist; instead, he was a 22-year-old beetle collector and an amateur naturalist with only a smattering of…