Though Matt Cormons was a Linnaean Society member for nearly 50 years, many current members did not have the pleasure of knowing him, since he left the New York metropolitan area in 1985. He joined the Society in 1973—coincidentally, the same year I joined, and we got to know each other through our involvement in the Great Gull Island project.
Matt was a native New Yorker, born in the City on March 30, 1941. After graduating from the City College of New York in 1963 with a degree in biology, he worked for five years at the American Museum of Natural History as a teacher and lecturer, and, later, as a scientific illustrator. In that last capacity, he accompanied Dr. Pedro Wygodzinsky to Venezuela to study black flies, two new species of which were named for him (Simulium cormonsi and Gigantodax cormonsi). He received a master’s degree in animal behavior from the University of Wisconsin in 1972.
From 1974 to 1983, Matt served as director of the Tenafly Nature Center in New Jersey. It was during those years that I first got to know him. He personified the spirit of the Linnaean Society, being interested in all aspects of the natural world, with a special focus on birds. He was a licensed bird bander and expert bird carver. His wife, Grace Donaldson Cormons, was also a bird bander and led the Roseate Tern work on Great Gull Island for many years. Together they imbued their two sons, Tom and Peter, with their love of birds and nature.
In 1985 the family moved to a 43-acre working farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. There, Grace established an innovative, nature-based family learning program: SPARK (Shore People Advancing Readiness for Knowledge); she and Matt ran the program along with the farm for many years. Besides leading nature field trips, Matt contributed material and photographs to SPARK’s nature books for young people and wrote the young peoples’ guide, “Wildflowers of the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge.” Whenever possible, he continued his involvement with the Great Gull Island project. His trips to the Azores to band Roseate Terns are featured in the recent award-winning film about the project, “Full Circle.”
Matt passed away on his farm on December 16, 2022, after a long fight with cancer. In recent years, his illness curtailed much of his active field work, but he continued to work on his writing. The Entomological Society of Washington recently published a paper on digger wasps based on his master’s thesis, and a longer one on homing behavior has been submitted to another journal.
Grace says that “sharing his love of nature with his five enthusiastic grandchildren was probably his greatest joy.”
—Joseph DiCostanzo