Thomas Littleton Powys, 4th Baron Lilford was a British aristocrat and ornithologist. He was one of the eight founders of the British Ornithologists' Union in 1858, and its president from 1867 until his death. He was also the first President of the Northamptonshire Natural History Society. He travelled widely, especially around the Mediterranean and his extensive collection of birds was maintained in the grounds of Lilford Hall. Until 1891, his aviaries featured birds from around the globe, including rheas, kiwis, Pink-headed ducks and a pair of free-flying Bearded vultures. He was responsible for the introduction of the Little owl into England in the 1880s. He wrote about birds including Notes on the Birds of Northamptonshire and Neighbourhood (1895) and Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands, which was completed by Osbert Salvin after his death. A species of European lizard, Podarcis lilfordi, is named in his honour
August von Pelzeln was an Austrian ornithologist. He studied at the University of Vienna, later working as an assistant under helminthologist Karl Moriz Diesing in the Hof-Naturalien-Cabinet from 1851. In 1857 he acquired curatorial duties formerly held by Johann Jakob Heckel, and subsequently became in charge of the bird (1857) and mammal (1869) collections. He worked on the birds collected by Johann Natterer in Brazil (343 species)
Guy Mountfort was an English advertising executive, amateur ornithologist and conservationist. He is known for writing A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, published in 1954. In 1961 he created the World Wide Fund for Nature (then the World Wildlife Fund) with Victor Stolan, Sir Julian Huxley, Sir Peter Scott and Max Nicholson. In 1956 he led an expedition to the Coto Donana with the resulting Book Portrait of a Wilderness illustrated by Eric Hosking. In 1963 he led a party of naturalists which made the first ornithological expedition to Azraq in Jordan. The expedition's recommendations led to the creation of the Azraq Wetland Reserve and other protected areas. He was appointed an OBE in 1970, for services to ornithology. In 1972 he led the campaign to save the Bengal Tiger, persuading Indira Ghandi to create nine tiger reserves in India, with eight others in Nepal and Bangladesh
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen was a British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behaviour. He developed an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth. Lorenz studied instinctive behaviour in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting. Although Lorenz did not discover the topic, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctive bond. Lorenz's work was interrupted by the onset of World War II and in 1941 he was recruited into the German Army as a medic. In 1944, he was sent to the Eastern Front where he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and spent four years as a German Prisoner of War in Soviet Armenia. Lorenz wrote numerous books, some of which, such as King Solomon's Ring, On Aggression, and Man Meets Dog, became popular reading
Ronald Mathias Lockley was a Welsh ornithologist and naturalist. He wrote over 50 books on natural history, including a major study of shearwaters. He is perhaps best known for his book The Private Life of the Rabbit
Colonel William Vincent Legge was an Australian soldier and an ornithologist who documented the birds of Sri Lanka. Legge's hawk-eagle is named after him as is Legge's flowerpecked and Legges Tor, the second highest peak in Tasmania. He was a member of the Zoological Society of London
Employed by the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology
Leonard Howard Loyd Irby was a British ornithologist and army officer. He specialised in the study of birds in southern Iberia
William Henry Hudson (known in Argentina as Guillermo Enrique Hudson) was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. Hudson spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna in Argentina while publishing his ornithological work in the Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895)