Edmund Selous

Edmund Selous (1857 – 25 March 1934) was a British ornithologist and writer. He was the younger brother of big-game hunter Frederick Selous. Born in London, the son of a wealthy stockbroker, Selous was educated privately and matriculated at Pembroke College, Cambridge in September 1877. He left without a degree and was admitted to the Middle Temple just over a year later and was called to the bar in 1881. He practised as a barrister only briefly before retiring to pursue the study of natural history and literature. He married in 1886 and moved to Wiesbaden, Germany with his family in 1888 and then to Mildenhall in Suffolk in 1889. In the 1920s, he moved to the Weymouth village Wyke Regis in Dorset, where he lived in the folly Wyke Castle with his wife.

Career

Selous started as a conventional naturalist, but developed a hatred of the killing of animals for scientific study and was a pioneer of bird-watching as a method of scientific study. He was a strong proponent of non-destructive bird-study as opposed to the collection of skins and eggs. In his book Bird Watching (Selous, 1901) he said: