Philip Hollom

Philip Arthur Dominic "Phil" Hollom (born June 9, 1912 in Bickley , Kent , † June 20, 2014 in Hydestyle , Surrey ) was a British ornithologist .

Life

Hollom was a hobby ornithologist even as a teenager and in 1931 Harry Witherby and Max Nicholson hooked him into a national British inventory of great crested grebes, which was on the brink of extinction in the early 20th century due to the demand for his feathers in the UK fashion industry. The survey showed that the population had increased from 50 breeding pairs to at least 1200. The anthropologist, zoologist and sociologist Tom Harrisson , who later applied the methods used in the project Mass Observation in sociology, was also involved. The Great Crested Study helped establish the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in 1932 . During World War II he was a Royal Air Force pilot in the Coast Guard in West Scotland and almost lost his life in 1943 when his aircraft had to ditch in fog. His main job was for a foreign trade company, which he stayed with until his retirement in 1977.

Hollom was co-editor of British Birds Magazine in 1951 and, from 1960 to 1972, editor-in-chief, succeeding Max Nicholson . He was Chairman of the British Birds Rarities Committee and Vice President of the Ornithological Society of the Middle East. In 1954 he received the Tucker Medal of the British Trust for Ornithology and in 1984 the Union Medal of the British Ornithologists Union.

In 1952 he published an abridged version of the extensive Handbook of British Birds by Harry Witherby (who had already died at the time), which appeared in five volumes from 1938 to 1941, followed by a volume on rarer birds in Great Britain in 1960. He was also involved in The Birds of the Western Palearctic (Oxford University Press, 9 volumes, 1978 to 1994), which replaced Witherby's account as the standard work.

He is best known as the co-author of the popular identification book The Birds of Europe (in German by Parey-Verlag). It is usually only briefly referred to as "Peterson, Mountford, Hollom".

Fonts

• with Roger Tory Peterson Guy Mountfort : A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe , William Collins 1954 (new edition with James Ferguson-Lees , D. Ian M. Wallace 1965 and more)
  • German edition: The birds of Europe , Paul Parey publishing house, Hamburg and Berlin, 9th edition 1970, ISBN 3-490-05518-7 .
• with TH Harrisson, HF and G. Witherby: The Great Crested Grebe Inquiry 1931, 1932
• Trapping Methods for Bird Ringers, BTO Guide No. 1, 1955
• with HF Witherby : The Popular Handbook of British birds, HF and G. Witherby 1952, 5th edition 1988
• with HF Witherby: The Popular Handbook of Rarer British birds, HF and G. Witherby, 1960
• Birds of the Middle East and North Africa, Poyser 1988

Web links

• Obituary in the British Ornithologists' Union (English)
• Obituary in The Guardian, July 15, 2014 (English)