The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now part of BirdLife Australia, was Australia's largest non-government, non-profit, bird conservation organisation. It was founded in 1901 to promote the study and conservation of the native bird species of Australia and adjacent regions, making it Australia's oldest national birding association. In 1996, the organisation adopted the trading name of Birds Australia for most public purposes, while retaining its original name for legal purposes and as the publisher of its journal, the Emu. In 2012, the RAOU merged with Bird Observation & Conservation Australia to form BirdLife Australia.
Dominic Louis Serventy was a Perth -based Western Australian ornithologist. He was president of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) 1947–1949. He assisted with the initial organisation of the British Museum's series of Harold Hall Australian ornithological collecting expeditions during the 1960s, also participating in the third (1965) expedition.
Lesley Brooker is an Australian ornithologist based in Western Australia following retirement from a career with the CSIRO's Division of Wildlife Research. There she worked, as a database manager and computer modeller, on developing methodologies for the re-design and restoration of agricultural lands for bird conservation. Since then, she has collaborated with her husband Michael Brooker in studies on cuckoo evolution, population ecology of fairy-wrens and spatial dynamics of birds in fragmented landscapes.
Stephen Marchant, AM was born in Staffordshire, studied geology at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and worked in the oil exploration business in many countries, using the opportunities arising from his postings to study birdlife around the world. He wrote classic papers on the birds of the Red Sea, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Indonesia, Borneo, Ecuador and Iraq. In 1963 he migrated to Australia where he joined the Bureau of Mineral Resources in Canberra.
Alexander Hugh Chisholm OBE FRZS also known as Alec Chisholm, was a noted Australian naturalist, journalist, newspaper editor, author and ornithologist. He was a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), President of the RAOU 1939–1940, and editor of its journal the Emu from 1926 to 1928. In 1941 he was elected a Fellow of the RAOU in 1941 and the previous year he had been the first recipient of the Australian Natural History Medallion for his work in ornithology and popularising natural history. Chisholm was a prolific and popular writer of articles and books, mainly on birds and nature but also on history, literature and biography.
John Casimir Zichy Woinarski is an Australian ornithologist, mammalogist, and herpetologist. He was awarded the 2001 Eureka Prize for Biodiversity Research. In the same year he was the recipient of the D. L. Serventy Medal, awarded by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region.
Ian Cecil Robert Rowley was an Australian ornithologist of Scottish origin. He was born in Edinburgh and educated at Wellington College and Cambridge University. Following service in the Royal Navy during the second world war, he moved to Australia in 1949 and graduated in Agricultural Science from the University of Melbourne under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme.
Penelope Diane Olsen is an Australian ornithologist and author.
Herbert Thomas Condon was an Australian museum curator and ornithologist. He was born in Melbourne and attended the University of Adelaide. In 1929, Condon joined the scientific staff of the South Australian Museum; he was promoted to Assistant in Zoology in 1935, and became Curator of Birds and Reptiles in 1938. He kept this position for the decades through to 1976, broken only by a period of war service with the RAAF.
Stephen John James Frank Davies was an Australian administrator and ornithologist. He worked for the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research in Western Australia (1964–1984). He carried out research on emus and magpie geese. He was a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), President (1975-1978) and Chairman of the RAOU Research Committee (1975–1984). He was elected a Fellow of the RAOU in 1984. From 1984 to 1988 he also served the RAOU as its first paid Director.
Brian Douglas Bell was a New Zealand environmental consultant and ornithologist.
John Warham was an Australian and New Zealand photographer and ornithologist notable for his research on seabirds, especially petrels.
Margaret Alison Cameron AM, FRAOU was a noted Australian librarian, administrator, and amateur ornithologist. She was the foundation librarian of Deakin University between 1977 and 1996, and pro vice-chancellor of the University from 1986 to 1990. She joined the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) in 1969 which she served as President from 1986 to 1989.
Professor Jiro Kikkawa was a Japanese Australian ornithologist. His early zoological studies were at Tokyo University, Japan and at Oxford University in England. He subsequently spent three years at the University of Otago in New Zealand where he began what was to become an enduring focus of research, the behavioural ecology of Silvereyes and other species of Zosterops.
Dr Hugh Alastair Ford is an Australian ornithologist.
Richard Alexis Zann was an Australian ornithologist.
Warren Billingsley Hitchcock was an Australian field biologist and ornithologist. He was born at Ashfield, New South Wales and educated in Adelaide, South Australia. During the Second World War he served in the CMF and AIF in the Northern Territory of Australia as well as in New Guinea and New Britain.
The mallee emu-wren is a species of bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It is endemic to Australia.
John Leonard McKean was an Australian ornithologist. He published around 100 scientific papers on birds and bats. He was a bird and bat bander and major contributor to the Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme.
Leslie Christidis, also simply known as Les Christidis, is an Australian ornithologist. His main research field is the evolution and systematics of birds. He has been director of Southern Cross University National Marine Science Centre since 2009. He was assistant director at Sydney's Australian Museum from 2004 to 2009.
