Margaret Morse Nice (December 6, 1883 – June 26, 1974) was an American ornithologist, ethologist, and child psychologist who made an extensive study of the life history of the song sparrow and was author of Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow (1937).

She observed and recorded hierarchies in chicken about three decades ahead of Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe who coined the term "pecking order".

After her marriage, she made observations on language learning in her children and wrote numerous research papers.

[1] The daughter of Anson D. Morse, professor of history at Amherst College, and Margaret Duncan (Ely), she was the fourth child with two older brothers, Ely and William; an elder sister Sarah; a younger sister, Katherine; and two younger brothers, Harold and Edward.

[5] At Clark University, Margaret met Leonard Blaine Nice (referred to by his middle name) and they married in 1908.

At an AOU meeting in 1927, she was greeted as "Mrs Mourning Dove Nice" by Florence Merriam Bailey.

[7] Here she carried out a study of song sparrows that established her as one of the leading ornithologists in the world, recording the behavior of individual birds over a long period of time.

Beginning in 1929, she spent eight years studying these birds and focused on interactions, breeding, territoriality, learning, instinct and song.

[15]: 172 Margaret Morse Nice died in Chicago on June 26, 1974, from arteriosclerosis, two months after the death of her husband.

Nice worked on the life-histories of birds at a time when most of the focus was on collection, description and geographic listing.

[3] Nice was made an honorary member of the British, Finnish, German, Dutch, and Swiss ornithological societies.

Dean Richard Bond of Elmira College said about her: She used the outdoors near her home as her laboratory and common species of birds as her subject.

In so doing, she joined the ranks of the eminent ornithologists of all time, who saw so much in what appeared common to so manyOrnithologist Robert Dickerman named a Mexican subspecies of song sparrow (Melospiza melodia niceae) after her.