Charles Foster Batchelder (July 20, 1856 – November 7, 1954) was an American ornithologist and naturalist. He was an early member and President of the American Ornithologists' Union, and of the Nuttall Ornithological Club. He also edited The Auk, and before it, the Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club. Biography Batchelder was born to Francis Lowell Batchelder and Susan Cabot Foster-Batchelder, and grew up next to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a youngster, he developed a friendship with a number of future figures in ornithology, such as William Brewster, Henry Wetherbee Henshaw, Henry Augustus Purdie, Charles Johnson Maynard and William Earl Dodge Scott. Batchelder hardly knew his father, who had died when he was 18 months old. His sister also died at about the time he entered Harvard, having completed his studies at the local public high school. In university, he came in contact with several leading thinkers, and had a particular admiration for Nathaniel S. Shaler and Henry L. Eustis. He graduated in 1882 with a degree in engineering science. During that time, the group of nature-inclined youth led by Brewster met at the latter's home, and these meetings would eventually evolve into the Nuttall Ornithological Club (officially in 1873), of which Batchelder became a member in 1877. Two years later he was elected vice-president before later becoming treasurer, a position he would keep for half a century. After his graduation, he traveled and collected extensively in the Southwestern United States. He pursued a brief career in his original vocation upon his return in 1884, which only served to shake his frail health, a situation that was not helped by his subsequent travel to Europe, which lasted until 1887. His health would only be restored a few months before his return. Stuck in his oversea quarters, he worked on developing better labels and checklists. He married Laura Poor Stone in February 1895. Of their four sons, only two survived to adulthood: Laurence and Charles Foster Jr. The family moved twice before settling at Peterborough, New Hampshire, on a farm with dilapidated lands that Batchelder used to make horticultural experiments, commenting: "there is no danger of my undertakings reaching such complete fruition that I shall be left with idle hands at the end." In the latter part of his life, the couple was renowned for their hospitality. Batchelder himself had a great capacity to analyze his fellow humans, and