Timeline of Ornithology - Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century

• 1900 - Ernst Hartert monographs the Trochilidae in volume 9 of the series Das Tierreich published in Berlin by R. Friedländer und sohn
• 1900 - Edmond de Sélys Longchamps bird collection given to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
• 1900 - National Audubon Society organises the first Christmas Bird Count
• 1901 – Johannes Thienemann establishes Vogelwarte Rossitten (now Rybachy), the world's first bird observatory
• 1901 – The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union established
• 1902 - Wild Birds Protection Act 1902
• 1905 – Foundation of the National Audubon Society
• 1905 - Philogène Auguste Galilée Wytsman commences the serial publications Genera Avium
• 1905 – Joseph Whitaker publishes The Birds of Tunisia
• 1905-1906 - Bror Yngve Sjöstedt Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Schwedischen Zoologischen Expedition nach dem Kilimandjaro, dem Meru und umgebenden Massaisteppen Deutsch-Osatafrikas.
• 1907 – The monthly journal British Birds begins publication
• 1907 - Kurt Floericke becomes the editor of Kosmos - Die Zeitschrift für alle Freunde der Natur or Magazine for the Friends of Nature
• 1909 – First organised ringing schemes in the UK
• 1909 – Heligoland Bird Observatory is established at Heligoland by Hugo Weigold. Birds are collected in specially designed wire-netting traps, still known today as "Heligoland traps"
• 1909 – First known mapping census carried out in Kent, England by the Alexander brothers
• 1909 Ornithologists James Chapin and Herbert Lang begin a six year biological survey of the Belgian Congo.
• 1910–1911 – Sandy Wollaston leads the British Ornithological Union Expedition to Dutch New Guinea
• 1910 - Museum Oologicum R. Kreuger commenced by Ragnar Kreuger
• 1910–1913 - Edward Adrian Wilson is the zoologist on the Terra Nova Expedition. He died with the rest of the party but in 1987 Edward Wilson's Birds of the Antarctic was edited by Brian Roberts and posthumously published
• 1912 – A Barn Swallow ringed by James Masefield in Staffordshire, England is recovered in Natal, South Africa
• 1912 - Giacomo Damiani and Conte Arrigoni degli Oddi Birds of the Tuscan Archipelago
• 1914 – The last Passenger Pigeon dies in Cincinnati Zoo
• 1914 - Emilie Snethlage publishes Catálogo das Aves Amazônicas
• 1915 - Cornell Lab of Ornithology founded
• 1915 - Eduard Daniel van Oort becomes Director of the Rijksmuseum of Natural History in Leiden.
• 1916 - Marion Ellis Rowan paints birds on the first of many trips to New Guinea.
• 1918-1949 - Carl Eduard Hellmayr ends the chaos of systematic and nomenclatural confusion created by previous ornithologists working on South American birds in Catalogue of Birds of the Americas. It takes four decades and fifteen volumes.
• 1921 - 1932 The Whitney South Seas Expedition visits islands in the south Pacific region collecting over 40,000 bird specimens. The expedition also seals the extinction of the Guadalupe Caracara
• 1922 – Foundation of the International Council for Bird Preservation (now Birdlife International)
• 1922 – Publication of John Charles Phillips's A Natural History of the Ducks, which provides maps of the known breeding and wintering distributions of ducks throughout the world
• 1922 William Rowan tests the effect of photoperiodism on the size of gonads in birds
• 1925 - Perrine Millais Moncrieff publishes a field guide New Zealand Birds and How to Identify Them.
• 1927 - Frédéric Courtois publishes Les oiseaux du musée de Zi-Kia-Wei
• 1928 – Ernst Mayr leads the first of three expeditions to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, during which he discovers many new species
• 1929 - Conte Arrigoni degli Oddi publishes Ornitologia Italiana.
• 1929 - Friedrich von Lucanus publishes Zugvögel und Vogelzug (Migratory birds and bird migration)
• 1930 – Alexander Wetmore publishes his Systematic Classification
• 1931 – Ernst Schüz and Hugo Weigold publish Atlas des Vogelzuges, the first atlas of bird migration
• 1931 - Jean Théodore Delacour publishes Les Oiseaux de L'Indochine Française
• 1932 – Foundation of the British Trust for Ornithology for the study of birds in Britain
• 1932 - Yoshimaro Yamashina founds the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology at his home in Shibuya, Tokyo. His research centred on the use of the chromosomes of bird to distinguish species (and, later, DNA).
• 1933 - Nagamichi Kuroda publishes Birds of the Island of Java (2 Volumes, 1933–36)
• 1934 – Roger Tory Peterson publishes his Guide to the Birds, the first modern field guide
• 1935 – Konrad Lorenz publishes his study of imprinting in young ducklings and goslings
• 1936 - Robert Cushman Murphy publishesOceanic Birds of South America.
• 1937 – Margaret Morse Nice publishes Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow
• 1937 - Theodosius Dobzhansky publishes Genetics and the Origin of Species a key work of what is to become known as the modern evolutionary synthesis
• 1938 – Foundation of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology
• 1938-1941 - The Handbook of British Birds commenced.
• 1940 - Claude Gibney Finch-Davies plates held by the Transvaal Museum form the basis for Austin Roberts The Birds of Southern Africa
• 1943 – David Lack makes calculations of bird mortality using reports of ringed birds
• 1946 – Peter Scott founds the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge
• 1948 - IUCN Red List of Threatened Species founded as conservation concerns grow.