Background
He was the son of Chicago banker Melvin Alvah Traylor and Mistress Dorothy Y. Traylor.
He was the son of Chicago banker Melvin Alvah Traylor and Mistress Dorothy Y. Traylor.
As a Marine Corporation officer, Mel was severely injured during the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific theatre, where he lost one eye and suffered arm and upper body wounds during the famous beach assault. After the war Traylor continued his work for the Field Museum which he had started in 1937. He made expeditions to Africa (in collaboration with Austin L Rand), to South America, and to Asia.
In 1956 Traylor became assistant curator of birds in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
Since his retirement in the 1980s he was working as curator emeritus for the Field Museum. Traylor was among the authors (alongside Raymond A Paynter, Ernst Mayr, G William Cottrell, and James Lee Peters) of Check-list of Birds of the World, a standard reference work with sixteen volumes published between 1931 and 1987.
Traylor described species like the Tana River cisticola and the Colombian screech-owl, and the genus Zimmerius. He made further revisions of the family Tyrannidae.
The orange-eyed flycatcher (T traylori) is named in his honour.
Traylor and Paynter were awarded with the Elliott Coues Award by the American Ornithologists" Union in 2001.
In 1960 he was among the members of the World Book Encyclopedia Scientific Expedition to the Himalaya led by Sir Edmund Hillary.