Interest in birds was gathering momentum, though not always benevolent in spirit. Shooting and killing was much in vogue in the 1850s and Ralph Payne-Gallwey’s The Fowler in Ireland (1882)88 was a practitioner’s guide on how to shoot and trap wildfowl. It contained advice on how one could massacre birds by the hundreds by slowly paddling a punt equipped with a gun, mounted like a horizontal artillery piece, across muddy estuarine ooze towards unsuspecting flocks. Netting of plovers and other bird-catching tricks were described together with natural history accounts of the more valued quarry species. A more gentle bird book, with an evangelical flavour, produced by a school teacher, the Rev. Charles Benson (1883–1919) was Our Irish Song Birds (1886)89, which, according to Praeger, was ‘written with charm and understanding, worthy of a true naturalist’.
The migration of birds had long fascinated ornithologists. Despite a call by J. D. Salmon in 1834 for a chain of coastal observatories in Britain the initiative came from the Continent. In 1842 the Belgians attempted the observation of ‘periodic phenomena’, of which birds were a small part; then in 1875 the German bird watchers were organised into a massive scheme for recording the seasonal movements of migrating birds. In 1879 a pilot scheme was put into operation in Britain by the naturalists J. A. Harvie-Brown and John Cordeaux who had the bright idea of relying on the ready-made network of lighthouses and lighthouse keepers. Special recording forms were despatched to over 100 such coastal beacons and the experiment was a success.
Robert Patterson successfully quarried the zoological curiosities of the insects mentioned by Shakespeare and turned his endeavours into a charming and erudite book.
The following year, under the sponsorship of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the scheme was refined and extended to Ireland. The Irish naturalist Richard Manliffe Barrington (1849–1915) set up the project, enlisting single-handedly all the lighthouse keepers in the country. Another member of the landed gentry and a contemporary of Henry Chichester Hart, Barrington was born and lived at the family property at Fassaroe, Co. Wicklow. He possessed remarkable energy and enthusiasm for natural history. With the encouragement of his mentor, Alexander Goodman More, Barrington undertook several botanical expeditions to west coast islands, Midland lakes and Benbulbin, Co. Sligo and for the purpose of his ornithological work he visited most Irish islands. He is probably best-known for his work on bird migration. From the observations of the lighthouse keepers, Barrington gathered a vast amount of information on bird migrations and movements, much of it new and exciting (see here). He painstakingly compiled all the raw data and brought them together into a fat, information-packed tome The Migration of Birds as observed at Irish Lighthouses and Lightships (1900). The book is a particularly important reference source for Irish ornithologists as, unlike most other bird books, all the raw data is published in full, turning the book into a rich ornithological database.90
Barrington, Richard John Ussher (1841–1913) and Robert Warren (1829–1915) comprised an ornithological triumvirate of probably the most gifted bird watchers ever seen in Ireland. In 1890 the three had planned together with More to write a much needed sequel to Thompson’s great work on birds published nearly 50 years earlier. New data had been gathered, especially on species in the process of becoming extinct or undergoing distributional changes, and it was clearly time for a new work. But Barrington was over-committed to his migration studies and unable to assist, More was suffering from ill health – he died in 1895 – and Robert Warren, in the words of Praeger ‘did not feel himself sufficiently equipped for so wide an undertaking’ so the task fell upon Ussher who became the ‘real’ author of The Birds of Ireland (1900).91
Ussher, born and based in Co. Waterford, was, according to Praeger, facile princeps among Irish ornithologists. He was a quiet, courteous man with blue eyes and a red bushy beard. His almost over-modest bearing conveyed little impression of the determination, fearlessness, and contempt for discomfort he harboured inside. His expeditions, whether ornithological or speleological, necessitated descending the most dangerous cliffs and working underground for weeks amid rocks and mud. There were indeed very few cliffs, hills, loughs, woods and other places in Ireland that did not receive the imprint of Ussher’s foot. He was an oologist and for many years relentlessly persecuted the eyries of his favourite species, the peregrine falcon. He gave up egg collecting later in life. Warren was less robust. Born in Cork, he later settled on the Moy Estuary, Co. Mayo, an excellent location for birds. A regular correspondent with Thompson, he supplied the latter with plenty of information to be used in the Natural History of Ireland.
The Birds of Ireland proved worthy of its predecessor of 50 years earlier. It is probably the finest avifauna of its time from any European country with accurate and detailed information on the status and distribution of all species recorded in Ireland. Much of the data was gathered in the field by Ussher, to which were added Barrington’s results from the migration studies, and Warren’s steady contributions. Like Thompson, Ussher also drew upon an extensive network of gifted bird watchers scattered throughout the country who provided, by correspondence, detail of local occurrences. The quality of the information in The Birds of Ireland, as in Thompson’s three volumes on birds, is irreproachable, making it an invaluable historical text, regularly quoted by ornithologists today.
The Victorian natural history clubs
One particularly important development of the Victorian period was the field club which has been described by Allen as a masterpiece of social mechanism.62 These clubs were founded in most large British towns and cities during the 1820s and 1830s. The meeting rooms were the focus of intellectual debates on natural history with much exchanging and sharing of views. Special displays, or ‘cabinets of curiosity’, which were essentially miniature museums, flourished in association with these clubs. Field excursions were all the rage. The day was spent, often after a group breakfast – improved by a few stiffening drinks for the more hardy members – collecting specimens of flowers and rocks and perhaps some insects. Women were very much present on the outings as shown by group photographs. A grand picnic punctuated midday, adding further to the fortification of the participants, followed by more hunting of ‘specimens’ before the group dispersed to change gear and boots – the excursionists wore what would be seen today as the most inappropriate attire for active field work. They later reassembled for dinner and afterwards continued to be enlightened on the subject of natural history by ‘addresses’ and speeches from the luminaries. Most clubs were patronised by a single social class, the privileged one. But a few were more open and democratic.
The Belfast Natural History Society came into existence in 1821 – one of the first societies within Ireland and Britain. It was formed for the ‘cultivation of Zoology, Botany and Mineralogy in all their branches, more especially the investigation of the Natural History and Antiquities of Ireland’. The word ‘Philosophical’ was added in 1842 to the Society’s name which then became The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society to allow scope for a broader interaction between science and ideas. Robert Templeton and William Thompson, two of Ireland’s most distinguished naturalists, were members of the BNHPS. So was Robert Patterson, author of several zoological text books