Charles Andrew Allen born August 21, 1841, in Milton, Massachusetts, after whom the Allen’s Hummingbird is named, was a Massachusetts amateur birder who worked as a carpenter and lumber mill worker.
He became a lifelong bird lover after being inspired by Boston-based ornithologist and taxidermist, James Gately (1810–1875). When Charles was 11, he was walking in Cape Cod with Gately when he presented a bird to him and asked what it was. Gately identified it as a Cory Shearwater and then took Charles to his cabin and proceeded to show him how to stuff the bird. James Gately went on to tutor him in the ways of taxidermy and bird lore.
Charles served in the Union army during the early years of the Civil War. He worked for eight years in the Baker Chocolate Mills and collected and mounted specimens in his spare time. He married in 1870. After the Mills he worked on and off in the planning mill of a furniture factory but in 1873 moved to California for his health due to sawdust inhalation.
He lived as a caretaker and handyman/carpenter in a small cabin in Nicasio, Marin County, where he studied birds and other wildlife. He collected various specimens and sent them to ornithologists on the east coast for their own collections. It is here where his three children were born.
In 1877 Charles noticed a slight difference between the tail of the Rufous Hummingbird and a similar hummingbird sample he’d collected. He suggested to the renowned Bostonian ornithologist William Brewster that it may be a sub-species. Brewster passed the specimen to Henry Wetherbee Henshaw, a prominent naturalist in Washington D.C. who later became head of the U.S Biological Survey. Henshaw agreed and named one of the species after Allen, the other being the Rufous. The difference between them is minor, Allen’s Hummingbird has a green back and narrow tail feathers, a Rufous Hummingbird has a copper back with wider tail feathers.
In the 1880’s he bought a small house near San Geronimo Station and it’s here where he passed on June 19, 1930. Charles cremains were put in the Sunset Mausoleum in Berkeley.
Retrieved: https://chavezpark.org/different-hummer/ , 1931 The Condor, article by Joseph Mailliard
There is one Allen’s Hummingbird egg set in the Pember Collection but there is no data sheet or any information on it. It’s displayed in the eggs & nest exhibit. So, this set is extremely exciting because it was collected by Allen and there is data that with it.
1931 The Condor article on Charles Andrew Allen by Joseph Mailliard