Rollo Howard Beck was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 ornithologist

Ornithology

Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...

, bird collector and explorer. Beck's Petrel

Beck's Petrel

Beck’s Petrel, Pseudobulweria becki, is a small, recently rediscovered shearwater. It is dark brown above and on the head and throat. It is dark underneath the wings with a fairly distinct white wingbar. The belly and breast are white...

 is named after him.
Rollo Howard Beck was born in Los Gatos, California

Los Gatos, California

The Town of Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 29,413 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area at the southwest corner of San Jose in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains...

, and grew up in Berryessa

Berryessa, San Jose, California

The Berryessa District or North Valley in San Jose, California is located in the northeast portion of the city, between Coyote Creek and the Diablo Range foothills. The neighborhood borders Milpitas along Landess Avenue to the north and the Alum Rock neighborhood of East San Jose along Mabury Road...

 working on apricot and prune orchards. He completed only 8th grade education, but took an early interest in natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

, trapping gopher

Gopher (animal)

The term gopher as it is commonly used does not relate to any one species, but is a generic term used to describe any of several small burrowing rodents endemic to North America, including the pocket gopher , also called true gophers, and the ground squirrel , including Richardson's ground squirrel...

s after school on neighborhood farms. One of his neighbors, Frank H. Holmes, was a good friend of the ornithologist Theodore Sherman Palmer

Theodore Sherman Palmer

Theodore Sherman Palmer was an American zoologist.Palmer was born in Oakland, California and studied at the University of California. In 1889 he joined the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy of the United States Department of Agriculture under Clinton Hart Merriam. In 1891 he led an...

. Palmer also introduced Beck to Charles Augustus Keeler, who studied birdlife of the San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

 area, and Beck learned about upland birds hunting quail with Holmes.