All posts tagged with birds

William Brewster (1851-1919) was a renowned American amateur ornithologist, serving as a co-founder of the American Ornithologists’ Union, the first president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and a curator at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). As a part of the CLIR-funded BHL Field Notes Project, MCZ has been digitizing Brewster’s journals, diaries, letters, and photographic prints, which are held in Special Collections at the MCZ’s Ernst Mayr Library.

Did someone say Spring?!

In Ottawa, we start to see the Canada Geese returning to their summer nesting grounds around this time of year. Large flocks of them fly overhead in the same v-shaped formations we saw months ago when they left in the late fall.​

Aren’t migratory birds fascinating? Along with so many other Canadian bird species.

Birds of Canada by Percy Algernon Taverner remains one of the best accounts of the kinds of birds that occur in Canada. And the first thirty-six pages holds just the right amount of information to open the science of ornithology to bird lovers, yet still enough information to satisfy research needs.​

At the end of the eighteenth century, the “father of German ornithology” began publishing a German translation of General Synopsis of Birds, an important work by John Latham, the “grandfather of Australian ornithology”. This German edition, entitled Johann Lathams Allgemeine Uebersicht der Vögel ([1792] 1793-1812), was translated and edited by Johann Matthäus Bechstein (1757-1822).

For over 40 years, the Delaware Museum of Natural History (DMNH) has promoted the study of nature, investigated the planet’s flora and fauna, and educated the public with its world-class collections, which are particularly rich in mollusks and birds (DMNH’s collection of bird eggs is the second-largest in North America). Founded in 1957, the museum began as an idea in the mind of John duPont, heir to the DuPont Chemical fortune.

In the wake of the Quakers’ immigration to North America, a taste for the study of nature came “quietly” into being among descendants from the “tolerant” zones, notably the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.