THE FEATHER DETECTIVE

An avian expert reaches new heights.

Armed with a microscope and a talent for identifying bird species by scrutinizing small bits of feathers, Sweeney’s subject, a taxidermist and ornithologist, forged an extraordinary niche in labs and courtrooms. In 1960, Roxie Laybourne was working at the Smithsonian when she was asked to inspect bird remains pulled from an engine of a plane that had crashed into Boston Harbor, killing more than 60 people. Bird strikes had been a problem since the Wright brothers’ days, and species identifications were crucial for reducing them. Laybourne determined that the Boston flight “ingested a flock of European Starlings,” Sweeney writes. It was among numerous such assignments for Laybourne, who while dealing with workplace sexism and, per Sweeney, a “deadbeat” first husband, devoted countless hours to her office’s incoming mail—packages containing bird “fat, blood, tissue, and fragments of feather.” The FBI and other investigators also turned to Laybourne, asking her to identify—and sometimes testify in court about—feathers found at crime scenes and during poaching investigations. One year, “she analyzed evidence from forty-five different criminal cases.” Sweeney is a talented prose stylist who devotes overabundant space to the granular details of moderately interesting subplots. In one, about Laybourne’s grooming of “potential successors,” he notes the favorite soda brands of two Laybourne mentees and recounts a work trip during which his subject and a protégé encountered a long buffet line and ate an expensive slice of cake. Yet this otherwise interesting portrait of an unsung pioneer successfully supports its claims about the importance of her contributions. Laybourne’s findings not only helped prod the Federal Aviation Administration to update commercial plane engineering requirements; according to a U.S. military officer, they also helped prevent fighter pilot deaths.

A scientific trailblazer takes flight in this solid biography.