Delacour, Jean Théodore

Jean Théodore Delacour was an American ornithologist and aviculturalist of French origin. He was renowned for not only discovering but also rearing some of the rarest birds in the world. He established very successful aviaries twice in his life, stocked with birds from around the world, including those that he obtained on expeditions to Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. His first aviary in Villers-Bretonneux was destroyed in the First World War, and the second one that he established at Clères was destroyed in the Second World War. He moved to the United States of America where he worked on avian systematics and was one of the founders of the International Committee for Bird Protection (later BirdLife International). One of the birds he discovered was the imperial pheasant, later identified as a hybrid between the Vietnamese pheasant and the silver pheasant