Thomas Carter (1863–1931) was an English ornithologist active in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. He made large collections of bird specimens while living and working in remote regions of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

Biography

Born in the town of

Masham Masham ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. It had a population of 1,205 at the 2011 census. The town is located northwest of York and was in the former Borough of Harrogate, Harrogate ...

in Yorkshire, England, to Amelia Mary Carter, née Rhodes on the 6 April 1863. His merchant father, James, is said to have shared an interest in wildlife. Carter had published papers on British birds, and made observations in Iceland, before travelling to Western Australia. He arrived at Carnarvon to work at Boolathanna station, later acquiring a pastoral lease around

Point Cloates Point Cloates (), formerly known as Cloate's Island, is a peninsula approximately south-southwest of North West Cape, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It features Point Cloates Lighthouse and the ruins of a previous lighthouse (buil ...

. Carter married Annie Ward when back in England in 1903, and returned to settle at a

Broomehill Broomehill is a place name, and may refer to: * Broomehill, Western Australia Broomehill is a town on the Great Southern Highway between Katanning, Western Australia, Katanning and Albany, Western Australia, Albany, in the Great Southern (Wes ...

property. Illness reportedly required his family to return to England in 1914, living in

Sutton, Surrey Sutton is a town in the London Borough of Sutton in South London, England. It is the administrative headquarters of the Outer London borough, on the lower slopes of the North Downs. It is south-southwest of Charing Cross, one of the fourteen ...

, but he returned to the region for several expeditions, the last in 1928. Thomas Carter died in Yorkshire, 29 January 1931, and is buried there.

Works

Tom Carter's arrival in Western Australia reopened ornithological study of the region's birds, following a period of few collections and little research. While working in his first job as a Jackaroo, Carter used his spare time to make observations and collect bird skins and eggs in the

Gascoyne The Gascoyne region is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Gascoyne has about of ...

district. He later studied the

North West Cape North West Cape is a peninsula in the north-west of Western Australia. Cape Range National Park, Cape Range runs down the spine of the peninsula and Ningaloo Reef runs along the western edge. It is in the Gascoyne region and includes the town of ...

and Broomehill regions. He also made an expedition to

Dirk Hartog Island Dirk Hartog Island is an island off the Gascoyne (Western Australia), Gascoyne coast of Western Australia, within the Shark Bay, Western Australia, Shark Bay World Heritage Area. It is about long and between wide and is Western Australia's ...

in 1916, where he made the first observations of the Black-and-white Wren (a subspecies of the White-Winged Fairy-Wren) and the Western Grass-wren since their first collection one hundred years before. Carter made a collection of around five hundred bird skins from Western Australia, which he delivered to England in 1903 and was eventually included in the Tring Collection and at the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

. Carter made a significant contribution to the ornithological literature on Australian birds, his notes and papers from Western Australia appearing in ''

The Zoologist ''The Zoologist'' was a monthly natural history magazine established in 1843 by Edward Newman and published in London. Newman acted as editor-in-chief until his death in 1876, when he was succeeded, first by James Edmund Harting (1876–1896 ...

'' and ''

The Emu ''Emu'', subtitled ''Austral Ornithology'', is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of BirdLife Australia (formerly the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union). The journal was established in 1901 and is the oldest ornithological journal publi ...

''. In his article, 'Birds Occurring in the Region of the North-West Cape', (''Emu'', 1903.), Carter gives the names of birds in the Talaindji language. Carter published 'Birds of the Broome Hill District', where he had lived for a decade, in the ''Emu'' in 1923–24.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carter, Thomas 1863 births 1931 deaths English ornithologists People from Masham Zoological collectors People educated at Sedbergh School English expatriates in Australia