Series 7 - Research

1.28 m of textual records

The files in this series cover Professor Falls’ research activities from the completion of his doctoral thesis forward. The series begins with a list of research projects and files of correspondence, grant applications and research expenses covering the years from the early 1950s to1999, followed by files on fisheries research that predate Falls’ attending university.

Professor Falls’ research began in 1948 with his study of deer mice; this introduction to the study of small mammals, birds and snakes that was to occupy him for the ensuing half-century. For the first forty years the subject of most of his grant applications was broadly titled “behaviour and population of terrestrial vertebrates”.

After the grant applications and fisheries files are a files dating from the late 1940s on the live trapping of mice, including microtus (meadow mice). There are also annual activity experiments and research files, arranged chronologically from 1955 to 1972. Together, these files contain correspondence, research notes, grant applications and research reports. Included is a study on activities and habitat use in a beaver colony. Subsequent research files on small mammals centre on work done at the Wildlife Research Station in Algonquin Park. They encompass the years 1975 to 1994. From the early 1980s, the focus of the research in the files begins to shift to the white-throated sparrow, which Professor Falls had been studying since the 1950s.

The last portion of the series contains files relating largely to Professor Falls’ research on birds. Included is research carried out while he was on sabbatical leave, first in Australia in 1964 where he studied the Australian magpie, and again in 1973 at the University of British Columbia where he studied the blue grouse. The files document ongoing research on birds, beginning with the oven bird in the mid-1950s, then the eastern meadowlark, the western meadowlark in conjunction with John Krebs and Peter McGregor of Oxford University and the white-throated sparrow. Included is analysis of bird song done using the Cray computer at the University of Toronto. The emphasis in these studies was on bird song and territory. A survey of bird populations in Metropolitan Toronto was also carried out in 1974-1975.

These files contain correspondence, research notes, sonagrams, computer files, and research reports. Most of the computer files are found in box 033.

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