Henri will

Henri Wille (born April 1, 1926 in Zomergem , † June 11, 2012 in Ostend ) was a Belgian ornithologist .

Life

In 1944 Wille graduated from Sint-Barbaracollege , a Jesuit school in Ghent . He then studied law at the University of Ghent . In the 1950s he moved with his wife Marie-José Van de Velde († 2009) to what was then the Belgian Congo , where he was appointed provincial governor for an area as large as Belgium . After the independence of the Congo in 1960, Wille returned to Belgium, where he worked for the Belgian national bird reserves organized by his friend Léon LippensFounded. Their shared passion for birds led to the publication of the Atlas des Oiseaux de Belgique et d'Europe Occidentale in 1972 , a photo atlas about the avifauna in Belgium. At the time, Count Lippens was a personal friend of President Mobutu Sese Seko , who funded an expedition to inventory the birds of Zaire , which Wille took over. In June 1973, Wille set off with his wife, Graf Lippens, the photographer Hubert Lehaen and four black helpers with tents and jeeps on a one-year expedition through Zaïre. In October 1973, saw Will in the National Park Upemba a new subspecies of Natal throttle , which in 1984 by Michel Louette and Alexandre Prigogine as Zoothera guttata lippensi (now Geokichla guttata lippensi was named) first described and after Léon Lippens. In March 1974, visited will and the Lippens Lake Edward , where they swarm enormous concentrations of wormwood plovers , dwarf beach runners , Flußuferläufern and broken water striders have seen.

The Zaire expedition turned out to be a great success. More than 11,000 color photos were taken and 430 bird species were recorded, three of which were recorded for the first time in Zaire. A total of 5300 birds were caught with special Japanese nets , examined, photographed and then released again.

In 1976, at the request of President Mobutu, Henri Wille and Léon Lippens published the work Le Oiseaux du Zaïre , illustrated with hundreds of color photos , which is now one of the standard works on avifauna in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . 1986 appeared with Uitzonderlijke Vogels in Belgium en West-Europa, the last book together with Léon Lippens.

Wille had an enormous knowledge of birds. Even without seeing them, he was able to distinguish more than 2500 species of birds by their courtship song, alarm call and lure song and name them by their Dutch, French, English and scientific names. He has published articles in professional journals, has given hundreds of lectures to associations, and has directed bird-watching excursions through forests, wetlands, and parks.

Web links

• In memoriam: Henri Wille "vogelkenner met wereldfaam" (obituary of September 3, 2012, Dutch)