Ernst Sutter

Ernst Sutter (born August 7, 1914 in Basel ; † November 9, 1999 ) was a Swiss ornithologist .

Live and act

Sutter was fascinated by bird watching from an early age. In the 1930s, he took part in excursions at the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach to ring birds and research bird migration in the Alpine region. In 1943 he did his doctorate with Adolf Portmann with the dissertation " On embryonic and postembryonic brain growth in chickens and passerine birds " for Ph.D. In 1945 he became a curator in the bird department of the Natural History Museum in Basel . After his retirement in 1980, Sutter continued his scientific work for the museum as a volunteer until his death. In 1949 he undertook a nine-month expedition to Sumba in Indonesia with the ethnologist Alfred Bühler (1900–1981). Among the 65,000 zoological objects collected were 770 birds. After working on the material, Sutter wrote a revision of two species of ripening chickens and described five new subspecies of the spotted chickens ( Turnix maculosa ). Sutter's excursion to Sumba was his only collective expedition. He expanded the bird collection of the Natural History Museum Basel, which became one of the most important in Europe. Thanks to his excellent contacts with the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach, he repeatedly received dead birds for the collection. In 1954 Sutter got to know radar technology at Zurich Airport and realized that it could become a unique tool for researching bird migration. In 1956 Sutter carried out one of the first systematic studies of nocturnal bird migration with the help of radar devices. The result of these excursions was documented on film and made Sutter internationally known at the International Ornithological Congress in Helsinki in 1958. Ernst Sutter wrote around 95 scientific publications, including on woodpeckers , on the white stork, and on the growth and moulting of barnacles and hen birds . From 1954 to 1988 he was editor of the bird magazine Der Ornithologische Beobachter .

Ernst Sutter was a member of the International Ornithological Committee , honorary member of the Swiss Society for Ornithology and Bird Protection Ala, Honorary Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union , corresponding member of the German Ornithological Society and the Dutch Ornithological University.

Works (selection)

• 1943: On embryonic and postembryonic brain growth in chickens and passerines
• 1951: Sumba expedition of the Museum of Ethnology and the Natural History Museum in Basel, 1949
• 1953: Experientia: Supplementum, Volume 3 (with Adolf Portmann)
• 1953: Bird of Paradise and Hummingbirds: Pictures from the life of the tropical bird (with Walter Linsenmaier )
• 1955: Proceedings of the 11th International Ornithological Congress Basel, May 29 - June 5, 1954 (with Adolf Portmann)
• 1958: The breeding birds of Europe (with Ulrich Arnold Corti )
• 1960: Europe's breeding birds. Third volume. Hens, chicken, cranes, bustards, railing, waders, gulls and terns (with Martin Schwarz)
• 1984: From the miracle of bird life (started by Adolf Portmann and published posthumously by Sutter)

literature

• Raffael Winkler: Ernst Sutter (1914–1999) doi: 10.1007 / BF01651915
• Raffael Winkler, Luc Schifferli: In Memoriam: Ernst Sutter, 1914–1999 . In: The Auk . tape 117 , no. 4 , 2000, pp. 1031-1032 ( online [PDF; 193 kB ; accessed on August 29, 2011]).
• Raffael Winkler: Ernst Sutter in memory. Editor 1954–1988 . In: The Ornithological Observer . tape 97 , no. 1 , 2000, pp. 1–6 ( online [PDF; 1.8 MB ; accessed on August 29, 2011]).