Paul Slud

Paul Slud (31 March 1918, New York City – 20 February 2006, Catlett, Virginia) was an American ornithologist and tropical ecologist, known for his 1960 monograph The Birds of Finca "La Selva," Costa Rica and his 1964 book The Birds of Costa Rica: Distribution and Ecology.

Slud graduated with a bachelor's degree in geography from the City College of New York and then in 1948 took an ornithology course from Arthur A. Allen at Cornell University. Slud became a graduate student in zoology at the University of Michigan, His dissertation The Birds of Finca "La Selva," Costa Rica was published in 1960 by the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. which he used for his research on the birds of Cocos Island

From 1964 until his retirement in 1983, Paul Slud was an associate curator in the bird division of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. He was an expert on bird vocalizations.

The American Ornithologists' Union elected him a member in 1962.

Slud married Barbara Finkenthal in 1964 in Manhattan. Upon his death he was survived by his widow, two children, and four grandchildren.