Before Google Scholar and similar search engines, most ornithologists that I know trundled off to the library from time to time to search the current literature on birds. As a graduate student at McGill, I was lucky enough to have the Blacker-Wood Library close at hand and they subscribed to something like 300 bird journals, …

If you grew up in the 1950s, as I did, you will know the remainder of that song title as “(is my two front teeth)”, a song recorded by Spike Jones & His City Slickers that I found really annoying back in the day [1]. Annoying at least until one day, on the way to …

Last Wednesday, 29 November, was the 390th anniversary of the birth of John Wray, exactly one week later than the birthday of his student, friend, collaborator, and benefactor Francis Willughby (on 22 November) who was 7 years younger. Wray changed his surname to Ray when he was 43 years old having decided then that that …

Francis Willughby (1635-1672), an English ornithologist, is far from well-known. He died at just 36, so his  groundbreaking books on birds, fish and insects were all completed and subsequently published by his life-long friend and one-time undergraduate tutor, John Ray. A brilliant academic and prolific writer, Ray rather eclipsed Francis Willughby. When I wrote The …