Charles Hilary Fry

Charles Hilary Fry (born February 13, 1937 in Skegness , Lincolnshire ), often C. Hilary Fry , is a British ornithologist . His main research interests are the families of the kingfishers (Alcedinidae), the bee-eater (Meropidae) and the rocket (Coraciidae) as well as the African avifauna .

Life

As a student, Fry took part in a three-month expedition from the University of Cambridge to Annobón Island (formerly Pagalu) in the Gulf of Guinea in 1958 . In 1960 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Cambridge and in 1963 a Master of Arts. From 1962 to 1967 he was a lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria . From 1964 to 1985 he was the organizer of the Nigerian Ornithologists' Society (since 1979 West African Ornithological Society) and editor of the Malimbus society journal . In 1966 he was with the thesis Some Aspects of the Biology of African bee-eaters (Meropidae) with Particular Reference to Merops bulocki (Viellot) for Ph.D. PhD from Ahmadu Bello University. From 1967 to 1986 he was first a lecturer and then a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen , where he received an honorary doctorate (DSc) in 1985 in recognition of his publications on African avifauna . From 1986 to 1995 he was Professor of Biology at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman . He has been retired since 1995 and is an Honorary Professor in Zoology from the University of Aberdeen. In the late 1970s, Fry became a panel member of the British Ornithologists 'Union and he was a corresponding member of the American Ornithologists' Union .

Fry undertook four bird ringing expeditions to Lake Chad and one to Lake Turkana . In 1969 he was on an ornithological excursion in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso for two months and in the same year he undertook expeditions with the hovercraft on the Niger and the Congo to count water birds. In 1976 Fry was involved in a two-week study of Eleanor's falcons on the Cretan island of Dragonada. Further expeditions took Fry to the Okavango , the Sinai Peninsula (1984) and Borneo .

For his studies of bee-eaters and kingfishers, Fry fielded in 16 countries on five continents. He is married to the zoologist Kathleen Fry, who actively supports him in his projects.

In 1984 Fry published the book The Bee-eaters . In 1992, in collaboration with his wife and the illustrator Alan Harris, his best-known work Kingfishers, Bee-eaters and Rollers came out, which was voted Bird Book of the Year by British Birds magazine .

From 1986 to 2004 Fry was co-editor of volumes 2 to 7 of the book series The Birds of Africa alongside Emil K. Urban and Stuart Keith . In 2001 he wrote the chapters on the bee-eaters and the hoes in the sixth volume of the Handbook of the Birds of the World .

In 1985 Fry described the enigmatic red tern ( Petrochelidon perdita ), of which only one specimen is known to date.

literature

• John E. Pemberton: Who's Who in Ornithology. Buckingham Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-9514965-8-9 , pp. 135-136.
• Nicholas Polunin: World Who Is Who and Does What in Environment and Conservation. Volume 4, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 978-1-84971-005-3 , p. 105.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ British Birds. Bird Book of the Year 1992