Posted: Aug 18, 07 3:09pm
There are some famous names connected to birding, and this is just a partial list:
Aristotle, even though a lot of his "information" about birds was based on hearsay and legend
DaVInci who based some of his foremost futurisitic designs on birds and their flight.
Gilbert White who held a clerical job in the tiny village of Selborne in Hampshire, UK, for over fifty years. All that time he kept careful watch on the natural world around him, discovering a new warbler species and declaring many small land birds migrated annually. This was in 18th Century when migration was still far from accepted theory. Sort of the global warming of its day. Next time you;re in England, go see his home:
http://www.ukattraction.com/southern-england/gilbert-whites-house-the-oates-museum.htm
Thomas Jefferson: he wrote the first book on the natural history of Virginia, and included a list of birds he'd found there.
Other birding American presidents included:
Teddy Roosevelt who watched spring migration move across the White House gardens.
FDR
Jimmy Carter
American Inventorrs: Henry Ford and Thomas Edison
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger
Charles Darwin, who wouldn't have been Darwinian if he hadn't watched those finches on the Galapagos.
George Plimpton
Van Morrison
The late Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim ["Girl from Ipanema"
Jonathan Franzen, novelist
Ian Fleming, who named his most famous character after the ornithologist James Bond
British author, W.H Hudson
Princess Takamado of Japan
Harold Wilson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
anybody know about Hollywood environmentalists like Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Daryl Hannah?
Of course, there are the folks who've been made famous by their own birding art or activites, from Mark Catesby and Audubon to Roger Tory Peterson and Bill Oddie.
So know of any other birders famous for something other than birding?
President and birder, Thomas Jefferson. Picture from White House website
