Oology, , is a branch of ornithology studying bird eggs, nests and breeding behaviour. The word is derived from the Greek oion, meaning egg. Oology can also refer to the hobby of collecting wild birds' eggs, sometimes called egg collecting, birdnesting or egging, which is now illegal in many jurisdictions.
John Courtney Fortune was an English actor, writer and satirist, best known for his work with John Bird and Rory Bremner on the television series Bremner, Bird and Fortune.
Ernest Augustus was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death in 1851. As the fifth son of George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover, he initially seemed unlikely to become a monarch, but none of his elder brothers had a legitimate son. When his elder brother William IV, who ruled both kingdoms, died in 1837, his niece Victoria inherited the British throne under British succession law, while Ernest succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which barred women from the succession, thus ending the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714.
Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano was a French naturalist and ornithologist. Lucien and his wife had twelve children, including Cardinal Lucien Bonaparte.
The common linnet is a small passerine bird of the finch family, Fringillidae. It derives its common name and the scientific name, Linaria, from its fondness for hemp seeds and flax seeds—flax being the English name of the plant from which linen is made.
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is an organisation founded in 1932 for the study of birds in the British Isles. The Prince of Wales has been patron since October 2020.
John Gould was an English ornithologist who published monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter, Joseph Wolf and William Matthew Hart. He has been considered the father of bird study in Australia and the Gould League in Australia is named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Gould's work is referenced in Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species.
The British Ornithologists' Union (BOU) aims to encourage the study of birds (ornithology) around the world in order to understand their biology and aid their conservation. The BOU was founded in 1858 by Professor Alfred Newton, Henry Baker Tristram and other scientists. Its quarterly journal, Ibis, has been published continuously since 1859.
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was presented with the Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Rothschild was the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926.
Robert Swinhoe FRS was an English diplomat and naturalist who worked as a Consul in Taiwan. He catalogued many Southeast Asian birds, and several, such as Swinhoe's pheasant, are named after him.
Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet of Applegarth FRS FRSE FLS FSA was a Scottish naturalist. He is known for his editing of a long series of natural history books, The Naturalist's Library.
Richard Bowdler Sharpe was an English zoologist and ornithologist who worked as curator of the bird collection at the British Museum of natural history. In the course of his career he published several monographs on bird groups and produced a multi-volume catalogue of the specimens in the collection of the museum. He described many new species of bird and also has had species named in his honour by other ornithologists including Sharpe's longclaw and Sharpe's starling.
Austin Roberts was a South African zoologist. He is best known for his Birds of South Africa, first published in 1940. He also studied the mammalian fauna of the region: his work The mammals of South Africa was published posthumously in 1951. The 7th edition of Roberts' Birds of Southern Africa which appeared in 2005, is the standard work on the region's birds.
Johannes Gerardus Keulemans was a Dutch bird illustrator. For most of his life he lived and worked in England, illustrating many of the best-known ornithology books of the nineteenth century.
Nicholas Aylward Vigors was an Irish zoologist and politician. He popularized the classification of birds on the basis of the quinarian system.
The Fauna of British India with long titles including The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma, and The Fauna of British India Including the Remainder of the Oriental Region is a series of scientific books that was published by the British government in India and printed by Taylor and Francis of London. The series was started sometime in 1881 after a letter had been sent to the Secretary of State for India signed by Charles Darwin, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and other "eminent men of science" forwarded by P.L.Sclater to R.H. Hobart. W. T. Blanford was appointed editor and began work on the volume on mammals.
Colonel Charles Swinhoe was an English naturalist and lepidopterist, who served in the British Army in India. He was one of the eight founders of the Bombay Natural History Society and a brother of the famous naturalist Robert Swinhoe.
Keith E. Vinicombe is a British ornithologist and writer on bird identification.
The Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. The series was edited by Josep del Hoyo, Andrew Elliott, Jordi Sargatal and David A. Christie.
William Chapman Hewitson was a British naturalist. A wealthy collector, Hewitson was particularly devoted to Coleoptera (beetles) and Lepidoptera and, also, to birds' nests and eggs. His collection of butterflies, collected by him as well as purchased from travellers throughout the world, was one of the largest and most important of his time. He contributed to and published many works on entomology and ornithology and was an accomplished scientific illustrator.
