Born in Switzerland on June 11, 1829, Alfred Newton was a key player in Parliment’s first acts to protect birds. His most important work was A Dictionary of Birds (four volumes) he finished in 1896 which grew from his articles on birds published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He studied birds in Iceland, the West Indies, and in North America. Jacques-Yves Cousteau (famous oceanographer) was also born on June 11.
His writing showed how much he admired birds…
There is no one appreciative of the beauties of nature who will not recall… with delight the time when a live humming-bird first met his gaze. The suddenness of the apparition, even when expected, and its brief duration, are alone enough to fix the fluttering vision on the mind’s eye…. The beautiful nests of humming-birds… will be found on examination to be very solidly and tenaciously built, though the materials are generally of the slightest – cotton-wool or some vegetable down and spider’s webs. —Alfred Newton in The Encyclopedia Britannica 1911, vol. 13, p.887.
