Whose Bird?

Men & Women Commemorated in the Common Names of Birds

by Bo Beolens & Michael Watkins

Published by Helm [Paperback] GBP£17.99 October 2003 ISBN 0713666471

Now available direct from the Author

for GBP£16.19p at the Fatbirder Shop

Was Bonaparte’s Gull named after Napoleon? Was Pallas’ Warbler discovered by the same individual who discovered Pallas’s Sandgrouse, and if so did he discover the two birds at the same time on the same journey? Whose Bird? answers these questions and many more  by presenting a potted biography of every individual whose name is commemorated in a species of bird.

Mike Watkins was the first of us to become curious and ask the question ‘Whose bird?’ He was intrigued by the number of birds named after people and had put together a list of about 150, when he put out an enquiry on UKBirdNet asking others for their contributions. Mike got the list up to about 1,000 entries and discussed what to do with it. Should they publish? Should they just put it up on the Internet? In the end they decided that it could be a good way to raise money for an organisation, which he was then, and still is, a member of, the Disabled Birders Association (DBA). Bo Beolens (aka the Fat Birder) who founded the DBA looked at the list, thought about it, and, from that moment, moved the project from amusement to hard, but enjoyable, work. He suggested that we could publish it as a book but include, not just the list, which had been accumulated, but, if it proved possible to find them, biographical details of all those people mentioned. Furthermore, we should research alternative names and illustrate a book with portraits of the people or pictures of their work etc. Mike and Bo then decided to go ahead and write the book.

Whose Bird? undertakes the impressive task of cataloguing those who have, in turn, catalogued the birds of the world. Yet while the scope and ambition of the book are almost Victorian, its style and humour are utterly modern. Whose Bird? will be as interesting and accessible to the general reader as to the serious ornithologist.

Every bird’s name tells a story, and the authors of Whose Bird? are story-tellers with a passion.

At its heart, Whose Bird? is a book about remarkable people. In a series of delightful vignettes we are introduced to a cast of intriguing characters: heroic adventurers, library-bound boffins, aristocratic patrons, mysterious lovers, fortunate schoolboys, respectable scientists, and caddish charlatans, to name but a few – each one of whom has achieved immortality through having a bird named after them.

In documenting the exploits of these characters Whose Bird? celebrates two eternal forces of human nature: the unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and the insatiable hunger for fame.