What can we learn from antique ornithology?

Ornithology has a venerable history. Worldwide, birds are both culturally important and one of the most salient reminders of the natural world, and beyond their regular appearances in folklore, literature and art they were among the first subjects of natural history from the classical world to the Renaissance. The study of birds remained a fixture of inquiry through the scientific revolution: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific journal still published, included ornithological method papers in its very first volume (Boyle 1666), and as scientific practice developed ornithological research kept pace.

A growing interest in the diversity and systematics of birds ultimately led to the formation of dedicated ornithological societies and journals in the second half of the nineteenth century. First were the Society of German Ornithologists (Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft) in 1850 and the British Ornithologists’ Union in 1858; their respective journals ‘Journal für Ornithologie’ (now ‘Journal of Ornithology’) and ‘Ibis’ followed in 1853 and 1859. In America, the American Ornithologists’ Union was founded in 1883 with its journal ‘Auk’ beginning the same year, followed by the Wilson Ornithological Society (1886) and Cooper Ornithological Club (1893) and their journals shortly thereafter. The Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union (now part of BirdLife Australia) was founded in 1901, along with its journal ‘Emu’. Amazingly, all these publications are still extant, and digital versions of much of their content are now available back to their first issues.

In common with other branches of science, ornithological research has exploded in recent decades, and with this plethora of new work, it is tempting to disregard the older corpus of knowledge, under the assumption that it has either been superseded or is too far removed from modern practice to be useful. However, with over 10 000 extant bird species worldwide and the avifauna of many regions still rarely studied, we would encourage the ornithological community to not overlook earlier literature. In this note, we illustrate the potential interest and value of older studies using three diverse articles published in a single journal issue 100 years ago: volume nineteen of Emu.