A HISTORY OF ORNITHOLOGY. By Peter Bircham. New Naturalist No. 104.

2007 1st edition. 8vo (152 x 223mm). Ppxii,482,ii. Colour and b/w photographs, colour and b/w illustrations, bibliography. Green buckram, spine titled in gilt.

Peter Bircham offers a very thorough history of our understanding of birds. "What did we know about birds a thousand years ago, and how has our understanding developed? Which species did we first recognise, when did people begin to record their sightings, and how were the puzzles of bird behaviour and ecology gradually? [This book] offers a complete history of birdwatching in Britain, a classic for every nature lover's bookshelf." Chapters include:- Up to the sixteenth century; The first bird book; The first British list; The Willughby / Ray Ornithology and other seventeenth-century works; The Systema naturae: dawn of a new age; The first ornithological ecologists: White, Jenner and Blackwall; Early studies of migration: Legg, Jenner and others; A dictionary and two histories; The artists and their avifaunas; Alfred Newton and the founding of the British Ornithologists' Union; Theories of classification, the National Collection and the Catalogue of Birds; The twentieth century: winds of change; Recording the avifauna of Britain; Migration: the scientific studies begin; Plumage, cages, eggs and shooting: the history of bird protection; Behavioural and ecological studies; After the war; Post-war ornithological research; The British List and problems with fraud; New slants on old problems. Ornithological art is also covered in some detail, beginning with mediaeval illuminated manuscripts and working up to the great artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A terrifically good book, solidly in the tradition of the New Naturalist series. Number 104 in the New Naturalist series.