Leslie H. Brown

Leslie Hilton Brown OBE (born 1917 in India , † August 6, 1980 in Karen near Nairobi , Kenya ) was a British ornithologist , agronomist and ecologist . His research focus was the birds of prey .

Life

Brown had Scottish roots and grew up in India and Oundle , England , where he got his first experience with eagles, fishing and mountain hiking. After receiving his bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of St. Andrews in 1936, he attended courses in tropical agriculture at Cambridge and the Imperial College of Agriculture in Trinidad . In 1940 he joined the Colonial Agricultural Service in Nigeria and in 1946 became a citizen of Kenya. In 1956 he became deputy director of agriculture and from 1960 chief agronomist , where he was responsible for dealing with problems arising from Kenya's transition from a colony to an independent state. Brown wrote numerous scientific articles on African agriculture and when he retired in 1963 he was honored with the Order of the British Empire . For fourteen more years he was a frequent advisor to the World Bank and aid agencies. He traveled a lot and was not only active in the agricultural sector, but also as a conservationist and ornithologist. In 1973 he received his Ph.D. at St. Andrews University. Brown began his ornithological work in Kenya with pelicans and flamingos , but from 1947 birds of prey , especially eagles , became his preferred subject of study. In 1942 Brown was elected a member of the British Ornithologists' Union , for whose journal Ibis he wrote numerous articles from 1948. In 1980 he became a corresponding member of the BOU. He was also a member of the East African Wild Life Society and President of the East African Natural History Society.

Between 1970 and his death Brown published over a dozen books, including Eagles (1970, German: Die Welt der Tiere: Adler ), The Bird-watcher's Book (1974) and British Birds of Prey (1976). In the second half of the 1970s, Brown was detained for three months in Somalia for illegally crossing the border with his plane. He wrote Encounters with Nature about it in 1979 . Brown died of a heart attack in August 1980, and in November 1980 his son Charles was killed in a car accident.

Works

• Eagles, Hawks and Falcons of the World (2 volumes, with Dean Amadon ; illustrated by David Morrison Reid Henry ), 1968
• Eagles (German: Die Welt der Tiere: Adler ), 1970
• African Birds of Prey , 1970
• The mystery of the flamingos , 1973
• Conservation for survival: Ethiopia's choice , 1973
• The Bird-watcher's Book , 1974
• British Birds of Prey , 1976
• Birds of the African Waterside , paintings by Réna Fennessy. Collins, London 1979, ISBN 0-00-216-079-X
• African Fish Eagle , 1980
• The breeding seasons of East African birds , 1980
• Birds of Prey of the World (German: Die Greifvögel der Welt A colored guide to the determination of the order Falconiformes (with Friedhelm Weick )), 1980
• The Birds of Africa , Volume 1, (with Emil K. Urban , Kenneth B. Newman, Martin Woodcock and Peter Hayman ), 1982 (posthumous)

literature

• Jeffery Boswall: Obituaries: Leslie Brown. In: Ibis, Volume 123, Issue 4, April 3, 2008: pp. 548-550. ( PDF online )