John Alexander Harvie-Brown

J. A. Harvie-Brown was born near Larbert in central Scotland,[2] the only son of John Harvie-Brown and his wife, Elizabeth Spottiswoode, who was the daughter of Thomas Spottiswoode of Dunipace[3] (entitled "Thomas Spottiswoode, 6th of Dunipace").[4] J. A. Harvie-Brown inherited approximately 2100 acres near Dunipace.[5]

He was educated at Merchiston Castle School, and then attended both the University of Edinburgh and Cambridge University.

Travels of a Naturalist in Northern Europe (1905)

As a wealthy landowner, he could dedicate himself to ornithology and other naturalistic studies without pursuing a profession. He made ornithological visits to Norway, Russia, Finland and Transylvania. Perhaps his most famous expedition was with Henry Seebohm to the lower reaches of the Pechora River in 1875, when the eggs of the grey plover and the little stint were discovered. For many years Harvie-Brown cruised each summer among the islands of the Scottish coast in his yacht the "Shiantelle" (built in 1887 in Fraserburgh).[6] He, with H. W. Feilden, collected many eggs and birds' skins from the Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Faroes and even the island of Rockall (no eggs but birds' skins in the case of Rockall).[7] However, in January 1897 a fire almost totally destroyed the collection.

Harvie-Brown died in 1916, after a number of years of ill health. His burial was at Dunipace Old Cemetery. His publications in the scientific literature number close to 250 items. He was elected an Honorary Life Member of the American Ornithologists' Union. In 1912 the U. of Aberdeen conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D.[8]

In 1880 Alfred Newton persuaded the British Association to sponsor a committee for the study of bird migration all over the world but especially along the coasts of England and Scotland. Harvie-Brown, John Cordeaux, and W. Eagle Clarke were among the most important contributors to the committee's effort to recruit the keepers of lighthouses and lightvessels to make and record observations of bird migration.[9]

Image from A vertebrate fauna of the outer Hebrides

• Report on the migration of birds (1879–1887) (9 vols.)
  • Harvie-Brown, John A.; Cordeaux, John (1880). "Report on the Migration of Birds in the Autumn of 1879". The Zoologist. 3rd series. 4 (41): 161–204.
  • ——; Cordeaux, John; Kermode, Philip Moore Callow (1881). Report on the Migration of Birds in the Spring and Autumn of 1880. London: Sonnenschein & Allen. OCLC 756171980. (120 pgs.)
  • ——; Cordeaux, John; Kermode, Philip Moore Callow; Barrington, Richard Manliffe; More, A.G. (1882). Report on the Migration of Birds in the Spring and Autumn of 1881. London: West, Newman & Co. OCLC 315336609. (99 pgs.)

• The capercaillie in Scotland (1879)
• The history of the squirrel in Great Britain (1881)
• A vertebrate fauna of the outer Hebrides (1888) (with M. Forster Heddle, William Anderson Smith, & Thomas Edward Buckley)
• A vertebrate fauna of Argyll and the inner Hebrides (1892) (with Thomas E. Buckley)
• A fauna of the Moray basin (1895) (with Thomas E. Buckley)
• The wonderful trout (1898)
• On the avifauna of the outer Hebrides, 1888-1902 (1902), in the Annals of Scottish Natural History: A Quarterly Magazine ...
• The red-necked phalarope in Ireland, the Outer Hebrides, and Shetland as a nesting species (1903), in the Irish Naturalist
• Travels of a naturalist in northern Europe, Norway, 1871, Archangel, 1872, Petchora, 1875 (1905)

Media related to John Alexander Harvie-Brown at Wikimedia Commons

• Harvie Brown, John Alexander (1844–1916), Landed families of Britain and Ireland: July 2014, blogspot.com