Studying bird feathers to prevent plane crashes: the incredible story of Roxie Laybourne

To mark National Bird Day in the United States, the Smithsonian Institution released a striking photograph: a woman standing upright in the middle of a vast warehouse, surrounded by hundreds of open crates filled with dead birds. There must be tens of thousands, perfectly classified by species and color. A fascinating, yet somewhat macabre scene. What are all those embalmed creatures doing there, stored as if sleeping side by side? It's not some museum eccentricity. It's the result of the immense work of Roxie Laybourne, the woman in the photograph. A scientist who dedicated her career to meticulous and almost invisible, yet crucial, work. A career that marked a turning point in ornithological research and has had a direct impact on air safety worldwide.

It all began with a tragedy. On October 4, 1960, Easter Air Lines Flight 375 crashed shortly after taking off from Boston's Logan Airport. The plane struck a very dense flock of starlings, and several engines failed. The aircraft crashed into Winthrop Bay, the town's natural harbor. Sixty-two of the seventy-two passengers died in the accident. This catastrophe forced civil aviation to ask new questions about flight safety, beyond simply accepting the random cause of bird strikes. For many decades, the answers were found by Roxie Laybourne, a pioneer of forensic ornithology and the identification of birds from feather fragments. The air force requested her assistance, and her work became indispensable. She was dubbed the "feather lady"The Lady of Feathers. This researcher and naturalist became, throughout her life, a consultant for the U.S. Army, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Transportation Board. Thanks to her methods and research, airplane engines were redesigned, and systems were implemented at airports to prevent bird strikes. She averted disasters and preserved wildlife from being swallowed by relentless machinery. Fragments of feathers and birds were no longer mere waste, but evidence of complex research. A 22-year-old graduate in mathematics and science, her biography states that she was the only girl who wore jeans in class and that she skipped class to watch aviator Amelia Earhart land at the local airfield. She longed to learn to fly, a dream unfulfilled by many women. She began working as a taxidermist at the North Carolina State Museum of Natural History and from there moved to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The scrutiny she faced from her male colleagues forced her to raise her professional standards to avoid being overwhelmed. Laybourne not only meticulously cataloged the world of birds, but also investigated accidents of all kinds, recovered and saved endangered species, carried out invaluable educational work, and continued her training in various scientific disciplines to broaden her scope of work. It seems that science must advance only through major discoveries, but this feather lady is proof that progress can be built from insignificant fragments attached to an engine. Knowing a little about her history and professional scope, the photograph of Roxie Laybourne amidst crates full of dead birds acquires an unexpected poetry. The ability to soar also depends on the talent to recognize that what seems irrelevant can also be knowledge.