Rollo Howard Beck (26 August 1870 – 22 November 1950) was an American ornithologist, bird collector for museums, and explorer. Beck's petrel and three taxa of reptiles are named after him, including a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise, Chelonoidis nigra becki from Volcán Wolf. A recent paper by Fellers examines all the known taxa named for Beck. Beck was recognized for his extraordinary ability as a field worker by Robert Cushman Murphy as being "in a class by himself," and by University of California at Berkeley professor of zoology Frank Pitelka as "the field worker" of his generation. Early years Rollo Howard Beck was born in Los Gatos, California, and grew up in Berryessa working on apricot and prune orchards. He completed only an 8th grade education, but took an early interest in natural history, trapping gophers after school on neighborhood farms. One of his neighbors, Frank H. Holmes, was a good friend of the ornithologist Theodore Sherman Palmer. Palmer also introduced Beck to Charles Keeler, who studied birdlife of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Beck learned about upland birds hunting quail with Holmes. Beck's interest and knowledge of birds grew, and he soon learned how to make ornithological specimens and mount birds for museum collections. He joined the American Ornithologists' Union in 1894, and was among the first members of the newly formed Cooper Ornithological Society which formed in San Jose, California. He participated in early ornithological expeditions to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe with Holmes and Wilfred Hudson Osgood, and collected and helped describe the first eggs and nests of the western evening grosbeak and hermit warbler. Expeditions Channel Islands of California In the spring of 1897, Beck headed south to Santa Barbara, California, where he learned to sail a moderate-sized schooner under captain Sam Burtis. He visited the Channel Islands of California, including Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel islands collecting and documenting birds as well as nests and eggs. Beck was the first to collect and document the differences of the island scrub-jays that live on the Channel Islands, now recognized as distinct from mainland forms. Galápagos Islands, Ecuador Later in 1897, while on his way back to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Beck was invited to join an ornithological expedition to the Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, organized by Frank Blake Webster and funded by Lionel Walter Rothschild, of Tring,