Colin James Oliver Harrison (18 August 1926 – 17 November 2003) was an English
ornithologist
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...
.
Harrison was born in
London. He got a scholarship to grammar school, and then worked as a librarian and a teacher. He had been interested in birds since childhood, and joined an expedition to study autumn
migration in
Norway. He became a professional ornithologist at the age of 34 and became responsible for the care of the national collection of birds' nests and eggs in the Bird Room at the
Natural History Museum at Tring, Hertfordshire. In 1966 he led the fourth of the series of
Harold Hall Australian ornithological collecting expeditions.
Harrison later became interested in
biogeography
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...
and the museum's avian
paleontological collection, on which he published a number of articles with
Cyril Walker. He studied and published on different aspects of bird behaviour, on plumage patterns, and on the bone structure of modern and fossil birds. He identified ''
Eostrix vincenti'' in 1980.
Bibliography (incomplete)
* ''Atlas of the Birds of the Western Palearctic'' (Collins, 1982)
* ''History of the Birds of Britain'' (Collins, 1988)
* ''A Field Guide to the Nests, Eggs and Nestlings of British and European Birds'' (Quadrangle, 1975)
References
*
* Publisher's biography in ''A Field Guide to Nests, Eggs and Nestlings of British and European Birds''
1926 births
2003 deaths
English ornithologists
Scientists from London
20th-century British zoologists
{{UK-ornithologist-stub