James Ferguson-Lees

Ian James Ferguson-Lees (born January 8, 1929 in Sanremo , Italy , † January 11, 2017 ) was a British ornithologist . His main interest was the birds of prey.

Life

Ferguson-Lees spent his early years in Italy and France. He was trained in Bedford , England. At the young age he was by Bernard Tucker in the birding introduced. Ferguson-Lees originally wanted to study zoology at the University of Oxford , instead he married and worked as a school teacher for seven years. In 1952 Edward Max Nicholson brought him to the editorial office of the British Birds journal . From 1954 to 1973 he was editor-in-chief there. He then stayed with the editorial team for another six years.

In 1958 Ferguson-Lees founded the Rarities Committee of the British Birds Trust (British Birds Rarities Committee) together with PAD Hollom , of which he was a member until 1963. In 1962 he was involved with John Nelder and Edward Max Nicholson in the investigation into the Hastings rarities fraud. This was a scandal that stirred ornithological circles in Great Britain in the early 1960s. The Hastings rarities were a series of rare birds from the Hastings region that were prepared by ornithologist George Bristow (1863–1947) and provided with incorrect information about their origins. As a result of this analysis, published in two articles in the journal British Birds , 29 species of birds have been removed from the UK bird species list. In the following period, however, several species were allowed back because they were later sighted in Great Britain.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, Ferguson-Lees served on all committees of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), including those on population studies and bird ringing . From 1969 to 1973 he was President and Chairman of the BTO. Before that he was twice on the board of directors and once vice-president of the BTO. From 1967 to 1985 he chaired the working group responsible for planning and publishing The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland . In 1976 Ferguson-Lees was awarded the BTO's Tucker Medal for this book. From 1972 he was a member of a working group to plan a BTO register to record the ornithological areas, which is considered the basis for the work Bird Habitats in Britain by Rob Fuller from 1982. From 1986 to 1992 Ferguson-Lees was a member of a working group for the BTO's New Breeding Atlas .

From 1960 to 1986 he was a member of the avifaunistic commission of the British Ornithologists' Union and from 1970 to 1986 its chairman. From 1962 to 1966 he was a board member of the XIV. International Ornithological Congress , which was held in Oxford in July 1966 . From 1963 to 1973 he was a member of the Council of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds . From 1970 to 1975 he was director of West Palaearctic Birds Ltd. In December 1971 he was the planner and chairman of the international conference in Green Park near Tring , which was held under the joint patronage of the BTO and the Radolfzell ornithological station, in order to establish ornithological cooperation in Europe and standards for the inventory of nesting sites, the coding of habitats as well to develop the collection of biometric data and moulting data. From 1973 to 1975 he was the nature conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. From 1973 to 1977 he was a member of the Council of the British Ornithologists' Union .

In 1973 he founded the Rare Breeding Birds Panel with David Lea, where he was a member until 1979. He has also been chairman of nature conservation and education commissions on several occasions.

In 1983 Ferguson-Lees began work on Raptors of the World , a standard work that took 18 years to complete. In 1994 David A. Christie joined this project. For their research, the authors spent around 500 hours in museums and Ferguson-Lees undertook ten expeditions to South America.

Works (selection)

• 1961: The Birds of the Coto Doñana (with Guy Mountfort )
• 1961: Observations on the Birds of Bulgaria (with Guy Mountfort)
• 1972: A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe (with Roger Tory Peterson , Guy Mountfort, PAD Hollom and Donald Ian Mackenzie Wallace )
• 1972: Field Guide to Birds' Nests (with Bruce Campbell )
• 1972: A Guide to Bird-Watching in Europe (with Quentin Hockliffe and Ko Zweeres)
• 1978: Towns and Gardens (The Natural History of Britain and Northern Europe) (with Bruce Campbell and Denis Owen)
• 1978: Mountains and Moorlands (The Natural History of Britain and Northern Europe) (with Bruce Campbell and Arnold Darlington)
• 1979: Rivers, Lakes and Marshes (The Natural History of Britain and Northern Europe) (with Bruce Campbell and Brian Whitton)
• 1979: Coasts and Estuaries (The Natural History of Britain and Northern Europe) (with Bruce Campbell and Richard Barnes)
• 1979: Fields and Lowlands (The Natural History of Britain and Northern Europe) (with Bruce Campbell and Derek Boatman)
• 1983: The Shell Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland (with JTR Sharrock and Ian Willis)
• 1987: Birds of Central Europe (with Ian Willis, translation by Einhard Bezzel )
• 1992: Endangered Birds (with Emma Faull )
• 2001: Raptors of the World (with David A. Christie, Kim Franklin, David Mead and Philip Burton) (German short edition: Die Greifvögel der Welt, 2009, translation by Jochen Dierschke and Volker Dierschke)
• 2007: Birds of Wiltshire (with Paul Castle and Peter Cranswick)
• 2011: Field Guide to Monitoring Nests (with Richard Castell and Dave Leech)

literature

• John E. Pemberton: Who's Who in Ornithology. Buckingham Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-9514965-8-9 , pp. 123-124.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Farewell to IJFL in British Birds, January 12, 2017, accessed January 12, 2017
2. ^ EM Nicholson & IJ Ferguson-Lees (1962). The Hastings Rarities. British Birds (August 1962) 55 (8): 281.
3. ↑ JA Nelder (1962). A statistical examination of the Hastings rarities. British Birds, August 1962.