A History of Ornithology
What did we know about birds a thousand years ago, and how has our understanding developed? ‘A History of Ornithology’ offers a complete history of birdwatching in Britain, a classic for every nature lover's bookshelf.Today there is a huge interest in birdwatching as a hobby, and over the years amateur birdwatchers have contributed enormously to our understanding of the birds around us. At the same time, ornithology has developed as a science – in the field, in the laboratory, and in the universities – and birds have played their part in pushing forward the frontiers of biological knowledge.Peter Bircham looks at the history of British ornithology, spanning a millennium and exploring along the way the first bird book, the earliest British lists, various notable scientists, collectors and artists, the first studies of migration, and the challenges presented by classification. He traces the development of the British Ornithologists' Union and other organisations, and finishes with a review of the current state of ornithology in Britain.‘A History of Ornithology’ is an authoritative and engrossing account, packed full of fascinating stories – not only about the birds but also about the many colourful characters who have studied them through the ages. This beautifully illustrated book will hold great appeal both for the student of ornithology and for the enthusiastic amateur naturalist.
Читать A History of Ornithology онлайн беплатно
SARAH A. CORBET, ScD
PROF. RICHARD WEST, ScD, FRS, FGS DAVID STREETER, MBE, FIBIOL JIM FLEGG, OBE, FIHORT PROF. JONATHAN SILVERTOWN *
The aim of this series is to interest the general reader in the wildlife of Britain by recapturing the enquiring spirit of the old naturalists. The editors believe that the natural pride of the British public in the native flora and fauna, to which must be added concern for their conservation, is best fostered by maintaining a high standard of accuracy combined with clarity of exposition in presenting the results of modern scientific research.
Contents
Authorâs Foreword and Acknowledgements
1. Up to the Sixteenth Century
2. The First Bird Book
3. The First British List
4. The Willughby/Ray Ornithology and Other Seventeenth-Century Works
5. The Systema naturae: Dawn of a New Age
6. The First Ornithological Ecologists: White, Jenner and Blackwall
7. Early studies of migration: Legg, Jenner and others
8. A Dictionary and Two Histories
9. The Artists and Their Avifaunas
10. Alfred Newton and the Founding of the British Ornithologistsâ Union
11. Theories of Classification, the National Collection and the Catalogue of Birds
12. The Twentieth Century: Winds of Change
13. Recording the Avifauna of Britain
14. Migration: the Scientific Studies Begin
15. Plumage, Cages, Eggs and Shooting: the History of Bird Protection
16. Behavioural and Ecological Studies
17. After the War
18. Post-War Ornithological Research
19. The British List and Problems with Fraud
20. New Slants on Old Problems
Appendix: The British List
THE VOLUMES OF the New Naturalist library have generally examined particular places, habitats, or groups of species. The naturalists themselves have of course had walk-on parts, but very few of the 103 previous titles have taken as their main theme the people who have studied the wildlife, or the story of how our knowledge of the subject has developed. This addition to the series is different. It sets out to survey the history of ornithology in Britain spanning a millennium, to assess the worth of its components and their place in the grand scheme of things, and then to present the outcome with appropriate balance and in a palatable manner. This is indeed a mammoth task, but it is one that Peter Bircham has accomplished most successfully, producing a cover-to-cover read of continuing interest and fascination from what might be deemed to be the driest of base materials. He has also accomplished the task with style, his enthusiasm for both the underlying researches and the compilation of the text shining through each chapter.
With a background in continuing education, and based in Cambridge, Peter Bircham is well placed to handle the necessarily extensive sifting of both the archival and present-day researches and researchers, and to present the product to great effect. Inevitably, detail from the Middle Ages is scanty, but from the sixteenth century onwards the quantity of material to be sifted grows rapidly. Not only was there more interest in the natural environment and its inhabitants, but much more information was placed on record in one way or another. Then, as now, there were disputes over vernacular names and over taxonomy, with cyclic prevalences of splitters and lumpers, although at a rather more basic level than today. Many readers will be astonished at how little the concerns of the ornithologists have changed, and at how recently some of todayâs everyday birds were separated one from another.
Through time, the gradual attitudinal shift from hunting and collecting towards conservation is revealed, although sadly this transition has not yet been fully accomplished. Revealed too is the gradual, but now rapidly accelerating, shift from âwhatâs hit is history, whatâs missed is mysteryâ of the stuffed specimen to the technology of field identification of the live bird in the wild, brought about by a combination of observer skills and optical developments which allow feather-by-feather analysis. This, as the reader will discover, is not without intrigue, even dishonesty, along the way.
The pen-pictures of the ornithologists themselves show a gradual progression, from a handful of enthusiasts and scholars in the earliest days, to the mainly wealthy amateurs with ample time for field observation of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, then on to not much more than a handful of university academics before the post-1950 burgeoning of both the pursuit of birdwatching and the science of ornithology. The status of the amateur birdwatcher has been raised, first from crank to harmless eccentric, then to an interesting component of the social community, and finally to a respected contributor to a rapidly accumulating amateur/professional science base. The more extreme exertions of todayâs twitchers, seeking rarities often in far-flung places, may be viewed by some as a return to the eccentricity of old, but none can deny the field skills of those seeking and identifying these vagrants to our shores. And the science of ornithology has grown alongside the skills of the observers, so that by the start of the twenty-first century the study of birds has developed to the point where it can play a key role in fundamental biological investigation.
