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Henry Eliot Howard

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Henry Eliot Howard
JP
Born(1873-11-13)13 November 1873
Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England
Died26 December 1940(1940-12-26) (aged 67)
Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire, England
EducationEton
Alma materMason College, now the University of Birmingham
OccupationFactory director
Known forOrnithology
Notable workSee Bibliography

Henry Eliot Howard JP (13 November 1873 – 26 December 1940) was an English amateur ornithologist, noted for being one of the first to describe territoriality behaviours in birds in a detailed manner.[1] His ideas on territoriality were influential in the work of Max Nicholson.[1]

Biography

Henry Eliot Howard was born at Stone House near Kidderminster,[2] second son of Henry Howard and Alice Gertrude Thomson. He studied at Stoke Poges, Eton, and Mason College (the forerunner of the University of Birmingham).[1] He entered his father's steelworks firm, Lloyd and Lloyd in Worcester, becoming a director in 1896. Then in 1903 a director of the enlarged firm, Stewarts & Lloyds.[3]

Mason College, now the University of Birmingham

He showed from his earliest childhood an intense love of natural history. It was not until 1914 that his first work, British Warblers, illustrated by Henrik Grönvold, was fully published, having been issued in parts since 1907.[1] Continually working on the theory of territory, he published Territory in Bird Life, illustrated by George Edward Lodge and Henrik Grönvold, in 1920 (a reissue in 1948 had an introduction by Julian Huxley and James Fisher), followed by An Introduction to the Study of Bird Behaviour, Nature of a Bird's World and lastly A Waterhen's World, in 1940. His books were published under the name "Eliot Howard".

He was a Justice of the Peace[4] and for forty-five years a member of the British Ornithologists' Union.[1]

Although his home was always in Worcestershire, much of his time was spent on the wild coast of Donegal and in the north west of Ireland, shooting, fishing and studying natural history. He died at his home, Clareland, Stourport-on-Severn. He was attracted to the wild and beautiful area of Horn Head in the North West of Donegal, close to the Atlantic Ocean, through his marriage in 1900 to Anne Elizabeth Frances Stewart whose family had lived there for many years (the 1901 census of Ireland shows his wife was born in Donegal).

His father, Henry was a manufacturing chemist and was son of John Eliot Howard. John's father was Luke Howard. The 1901 Census shows Henry Eiot as a, 'Iron tube manufacturer'.

His daughter, Esme Eleanor Howard, married the Reverend John William Fletcher Boughey, son of the Reverend Percy Fletcher Boughey and Elsie de Strange Herring, on 25 April 1940.[4]

Bibliography

Books

  • Howard, Eliot (1907–14). The British Warblers: A History with Problems of Their Lives. R. H. Porter. 2 vols.
  • —— (1920). Territory in Bird Life. John Murray.
  • —— (1929). An Introduction to the Study of Bird Behaviour. Cambridge University Press.
  • —— (1935). The Nature of a Bird’s World. Cambridge University Press.
  • —— (1940). A Waterhen’s Worlds. Cambridge University Press.

Journal articles

  • —— (1903). "On Sexual Selection and the Aesthetic Sense in Birds."". The Zoologist. 4 (7): 407–417.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Burkhardt Jr. n.d.
  2. ^ Lowe 1941, p. 195.
  3. ^ Kinlen, L. J. Howard, (Henry) Eliot Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry Retrieved 1 May 2015
  4. ^ a b "Person Page 17472 (Reverend John William Fletcher Boughey)". thePeerage.com. Retrieved 16 July 2011.
  5. ^ Green plover: (Northern) lapwing (Vanellus vanellus)

Sources

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