Alfred Ezra

Alfred Ezra

Alfred Aaron D. Ezra OBE (* 1872 in Pune , India , † August 1, 1955 in Foxwarren Park , Surrey , England ) was a British avian breeder and owner. He gained fame through a private zoo in Foxwarren Park near Cobham in Surrey, where, among other things , the rose-headed duck , which may now be extinct , was kept.

Live and act

Ezra comes from a Jewish family from Calcutta . His parents, Elias David and Mozelle Ezra, née Sassoon , were cotton exporters. Ezra was privately tutored in Calcutta and was an avid bird collector from childhood. In 1912 he traveled overland to Europe, where he went on hunting trips in the Pamir and Turkestan, among other places . However, he remained loyal to India and visited his former homeland repeatedly in later years. His older brother, David Elias Ezra (1871–1947), lived in Calcutta until his death, where he ran a bank and a private zoo. In 1919, Ezra started a private zoo on his family home in Foxwarren Park, covering an area of ​​121.4 hectares. He had aviaries built for exotic birds, developed a nectar mixture for hummingbirds and created ponds for water birds . Kangaroos and deer were also kept in the zoo. In 1926, Ezra received three pairs of rose-headed ducks from West Bengal from his brother . In 1929 ten more copies were added, four of which Ezra gave to his friend Jean Théodore Delacour in Clères . However, the rose-headed duck was never successful in breeding and the last specimen died in Foxwarren Park in 1932. Ezra, however, had other successes, including the first British breeding of the Balistar in 1931 .

Ezra's daughter Ruth (1919–2007) was also an avian breeder and, together with her husband Raymond Sawyer (1924–2012), ran the Chestnut Lodge bird park near Cobham in Surrey.

Memberships

In 1915 Ezra became a council member of the Zoological Society of London and in 1916 a member of the British Ornithologists' Union , where he was appointed to the committee from 1923 to 1926. In 1926 he was elected President of the Avicultural Society . Ezra was also a member of the British Ornithologists' Club .

Awards and dedication names

Ezra was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his service in the British Indian Army during World War I in Europe . In 1953 he was awarded the gold medal of the Zoological Society of London. In 1926 Delacour named Aethopyga nipalensis ezrai , a subspecies of the green- tailed nectar bird from Vietnam, in honor of Alfred Ezra. In 1927, Delacour Ezra's wife Muriel honored in the epithet of Treron Sieboldii murielae , a subspecies of the Sieboldgreenpube .

literature

• David Seth-Smith: In Memoriam. Alfred Ezra, OBE Avicultural Magazine, 61, 1955: 215-221
• Jean Théodore Delacour: Obituary Alfred Ezra In: Ibis 98, 1956, pp. 135-136
• Lars Lepperhoff: A private paradise - the bird collection by Ruth Ezra and Raymond Sawyer , Gefiederte Welt No. 126, 2002, pp. 98-101
• Bo Beolens, Michael Grayson, Michael Watkins: The Eponym Dictionary of Birds . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.