Michael John Nicoll (29 September 1880, Bepton - 31 October 1925,

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

) was an English ornithologist and zoo director at

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah'' arz, الجيزة ' ) is the second-largest city in Egypt after Cairo and fourth-largest city in Africa after Kinshasa, Lagos and Cairo. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 9.2 ...

who worked on the birds of Egypt. He accompanied Lord Crawford on several voyages to explore bird life and wrote a book on his experiences. He also published one of the earliest comprehensive works on the birds of Egypt - the ''Handlist of the Birds of Egypt''.

Biography

Nicoll born to Reverend C.A. Nicoll in Bepton, Sussex. He grew up at

St Leonard's-on-Sea St Leonards-on-Sea (commonly known as St Leonards) is a town and seaside resort in the Borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. It has been part of the borough since the late 19th century and lies to the west of central Hastings. The origina ...

studying at the local school and moved to a farm in Brightling where he took an interest in the natural world. He began to observe, shoot, skin and preserve birds in Sussex. He was a friend of Thomas Parkin and was later helped by P.L. Sclater who elected him in 1902 to the membership of the

British Ornithologists' Union The British Ornithologists' Union (BOU) aims to encourage the study of birds ("ornithology") and around the world, in order to understand their biology and to aid their conservation. The BOU was founded in 1858 by Professor Alfred Newton, Henry ...

. He travelled on an expedition with Lord Crawford aboard the latter's yacht ''Valhalla''. He wrote a book on this in 1908 - ''Three Voyages of a Naturalist''. In 1906 he moved to Egypt to work at the Giza zoological gardens as an assistant to Captain S.S. Flower. He studied the ornithology of Egypt and wrote a book on the subject in 1919. In 1923, Nicoll replaced Major Flower as director of the Giza zoo but an illness forced him to retire in the next year. He settled at

Wittersham Wittersham is a small village and civil parish in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. It is part of the Isle of Oxney. History The Domesday Book of 1086 does not mention Wittersham, but it does assign the manor of Palstre to Odo, Bishop of ...

in Kent. He married Norris Lyon in 1912 after whom he named an Egyptian warbler '' Sylvia norrisae'' (now considered as a subspecies of the

Sardinian warbler The Sardinian warbler (''Curruca melanocephala'') is a common and widespread typical warbler from the Mediterranean region. Like most ''Curruca'' species, it has distinct male and female plumages. The adult male has a grey back, whitish underpart ...

). Although Nicoll was noted as a careful observer it has been found that 31 of the specimens in the

Hastings Rarities The Hastings Rarities affair is a case of statistically demonstrated ornithological fraud that misled the bird world for decades in the 20th century. The discovery of the long-running hoax shocked ornithologists. The Hastings Rarities were a se ...

case came from him. Some specimens were even found to have been prepared in a style more likely followed in Egypt than in England and that some of the rarities claimed to have been shot in England may have come from him.

References

External links

''Three Voyages of a Naturalist'' (1906)

''Handlist of the Birds of Egypt'' (1919)

''Wild Birds of the Giza Gardens'' (1912)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicoll, Michael John 1880 births 1925 deaths English ornithologists 20th-century British zoologists People from Chichester District People from Hastings People from Wittersham British expatriates in Egypt