author

Cecil Smith

1826–1890

A Victorian naturalist with a lawyer’s training, he turned years of careful birdwatching into detailed studies of Somerset and the Channel Islands. His books are valued for their patient observation and their clear love of the places and wildlife he knew best.

1 Audiobook

Birds of Guernsey (1879) And the Neighbouring Islands: Alderney, Sark, Jethou, Herm; Being a Small Contribution to the Ornitholony of the Channel Islands

Birds of Guernsey (1879) And the Neighbouring Islands: Alderney, Sark, Jethou, Herm; Being a Small Contribution to the Ornitholony of the Channel Islands

by Cecil Smith

About the author

Born in 1826, he was an English barrister and ornithologist associated with Lydeard House near Taunton in Somerset. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, was called to the bar in 1852, and also served locally as a justice of the peace.

He is best remembered for The Birds of Somersetshire (1869) and Birds of Guernsey (1879). Those works drew on many years of field observation and helped record the birdlife of western England and the Channel Islands in careful, practical detail.

His writing has an appealing mix of precision and quiet enthusiasm. Even now, it offers a window into nineteenth-century natural history, when close attention to local landscapes could become lasting scientific work.