Thomas Carter (1863–1931) was an English ornithologist active in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. He made large collections of bird specimens while living and working in remote regions of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

Biography

Born in the town of

Masham Masham ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England. It had a population of 1,205 at the 2011 census. Etymology In Wensleydale, on the western bank of the River Ure, the name derives from the An ...

in Yorkshire, England, to Amelia Mary Carter, née Rhodes on the 6 April 1863. His merchant father, James, is said to have shared an interest in wildlife. Carter had published papers on British birds, and made observations in Iceland, before travelling to Western Australia. He arrived at Carnarvon to work at Boolathanna station, later acquiring a pastoral lease around

Point Cloates Point Cloates (), formerly known as Cloate's Island, is a peninsula approximately 100 kilometres south south-west of North West Cape, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It features Point Cloates Lighthouse and the ruins of a previous li ...

. Carter married Annie Ward when back in England in 1903, and returned to settle at a Broomehill property. Illness reportedly required his family to return to England in 1914, living in Sutton, Surrey, but he returned to the region for several expeditions, the last in 1928. Thomas Carter died in Yorkshire, 29 January 1931, and is buried there.

Works

Tom Carter's arrival in Western Australia reopened ornithological study of the region's birds, following a period of few collections and little research. While working in his first job as a Jackaroo, Carter used his spare time to make observations and collect bird skins and eggs in the

Gascoyne The Gascoyne region is one of the nine administrative regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Gasc ...

district. He later studied the

North West Cape North West Cape is a peninsula in the north-west of Western Australia. Cape Range runs down the spine of the peninsula and Ningaloo Reef runs along the western edge. It is in the Gascoyne region and includes the town of Exmouth. History In 16 ...

and Broomehill regions. He also made an expedition to

Dirk Hartog Island A dirk is a long bladed thrusting dagger.Chisholm, Hugh (ed.), ''Dagger'', The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. VII, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (1910), p. 729 Historically, it gained its name from the Highland Dirk (Scot ...

in 1916, where he made the first observations of the Black-and-white Wren (a subspecies of the

White-Winged Fairy-Wren The white-winged fairywren (''Malurus leucopterus'') is a species of passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It lives in the drier parts of Central Australia; from central Queensland and South Australia across to Western Austr ...

) and the Western Grass-wren since their first collection one hundred years before. Carter made a collection of around five hundred bird skins from Western Australia, which he delivered to England in 1903 and was eventually included in the Tring Collection and at the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

. Carter made a significant contribution to the ornithological literature on Australian birds, his notes and papers from Western Australia appearing in ''

The Zoologist ''The Zoologist'' was a monthly natural history magazine established in 1843 by Edward Newman and published in London. Newman acted as editor-in-chief until his death in 1876, when he was succeeded, first by James Edmund Harting (1876–1896) ...

'' and ''

The Emu ''Emu'', subtitled ''Austral Ornithology'', is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of BirdLife Australia (formerly the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union). The journal was established in 1901 and is the oldest ornithological journal publ ...

''. In his article, 'Birds Occurring in the Region of the North-West Cape', (''Emu'', 1903.), Carter gives the names of birds in the Talaindji language. Carter published 'Birds of the Broome Hill District', where he had lived for a decade, in the ''Emu'' in 1923–24.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carter, Thomas 1863 births 1931 deaths Australian ornithologists People from Masham Zoological collectors People educated at Sedbergh School