John Freeman Milward Dovaston

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James William Giles

John Freeman Milward Dovaston (30 December 1782 – 8 August 1854) was a

naturalist.[1][2]

Life and work

Dovaston was born in Twyford,

Oxford to study law.[3]

At

Magazine of Natural History included light-hearted verse.[3]

Dovaston became a friend of the

History of British Birds. In his letters to Bewick, he introduced many of his innovations, including what he called an "ornithotrophe" (punning with "trough" and the Greek word for trophy), a hanging bird feeder. He also experimented with artificial nest boxes. In an 1825 letter to Bewick, he described the observations he made using a small spyglass that he called an "ornithoscope". John Denson, the editor of the Magazine of Natural History, had also been using a spyglass since 1823, although the use of these devices for observing birds grew only after a letter in 1830 by an observer who abhorred killing birds.[3]

Dovaston also experimented with growing mistletoes on trees, fencing off grasslands to study hares, and trying to document bird calls with musical notation. He made a neck ring using cello wire to ring swallows, and noted that four of the birds returned the next year. He found that individual birds had their own specific beats or haunts and rarely intruded into the territories of others. He was among the first to attempt to map and demarcate the boundaries of robin territories.[3]

Works

  • Fitz Gwarine with other rhymes, 1812.[4]
  • A selection of British melodies, 1817.[4]
  • The Dove, 1822.[4]
  • Lectures on natural history and national melody, 1839.[4]

References

  1. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7946. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ Cathrall, William (1855). The history of Oswestry. Oswestry: George Lewis. pp. 224–226. Retrieved 2011-10-20.
  3. ^
    doi:10.3366/jsbnh.1967.4.6.277
    .
  4. ^ a b c d "John F. M. Dovaston". Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography (1892-1921) 1:905. Virginia Tech. Retrieved 2013-06-06.

Further reading

  • Joanna Richardson (ed.) Letters from Lambeth: The Correspondence of the Reynolds Family with John Freeman Milward Dovaston 1808–1815 (Boydell Press, 1981)

External links

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