History & Special Collections, UCLA Biomedical Library
Donald Ryder Dickey Photographic Collection
Dickey holding out the wings of a California mastiff bat Birds by common name Birds by common name
Mammals by common name Mammals by common name  
People, places, camps, and means of transportation People and Places  
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about the collection About the Collection  
   
     
Donald Ryder Dickey (1887-1932) was a naturalist, a collector, a hunter, and a wildlife photographer. Born in Iowa, he came to California early with his parents and made it his home. During his relatively short life, he built a substantial bird and mammal collection numbering over 50,000 specimens with an eye toward starting a museum program and center for the study of natural history in Southern California.

As part of this he created a photographic record of his work using motion picture and still photography. He pursued his fieldwork, collecting and photographing birds and mammals, in California, the North Eastern U.S., Eastern Canada, and Baja California, Mexico. The images focus on the life and breeding habits of birds, the behavior of a variety of mammals, as well as landscapes depicting various habitats, and specimen collecting techniques and sites

He was the official photographer on the Smithsonian Institution sponsored Tanager expedition to Laysan Island, Hawaii in 1923. Just before his death he sponsored an extensive collecting trip to El Salvador. The 300 images on this site were selected from the over 4000 still images he took from 1911 to 1929.

Below are links to articles about Donald Dickey. One was written about Dickey during his lifetime and one after his death.


History & Special Collections
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