Philip Henry Gosse

The first study of Jamaican birds was made by Philip Henry Gosse, sometimes nicknamed “The Father of Jamaican Ornithology.”

The Englishman came to the island in 1844, living at the Bluefields House. When he returned to England in 1847, he published The Birds of Jamaica, followed by two other books, the Illustrations of the Birds of Jamaica in 1849, and the Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica in 1851.