John Eliot Thayer was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 amateur ornithologist.

Thayer was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Thayer, a banker who built Harvard's Thayer Hall. After graduating from Harvard, Thayer married Evelyn Forbes and settled at the family farm at Lancaster

Lancaster, Massachusetts

Lancaster is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in the United States. Incorporated in 1653, Lancaster is the oldest town in Worcester County...

, thirty-five miles west of Boston. He became interested in ornithology

Ornithology

Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...

 in the mid 1890s, building up a collection which he housed in a museum in the main street of Lancaster.

He used his wealth to sponsor various natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 expeditions and in 1906 he sent Wilmot W. Brown to Guadalupe Island

Guadalupe Island

Guadalupe Island, or Isla Guadalupe is a volcanic island located 241 kilometers off the west coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula and some 400 kilometers southwest of the city of Ensenada in Baja California state, in the Pacific Ocean...

 off Pacific Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. Here, Brown, H. W. Marsden and Ignacio Oroso gathered field data on how the natural vegetation was being destroyed by thousands of goat

Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...

s, to the detriment of the native wildlife. The native Guadalupe Storm Petrel was being predated by introduced cat

Cat

The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...

s, as was the Guadalupe Flicker. Both birds became extinct shortly afterwards; several other taxa were found to be already gone in 1906. Thayer and Outram Bangs

Outram Bangs

Outram Bangs was an American zoologist.Bangs was born in Watertown, Massachusetts and studied at Harvard from 1880 to 1884...

 wrote an article in The Condor

Condor (journal)

The Condor is a peer-reviewed quarterly scientific journal covering ornithology and published by the Cooper Ornithological Society.-History:...

to draw attention to the situation.

In 1913 Thayer and other Harvard graduates sponsored an expedition to Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 and Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, with Joseph S. Dixon and Winthrop Sprague Brooks as zoological collectors. A gull collected by Brooks on this trip was named Larus thayeri

Thayer's Gull

The Thayer's Gull is a large gull native to North America that breeds in the Arctic islands of Canada and primarily winters on the Pacific coast, from southern Alaska to the Gulf of California, though there are also wintering populations on the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi River...

in Thayer's honour.

Thayer became ill in 1928, and donated his collection of 28,000 skins and 15,000 eggs and nests to Harvard. These included the first clutches ever collected of Spoon-billed Sandpiper

Spoon-billed Sandpiper

The Spoon-billed Sandpiper , is a small wader which breeds in northeastern Russia and winters in Southeast Asia.- Taxonomy and systematics :...

 and Surfbird

Surfbird

The Surfbird is a small stocky wader in the family Scolopacidae. It is usually classified in a genus of its own, as Aphriza virgata, and was once considered to be allied to the turnstones, but more recent data suggests it is very close genetically to the Red and Great Knots and should be included...

. After Thayer's death Harvard received his collection of 3,500 mounted birds.