Africa Wild

William Allen (25 November 1792 – 23 January 1864)

Allen's Gallinule

Allen was an English naval officer and explorer. He was born in Weymouth, England in November 1792. In 1850 he entered the navy as a volunteer, and, as midshipman, was present at the passage of the Dardanelles in 1807. He was on board the 36 gun HMS Leda in August 1811 for the capture of Java, and in June 1813 during the successful attack on the pirate base at Sambas, Borneo.

Allen was promoted to lieutenant in 1815, to commander 1836, and to captain 1842. He look part in the Niger expedition of Richard Lander and Oldfield, 1832; but is best known as having commanded the steamer HMS Wilberforce in the elaborately equipped but disastrous Niger expedition of 1841 under Captain Henry Totter. Though Allen cannot be blamed for any of the misfortunes of this expedition, he was on his return placed on half-pay, and retired from the service, as rear-admiral, in 1862, dying at Weymouth 23 January 1864.

Allen collected the type specimen of Allen's gallinule (a small waterbird) near the River Niger. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A ... y_officer)

George Montagu (1753 – 20 June 1815)

Montagu's Harrier

Montagu was an English army officer and naturalist. He was known for his pioneering Ornithological Dictionary of 1802, which for the first time accurately defined the status of Britain's birds. He is remembered today for species such as the Montagu's harrier, named for him.

George Montagu was born to James Montagu (1713–1790), who was great-great-grandson of Lord James Montagu (d. 1665), who was younger son of Henry Montagu, 1st Earl of Manchester.

Montagu is best known for his Ornithological Dictionary (1802) and his contributions to early knowledge of British birds. He showed that many previously accepted species were invalid, either because they were birds in summer or winter plumage or males and females of the same species. His study of harriers resulted in the discovery that the Montagu's harrier was breeding in southern England. He was also involved in the first British records of cirl bunting, whose breeding range in England is around his home in Devon, as well as of cattle egret, little gull and gull-billed tern.

Montagu had an interest in marine and freshwater natural history, and in 1803 published his Testacea Britannica, a History of British Marine, Land and Freshwater Shells. This described 470 species of molluscs, 100 of which were new to the British list. He supplied some new species of crustacean to William Elford Leach at the British Museum, and recorded some species of fish for the first time in English waters, as well as discovering new species including Montagu's blenny and Montagu's snapper (Lutjanidae). He also described the lesser horseshoe bat for the first time. Montagu's ray, Montagu's sucker and Montagu's sea snail are also named for him.

He died of tetanus after stepping on a nail. He was buried at Kingsbridge Parish Church. Montagu's collection of birds was bought by the British Museum, about 200 of which are now housed at the Tring Museum. His annotated copies of the Dictionary and Testacea were bequeathed to the Linnean Society.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mo ... aturalist)

Thomas H. Ayres (July 1838 – 31 July 1913)

Ayres' Hawk-Eagle, Ayres' Cisticola

Ayres was born in Hereford, England, to John Ayres, the mayor of Hereford, and Helene Duschesne in July 1828. He and his family emigrated to Natal as part of the great influx of British settlers to South Africa in 1850. Two years later, Ayres joined a group of colonists departing for the gold fields of Australia, but was unsuccessful and returned to Natal a few years later to farm in what is now the Pinetown district, just inland of Durban.

Ayres became one of the colonists in Natal who augmented their incomes by collecting and preparing items of natural history, which were sold to ardent and often well-funded naturalists in western Europe. Most new bird species shot by Ayres were named by Dr. K. J. G. Hartlaub of Bremen in Germany.

Some of the species named by Hartlaub on Ayres's specimens were from the Port Natal area or just inland, including the ashy flycather, Muscicapa (Alseonax) caerulescens, and the green twinspot. Ayres shot the type of the elusive forest-dwelling orange thrush, Turdus (Zoothera) gurneyi, in Town Bush, Pietermaritzburg, and was instrumental in obtaining the type of Gurney's sugarbird, Promerops gurneyi, somewhere in Natal, which was described by Jules Verreaux in 1871.

Ayres's main patron was John Henry Gurney Sr., of Norwich, England, who consulted Hartlaub on taxonomy. Gurney disposed some of his material to R. Bowdler Sharpe of the British Museum (Natural History), in South Kensington, London, and others.

In 1865 Thomas and his brother Jack moved to the Transvaal, where they farmed, panned for gold, brewed and collected birds for sale.[1] He and his brother also hunted and traded with the Boer settlers. He settled down at Potchefstroom, where he ultimately died. Here he did much to encourage the young Austin Roberts, who was to become a well-known zoologist. The slaty egret and white-winged crake, S. ayresi, were new species that he obtained in this region

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ay ... thologist)

John Henry Gurney (4 July 1819 – 20 April 1890)

Gurney's Sugarbird

John Henry Gurney was an English banker, amateur ornithologist, and Liberal Party politician.

Gurney was the only son of Joseph John Gurney of Earlham Hall, Norwich, Norfolk. At the age of ten he was sent to a private tutor at Leytonstone near the Epping Forest, where he met Henry Doubleday, and commenced his first natural history collection. From there he moved to the Friends' School at Tottenham, and whilst there met William Yarrell. At the age of seventeen he joined the family's banking business in Norwich.

Gurney published a number of articles in The Zoologist on the birds of Norfolk. He also commenced a collection of birds of prey. In 1864 he published Part I. of his Descriptive Catalogue of this collection, and in 1872 he edited The Birds of Damara Land (Damaraland, South-West Africa) from the notes of his friend Charles John Andersson.

Between 1875 and 1882 he produced a series of notes in The Ibis on the first volume of the Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum, and in 1884 brought out a List of Diurnal Birds of Prey, with References and Annotations. The archives of Cambridge University Museum of Zoology contains five volumes of correspondence between Alfred Newton and Gurney, who was a founding member of the Norfolk Naturalists Trust.

His son, John Henry Gurney Jr., was also an ornithologist, and his great great grandson, Henry Richard Gurney of Heggatt Hall has continued the family tradition. The southern African race of the black-necked grebe, Podiceps nigricollis gurneyi, was named by South African zoologist and author Austin Roberts in 1919 in honour of the father and son.

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Gurney_Sr.

Joachim John Monteiro (1833 - 1878)

Monteiro's Hornbill

Monteiro was a Portuguese mining engineer with English ancestory. He collected bird specimens in Angola from 1860-1878.

Other species:
Monteiro's Twinspot, Monteiro's Golden Weaver, Monteiro's Bush-shrike

Sources:
http://www.namibian.org/travel/birds/mo ... nbill.html
https://books.google.co.za/books?id=En4 ... 8)&f=false

Edward Turner Bennett (6 January 1797 – 21 August 1836)

Bennett's Woodpecker

Bennett was an English zoologist and writer. He was the elder brother of the botanist John Joseph Bennett.

Bennett was born at Hackney and practiced as a surgeon, but his chief pursuit was always zoology. In 1822 he attempted to establish an entomological society, which later became a zoological society in connection with the Linnean Society. This in turn became the starting point of the Zoological Society of London, of which Bennett was Secretary from 1831 to 1836.

His works included The Tower Menagerie (1829) and The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society (1831). He also wrote, in conjunction with G. T. Lay, the section on Fishes in the Zoology of Beechey's Voyage (1839).

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Turner_Bennett

José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta (1832 - 1897)

Anchieta's Tchagra

Anchieta was born in Lisbon, Portugal and was a 19th-century Portuguese explorer and naturalist who, between 1866 and 1897, travelled extensively in Portuguese Angola, Africa, collecting animals and plants. His specimens from Angola and Mozambique were sent out to Portugal, where they were later examined by several zoologists and botanists, chiefly among them J.V. Barboza du Bocage.

Achieta died while returning from a zoological expedition to Portugal, in 1897, at 66 years of age, probably of the chronic consequences of malaria, which he and his wife caught, and which had severely affectedhis health for many years.

In all, according to Bocage, Anchieta's zoological output was truly prolific. He was responsible for identifying 25 new species of mammals, 46 birds, and 46 amphibians and reptiles. He didn't care much for writing scientific papers, though, but left this to his correspondents in Lisbon.

Many of the species of birds, amphibians, lizards, snakes, fishes and mammals collected by him were unknown and thus were named for Anchieta with the species designation anchietae. Some of them were:

Anchieta's sunbird
Anchieta's barbet
Anchieta's tchagra
Anchieta's ridged frog
Anchieta's dune lizard
Anchieta's frog
Anchieta's tree frog
Anchieta's chameleon
Anchieta's cobra
Anchieta's dwarf python
Anchieta's pipistrelle
Anchieta's elephantfish
Anchieta's antelope
Anchieta's serpentiform skink
Anchieta's spade-snouted worm lizard
Anchieta's agama

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9 ... a_Anchieta

Fred Barratt (1847 - 1875)

Barratt's Warbler

Barratt was an English collector who travelled around South Africa collecting specimens for the Bristish Musuem.

Source:
http://www.birdforum.net/archive/index. ... 79848.html

Bey El-Arnaut Abdim (1780-1827)

Abdim's Stork

Abdim was a Turkish governor of Wadi Haifa in Sudan from 1821 to 1827. This governorship was in the early years of the Turco-Egyptian conquest of the Sudan, which lasted until 1885. Abdim was, it seems, of great assistance to the German naturalist and explorer Wilhelm Rüppell after whom no less than 13 species of birds and mammals are named. In 1823 Abdim travelled with Rüppell up the Nile to Nubia, collecting specimens in the area. During this expedition Rüppell collected a specimen of a small stork, which he named after Bey Al-Arnaut Abdim as thanks for his valuable assistance with the expedition.

Source:
https://africageographic.com/blog/all-a ... after-him/
http://www.wilkinsonsworld.com/tag/bey-el-arnaut/

Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823 – 1887)

Baird's Sandpiper

Baird was an American naturalist, ornithologist, ichthyologist, herpetologist, and museum curator.

Spencer Fullerton Baird was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1823. He became a self-trained naturalist as a young man, learning about the field from his brother, William, who was a birder, and the likes of John James Audubon, who instructed Baird on how to draw scientific illustrations of birds. His father was also a big influence on Baird's interest in nature, taking Baird on walks and gardening with him.

He taught natural history at Dickinson starting in 1845. While at Dickinson, he did research, participated in collecting trips, did specimen exchanges with other naturalists, and traveled frequently. In 1848 he was awarded a grant from the Smithsonian Institution to explore bone caves and the natural history of southeastern Pennsylvania. In 1849 he was given $75 by the Smithsonian Institution to collect, pack and transport specimens for them. It was during this time that he met Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry. The two would become close friends and colleagues. Throughout the 1840s Baird traveled extensively throughout the northeastern and central United States. Often traveling by foot, Baird hiked more than 2,100 miles in 1842 alone.

Baird was the first curator to be named at the Smithsonian Institution. He would eventually serve as assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian from 1850 to 1878, and as Secretary from 1878 until 1887. He was dedicated to expanding the natural history collections of the Smithsonian which he increased from 6,000 specimens in 1850 to over 2 million by the time of his death. He published over 1,000 works during his lifetime.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Fullerton_Baird