ИСТОРИЯ ИЗУЧЕНИЯ ПТИЦ ВОЛГОГРАДСКОГО ПОВОЛЖЬЯ

Abstract

On the territory of the contemporary Volgograd region, bird studies began in the second half of the 18th century. First ones were conducted by the heads of large academic expeditions, namely: S. G. Gmelin (1771, 1777), I. I. Lepekhin (1771, 1795), and P. S. Pallas (1788). Therefore, this period of ornithological research can be called the “academic period”. In the mid-19th century, professors, masters, undergraduate and graduate students of big Russian universities (Eversmann, Artzibascheff, Bogdanov, Yakovlev, Khlebnikov, and Bostanzhoglo) started to study the birds of the Volga region, and this second research period can be called the “university period”. At this time, much information about the birds in the Lower Volga region was also published by German taxidermists (together with zoologists), who were gathering bird collections for sale to European museums (Moeschler, Badeker, Rikbeyl, Henсke, Pelzam, Loretz, et al.). In the first half of the 20th century, scientific and practical studies of birds prevailed in the Lower Volga region, required to organize their use and protection. Together with planned surveys by specialists, important data on the birds were collected by amateur ornithologists, who came to the Lower Volga region accidently (Kracht, Vietinghoff, Torne, and Bub). In the second half of the 20th century, active ecological and geographical research was initiated by the staff of Volgograd Pedagogical Institute, who studied the parasites of birds of prey and corvids, the urban bird population, and the birds in fish ponds. And at the end of the 20th century, works under the Important Bird Areas of Russia program started in the Lower Volga region, supported by foreign grants. These works were accompanied by a large series of publications, but, unfortunately, they contained very little significant ecological and faunistic information.