Hachisuka Masauji

Masauji Hachisuka in 1929

Hachisuka Masauji , 18th Marquis Hachisuka ( Japanese 蜂 須 賀 正 氏 ; born February 15, 1903 in Tokyo Prefecture , † May 14, 1953 in Atami ) was a Japanese ornithologist, aviator and member of the House of Lords of Japan .

Life

Hachisuka was a nephew of Prince Tokugawa Yoshinobu , the last Shogun . After graduating from Gakushūin School, Hachisuka went to Europe at the age of 19 to complete his education. Under the leadership of Baron Hayashi, the Japanese ambassador to London and a friend of his father Hachisuka Masaaki , then Vice-President of the Kizokuin , Haschisuka studied zoology at the University of Cambridge for the next five years. In 1925 he traveled to Iceland. In 1927 he made a trip to North Africa (to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco) with Ernst Hartert and a stay in America in the company of Jean Théodore Delacour . That same year, Hachisuka received a Ph.D. PhD. In 1928, Haschisuka and Delacour traveled to Korea and China. From 1928 to 1929, Haschisuka led a 50-man expedition to the summit of Mount Apo on Mindanao Island in the Philippines. Soon afterwards he went to Europe, where he stayed until 1934 and in particular studied his collection at the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring . After an expedition to the Belgian Congo with the Belgian zoologist Jean-Marie Derscheid (1901–1944), he paid a long visit to the King and Queen of Bulgaria. In 1930 Hachisuka became a corresponding member of the American Ornithologists' Union . From 1936 to 1937 he spent a few months with Delacour in Pasadena , California, the last time the two met. In October 1937 Hachisuka returned to Japan and in March 1939 he married Chiye Negamine from Los Angeles.

Hachisuka described some bird species and subspecies, including the Gray Hood Sunbird ( Aethopyga primigenia ), the subspecies Centropus melanops banks of the mask cuckoo , the subspecies Rhipidura superciliaris apo of Sockeye-fantail , the subspecies Pycnonotus urostictus philippensis of Gelbbrillenbülbüls , the subspecies Otus rufescens malayensis the rubella scops owl , the subspecies Alauda arvensis lönnbergi the skylark , the subspecies Lophura leucomelanos moffitti of Kalifasans and together with Jean Théodore Delacour, the Manila-Papageiamadine ( Erythrura viridifacies ). In 1934 Hachisuka introduced the genus Mimizuku for the red-eared owl ( Syn .: Otus gurneyi ).

In addition to several articles in journals such as Avicultural Magazine, L'Oiseux, Ibis , Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington and Tori, Hachisuka has published books on the birds of Egypt, Iceland, the Philippines, Hainans and Formosas.

The publication and success of his latest book, The dodo and kindred birds; or the extinct birds of the Mascarene Islands in 1953 about the extinct avifauna of the Mascarene Islands , Hachisuka no longer lived through . He died of a heart condition at the age of 50.

Dedication names

In 1949 S. Dillon Ripley named the subspecies Lanius validirostris hachisuka of the Philippines shrike in honor of Masauji Hachisuka.

Works (selection)

• A comparative hand list of the birds of Japan and the British Isles. University Press. Cambridge. 1925.
• A handbook of the birds of Iceland. Taylor & Francis. London. 1927.
• Variations among birds: chiefly game birds: heterochrosis, gynandromorphs, aberration, mutation, atavism and hybrids. Ornithological Society of Japan, 1928.
• Contributions to the birds of the Philippines. Ornithological Society of Japan. Tokyo. 1929.
• The birds of the Philippine islands. 1931
• Le Sahara. Societé déditions geographiques, maritimes et coloniales. Paris. 1932.
• Birds of Jehol. Report of the First Scientific Expedition to Manchoukuo under the leadership of Shigeyasu Tokunaga. June-October 1933. Section V. Division II. Part III. (with Nobusuke Takatsukasa , Kuroda Nagamichi , Yamashina Yoshimaro and Seinosuke Uchida )
• Contributions to the birds of Hainan. 1939
• The dodo and kindred birds; or the extinct birds of the Mascarene Islands. London. 1953.

literature

• Todd Starr Palmer: Biographies of Members of the American Ornithologists' Union , 1954, pp. 246–247 (based on the obituary by Jean Théodore Delacour in The Auk Volume 70, No. 4, 1953, pp. 521–522)
• Norman Boyd Kinnear : Obituary. The Marquess Hachisuka In: Ibis, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1954, p. 150
• Bo Beolens, Michael Grayson, Michael Watkins: The Eponym Dictionary of Birds . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Hachisuka is the family name, Masauji the first name.