A History of Birdwatching in 100 Objects

In 1665, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge published the first issue of its journal, having been granted permission by Charles II, and has broken the news of many of the latest scientific discoveries consistently ever since.

Before experimental results become accepted, or before a species is defined as a discrete entity by the scientific community (and consequently birders), conclusions are published formally as a paper in a scientific journal.

Until the 17th century, however, the results of scientific endeavours were often kept private, written in Latin or code, announced in the form of anagrams, or compiled into a magnum opus. The almost simultaneous publication of the first issues of the Journal des Scavans in France and the British Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in January and March 1665 changed this; both are still going strong. They rapidly established strict writing and data presentation protocols that still apply today and, though this can make for a dry read, the interchangeable style enables scientists to replicate, compare and evaluate results internationally and through time.

As truly disciplined academic inquiry was itself only just emerging during the 17th century, the advent of formal scientific publishing helped shape its development. Research had to conform to the formulation of a hypothesis, the laying out of a repeatable method to test that hypothesis, a concise summary and interpretation of the results, and a conclusion. The contents of papers have varied little since, and nor has the formality of having the contents reviewed by anonymous expert peers before publication.

The naming of a species has its own precise protocol within the journal system, a process referred to as ‘alpha taxonomy’, which involves publishing a detailed diagnostic description in a scientific journal, as well as depositing type specimens within a museum or collection.

Formally, an ornithologist (or, indeed, other biologist) naming a new species is called an author and is expected to be familiar with the majority of the published literature and extant forms and their accepted classification. In the case of a bird new to science, the paper in which the description of the type specimen is published should also contain a physical run-down of the main features of male, female and immature plumages, as well as vocalisations if possible and relevant, and also the circumstances under which the bird was ‘collected’ and any field observations that were made.

Most species are visually separable from each other, but as many a modern birder will realise, just because a form is identifiable in the field doesn’t make it a species, and conversely some species are not easily separable from their near relations by physical appearance. The definition of the term ‘species’ itself is constantly debated, with no conception of the term applying in all circumstances.

It may all seem a little confusing, as well as dusty and unexciting, to the field birder, but without the methods and protocols first established almost 250 years ago, tricky birds would be even harder to put a name to in the field. The struggle to figure out what exactly we are looking at continues …