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When only 17 months old, Melbourne R. Carriker of Lewes, professor emeritus of marine studies at the University of Delaware, embarked on his first ornithological expedition in Colombia. Carriker made that first journey with his father, naturalist Meb Carriker, who collected birds for museums in the United States, and his mother, Carme, an expert bird skinner and her husband’s partner. 
The trip lasted seven months, with the family and the few others who accompanied them, traveling first by train, then by boat and then by mule, eventually ending up high in the Andes, camping in the freezing cold, near the snow line.
Carriker’s book, “Vista Nieve,” meaning “vista of snow,” is named after his parents’ coffee and sugar cane plantation. The book is about his father and mother, his growing up years in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia and his unusual extended family who lived in the area.
“This book is more than a memoir,” Carriker said. “It is a sociological study of the life and history of a family. Writing this book had been on my mind for several years. The story of early ornithologists and naturalists, like my father and his colleagues, and of settlers, like my grandparents, was one only I could tell.
“A trip to Colombia, where little remains of their heritage because of the incursion of the drug world, made me resolved to get on with the book,” Carriker said.
The book begins with his maternal grandparents, Orlando and Eva Flye, pioneers who carved a 4,780-acre coffee plantation, Hacienda Cincinnati, out of the Colombian mountains in the late 19th century after several discouraging and unsuccessful tries. An electrical engineer from Maine, Orlando was hired to bring electricity to the port city of Santa Marta and stayed to become a coffee planter. Eva, originally from Ohio, was his partner and ally who helped smooth the way for her husband’s enterprises. The mother of seven children, she was the nurse and general factotum to all the plantation workers.
Their first house had mud walls, no ceiling, holes for windows and curtains for doors and a palm-thatched roof, which was “host to rats, lizards, centipedes,” Carriker wrote. The plantation was accessible only by mule train from Santa Marta, 21 miles away over steep mountainous terrain.
Carriker’s own parents were strong individuals as well. His father, Meb Carriker, whose field was ornithology and entomology, collected South American birds for museums in the United States and also collected specimens and categorized tropical birds’ lice. From 1902-1962, he collected some 80,000 birds, as well as some mammals. On one of his expeditions, he came to Santa Marta and met Carme Flye, Orlando and Eva’s oldest daughter, and they were married.
The Carrikers combined ornithology with tropical farming and established their plantation, Vista Nieve.
Carriker wrote about growing up there for his first 12 years with his brothers and sisters, and with his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who lived in the area. Then, his parents decided to move to the United States where Meb hoped for a museum position and where the children could be educated in the public schools.
 “It was a difficult decision for them to make,” Carriker recalled. “I experienced culture shock. For one thing, I was not used to a cold climate and not used to U.S. public schools. But, in a few months I adjusted, and in retrospect it was the right decision.”
After high school he had one of the most memorable times of his life on an ornithology expedition to Bolivia for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, accompanying his father as a shooter and a skinner. “For me the Bolivian expedition was an enviable, exhilarating experience open to very few budding biologists,” Carriker wrote.
“That experience taught me firsthand what my father encountered on his earlier expeditions which I have written about,” Carriker pointed out.
The experience encouraged Carriker in his desire to be an ornithologist, but his future lay elsewhere. While Carriker was a student at Rutgers University, his professor suggested he apply for a fellowship in invertebrate biology at the University of Wisconsin. “He said to me, ‘Protoplasm is protoplasm wherever you find it.’ I took his advice and applied at Wisconsin and have found my career in marine biology, conducting research on bivalves and gastropods--a fascinating field,” Carriker said.
The last part of the book tells what happened to all of the family members and to their plantations, which, because of the drug culture in the area, have become overgrown ruins, suffering from neglect.
“I still have a cousin in Colombia who owns a part of the original Flye plantation where she grows mangoes. She has to keep guards there all the time and does not feel safe living in the house. It is sad what has become of Hacienda Cincinnati and the other family plantations and homes,” Carriker said.
Carriker, who retired from UD in 1985, is now involved in writing the history of the National Shellfisheries Assn., an organization founded in 1909, which brings together scientists and shellfishermen. Carriker served as president of the organization and also as president of the Institute of Malacology, the American Malacological Society, the Atlantic Estuarine Research Society and the Delaware-Panama Partners of the Americas.
Article by Sue Moncure
April 10, 2002
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