Robert Stroud, or the Birdman of Alcatraz, was an American convicted murderer and self-taught ornithologist. Stroud committed his first murder when he shot dead a bartender who beat up his mistress in January 1909. Sentenced to 12 years at the McNeil Island federal prison, Stroud became known for his anger issues and was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. After killing a guard in 1916, he was sentenced to be hanged till death. Responding to his mother’s pleas, President Woodrow Wilson commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, but he was kept in solitary confinement. For the next three decades, Stroud conducted a detailed study on canaries and other birds, raising over 300 birds. He published two books, one of them being Stroud’s Digest on the Diseases of Birds, a valuable resource on the subject. Transferred to Alcatraz later, he was prohibited from maintaining his birds and eventually died in the prison hospital. The 1962 movie Birdman of Alcatraz narrated his tale.
