A family of Ornithologists

The Fothergills.

Charles Fothergill was born in 1782, on the  23rd of May . The Fothergill family were a  well-known Yorkshire family who had interests in  Ornithology , science and the arts and who were well respected in the area. ( The Fothergill Family as ornithologists. The Naturalist no 785 June 1922 )

Charles’s Uncle William, ‘a clever bird student’ corresponded about the bird life of the ‘ancestral home in Yorkshire’, while his cousin Alexander, drew  ‘beautiful drawings ‘ from life, the birds and wildlife from the area. Alexander’s brother, Dr. John Fothergill, an artist compiled the list of birds  used in The History of Richmondshire (Whitaker 1823).

Charles at an early age was compiling lists of  Yorkshire birds and at 17 (1799) published Ornithologia Britannica, a folio of eleven pages, listing 301 species of British birds (Fothergill 1799).

The family home referred to is Carr End, Countersett, the name of the house referring to the end of Semer Water, a lake, or carr, in dialect. 

In 1816 Charles emigrated from Yorkshire to Montreal Canada with the aim of researching and compiling the natural history of the British Empire – an ambitious project. In 1805, before emigrating, he had started some original sketches for this work . He also produced 48 original sketches of English birds, insects and plants for Notes for a tour of the Northwestern Dales of Yorkshire. He entered his first art exhibition in 1834 showing work painted in Yorkshire and Scotland.

During his 24 years in Canada, he always remained interested in natural history .”He was one of the first to document the depletion of salmon in the rivers and streams of Upper Canada and in 1835 he had a paper he prepared on the migration of salmon read at the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec (Fothergill 1835). In that paper, he noted the diminishing of salmon due to the building of dams, the increase of human population, and illegal fishing. “  (The aspirations and disappointments of Charles Fothergill in Upper Canada, Ontario’s pioneer ornithologist/naturalist, from 1817 to 1840 John W. Sabean )

 He was definitely a man before his time.

I am using Charles 1799 bird list and his cousin John’s  1823 list, to compare to more recent sightings using Marie Hartley’s diary, 1947 the Akrigg yearbooks 1965 and 2014/15, as well as 2026 sightings .