Beck married his wife and lifelong companion, Ida Menzies of Berryessa, in 1907 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He went to work for Joseph Grinnell, the Director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, in the spring of 1908, and collected waterbirds for Grinnell's studies of California birds. Before long, Beck was offered even more money by Dr. Leonard C. Sanford, of New Haven, Connecticut, to collect birds in Alaska for the well-known ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent, who was collecting for his studies of “The Life Histories of North American Birds.” He did much of the field work with the young Alexander Wetmore, who had recently graduated from college.