Penny Olsen

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Penny Olsen in 2013 at the launch of Cayley and Son: The Life and Art of Neville Henry Cayley and Neville William Cayley

Penelope Diane Olsen (* 1949 ), mostly known as Penny Olsen , is an Australian ornithologist and non-fiction author.

Life

In 1969, Olsen received his Bachelor of Science degree from the Australian National University (ANU) for his work on broad-footed pouch mice ( Antechinus ). From 1970 to 1982 she worked as an investigator in the Department of Wildlife and Ecology of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), where she studied the ecology of water rats and the effects of predation on feral mouse populations.

She also started her own research projects on birds of prey and falcons . One of these has been the effect of pesticides on reproduction in these birds, particularly the thinning of egg shells from DDT .

Olsen and her family established a rehabilitation center with large aviaries on their property outside Canberra in 1978, where they nursed sick, injured and orphaned birds of prey. Over 200 birds of prey were successfully cared for and released back into the wild in these aviaries.

In the 1980s she devoted herself to raising her two children. At the time, she and her then-husband Jerry Olsen were involved in a long-term study of the Norfolk Island cuckoo owl ( Ninox novaeseelandiae undulata ), of which only one female existed in 1986 and died in 1996. In 1991, she was with the thesis Aspects of the evolutionary ecology of reproduction of raptors for Ph.D. PhD from Australian National University.

From 1994 to 1997 she completed her postdoc phase at CSIRO, where she studied the behavior and reproduction of a peregrine falcon population that she had observed for over 20 years.

Since 1999 she has been a consultant in various ministries and a visiting scholar at the ANU. From 2003 to 2009 she was editor of the magazine Wingspan (now Australian Birdlife ) of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (now Birdlife Australia ). In 1991 she wrote the chapters on birds of prey and on owls, swallows and milkers in Joseph Michael Forshaw's Encyclopedia of Birds, and in 1994 she wrote the chapter on falconies for the second volume of the Handbook of the Birds of the World .

In 2007 she was one of the first to describe the moth species Trisyntopa neossophila , whose caterpillars occur in the nests of Collett parakeets .

Awards

In 1997, Olsen received the DL Serventy Medal for her outstanding publications on the birds of the Australasian region. In 2011 she was appointed a member of the Order of Australia (AM). Her books have won the Whitley Award from the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales several times , including Australian Birds of Prey: The Biology and Ecology of Raptors (1996), Feather & Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art (2002), Glimpses of Paradise: the Quest for the Beautiful Parrakeet (2008), the first detailed documentation of extinct paradise parrot and Australia's first Naturalists: Indigenous Peoples' Contribution to Early Zoology (2019).

Fonts (selection)

  • Birds of Prey , 1990 (German: Adler und Geier , 1991)
  • Falcons and Hawks , 1991 (German: Falken und Habichte , 1991)
  • Australian Raptor Studies: Proceedings 10th Anniversary Conference, Australasian Raptor Association, Canberra, September 21-22 1989 , 1993
  • Birds of Prey & Ground Birds of Australia: The National Photographic Index of Australian Wildlife, 1993
  • Australian Birds of Prey: The Biology and Ecology of Raptors , 1995
  • Australia's Pest animals: New solutions to old problems , 1998
  • Feather & Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art , 2001
  • The State of Australia's Birds , 2003
  • Wedge-tailed Eagle , 2005
  • Glimpses of paradise: quest for the beautiful parrakeet , National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2007
  • Data Brief: Biodiversity - bird distribution and abundance , 2008
  • Spirit of the Wedge-tailed Eagle: The Art of Humphrey Price-Jones , 2008
  • A Brush with Birds Australian Bird Art from the National Library of Australia , 2008
  • Upside Down World: Early European Impressions of Australia's Curious Animals , National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2010
  • (with Leo Joseph ) Stray Feathers: Reflections on the Structure, Behavior and Evolution of Birds , CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne Australia, 2011
  • A Flutter of Butterflies , National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT, 2011
  • The Quintessential Bird: The Art Of Betty Temple Watts , 2011
  • Flocks of Color , 2012.
  • A Botanical Life: Robert David Fitzgerald , National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2013
  • Have You Seen My Egg? , 2013
  • Collecting Ladies, Ferdinand Von Mueller and Women Botanical Artists , National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2013
  • Cayley and Son: The Life and Art of Neville Henry Cayley and Neville William Cayley , National Library of Australia, Singapore, 2013
  • An Eye for Nature: The Life and Art of William T Cooper , 2014
  • Louisa Atkinson's Nature Notes , 2015
  • Australian predators of the sky , 2015
  • Night Parrot: Australia's Most Elusive Bird , 2018
  • with Lynette Russell: Australia's First Naturalists: Indigenous Peoples' Contribution to Early Zoology , National Library of Australia, 2019

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joseph Glascott: Pesticide threat to many Birds In: The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) Saturday, August 5, 1978, p. 4
  2. ^ Anne Suskind: Treated birds off on a wing an a prayer In: The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), Monday, September 7, 1992, p. 6
personal data
SURNAME Olsen, Penny
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olsen, Penelope Diane (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian ornithologist and non-fiction author
DATE OF BIRTH 1949