Hans Löhrl (25 May 1911 – 26 June 2001) was a German ornithologist and ethologist who conducted studies on bird behaviour, life-history, the imprinting of natal habitat, and wrote several popular books on bird life. Löhrl was born in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

and studied biology and geology at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Wü ...

and received a PhD from the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's List of universities in Germany, sixth-oldest u ...

for studies on rodents. He then worked at the

Rossitten Rybachy (russian: Рыба́чий, from ''Рыба́к'', "Fisherman", german: Rossitten, pl, Rosity, lt, Rasytė) is a rural settlement in Zelenogradsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the Curonian Spit. As of 2010 it has a ...

and Radolfzell bird observatories, heading the latter from 1963 until his retirement in 1976. Löhrl was skilled at raising young birds and his home often had free flying birds of a number of species that he studied at close quarters. These included studies on cuckoos, nuthatches, and tree creepers which are considered hard to raise in captivity. In the 1950s he was influenced by

Gustav Kramer Gustav Kramer (11 March 1910 – 19 April 1959) was a German zoologist and ornithologist who specialised in allometry. He described ''Xenopus laevis'', the African clawed frog, for the first time in his doctoral thesis. Near the end of the 1 ...

to examine how collared flycatchers were able to learn what their home-grounds where and noted that this imprinting required the young birds to fly and explore the habitats in which they grew up. He also examined problems of clutch size in terms of the last or weakest nestling. He coined the term ''nachstürzen'' (or diving after) as a reflex action among insectivorous birds for whom chasing fallen or escaping prey was energetically less demanding than searching afresh for prey.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Löhrl, Hans 1911 births 2001 deaths German ornithologists