| Elizabeth L Kerr | |
| Birth Place: | United States of America |
| Nationality: | American |
| Fields: | Ornithology |
| Known For: | Colombian bird surveys |
Elizabeth L Kerr was an American ornithologist, who collected hundreds of birds for the American Museum of Natural History bird surveys in Colombia, in the first decades of 20th-century.
Frank Chapman, the organiser of the early 20th-century surveys and the museums curator of birds, used the Mrs. Kerr Collection to help with the distribution of Columbian birds. He relegated Kerr's contribution to a footnote in his The Distribution of Bird-Life in Colombia. A Contribution to a Biological Survey of South America.[1] In 1915 he named the Choco tinamou, Crypturellus kerriae (Chapman, 1915) after her. [2]
A group of female ornithologists surveying Colombian birds, consider Kerr an inspiration for 21st-century female ornithologists. Of the ninety species found by the 2020 expedition, twenty-six species were documented by Kerr. [3]