Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin

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Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin (born July 1, 1925 in Donaghadee , County Down , Northern Ireland , † September 13, 2017 in Litcham , Norfolk ) was a British-Rhodesian ornithologist .

Life

In 1949 Irwin moved from Northern Ireland to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ), where he made the acquaintance of Reay Smithers , the then director of the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo . He got a job as a museum collector, became deputy curator for vertebrates in 1959 and was then curator for ornithology. In 1975 he became Regional Director in Bulawayo and eventually associated ornithologist and librarian of Natural History . In May 2012 he moved to England, where he settled in Norfolk.

Irwin worked closely with Constantine Walter Benson , an expert on Central African avifauna . Together they expanded the bird collection of the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe . With currently 90,000 specimens from Zimbabwe and neighboring countries, it is considered the largest bird collection in Africa as well as in the southern hemisphere.

In 1981 Irwin published his best-known work The Birds of Zimbabwe , which is one of the standard works on the avifauna of this region. His previous works include Checklist of Birds of Southern Rhodesia from 1957, which was created in collaboration with Reay Smithers. In 1971 he published the work The Birds of Zambia together with Constantine Walter Benson , the second edition of which appeared in 1983. In 1978 Irwin's Bibliography of the Birds of Rhodesia was published . He has also contributed to the book series The Birds of Africa (with Emil K. Urban , Stuart Keith and Charles Hilary Fry ) and published more than 300 specialist articles, a large part of which appeared in the museum journal Arnoldia .

In 1957 Irwin described the subspecies Spizocorys conirostris crypta of the Red Schnabellerche and Eremopterix verticalis khama of the nunlark . In 1960 he described the subspecies Calamonastes stierlingi pinto of the wave-throated warbler . Together with Constantine Walter Benson, he described 1965 subspecies Eremopterix verticalis harti the Rotschnabellerche and Mirafra fasciolata reynoldsi the Ostklapperlerche and the Makawa Barbet ( Pogoniulus makawai ), to date, only one copy is known by the. In collaboration with Phillip Alexander Clancey he introduced in 1986, the monotypic genus Arcanator for Strichelkehlsopranist on.

Irwin was editor of Honeyguide , the ornithological journal of BirdLife Zimbabwe , from 1983 to 2006 .

In May 2017, Irwin had a serious fall and in September 2017 he died of a hip fracture .

Dedication names

After Irwin, the subspecies Calamonastes stierlingi irwini of the wave-throated warbler and Coccopygia quartinia irwini of the yellow-bellied asterisk are named.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert J. Dowsett: Obituary Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin (1925-2017). In: Ibis from March 8, 2018 (online)
  2. ↑ a b c d Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2014). The Eponym Dictionary of Birds. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 1472905741 , p. 278
  3. ↑ a b Obituary in The Babbler , No. 138, Oct – Nov 2017, p. 3
  4. ↑ a b c d The Museums Renowned Past Curators
  5. ↑ Michael P. Stuart Irwin: A new race of pink-billed lark Calandrella conirostris from Northern Bechuanaland Protectorate. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 77 (7), 1957: 117
  6. ^ Michael PS Irwin: A new race of Eremopterix verticalis from the Makarikari Pan, Northern Bechuanaland Protectorate. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 77 (5), 1957: 87
  7. ^ MPS Irwin: Relationships within the Camaroptera fasciolata-stierlingi-simplex complex of warblers. Durban Museum Novitates 6 (3), 1960: 47-60.
  8. ↑ CW Benson, MPS Irwin: The Gray-backed Sparrow-lark, Eremopterix verticalis (Smith). Arnoldia, Rhodesia 1 (36), 1965: 1-9
  9. Jump up ↑ CW Benson, MP Stuart Irwin (1965): A new subspecies of Clapper lark, mirafra apiata from Barotseland Arnoldia, Rhodesia 1 (37): 1
  10. ^ PA Clancey, MPS Irwin: A new generic status for the Dappled Mountain robin Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 106 (3), 196, pp. 111-115
personal data
SURNAME Irwin, Michael Patrick Stuart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Rhodesian ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Donaghadee , County Down , Northern Ireland
DATE OF DEATH 13th September 2017
Place of death Litcham , Norfolk