ABSTRACT
Brian Hodgson was the first person to study the birds of the forests and mountains of the Himalayas, a true pioneer of Himalayan ornithology. His work on birds is without doubt his major achievement in the field of zoology. Hodgson’s bird collection of 9,512 specimens was one of the largest made in Asia and comprised 672 species, of which 124 were new to science. He is credited with first descriptions of 80 bird species (see the Appendix), the rest being mainly attributed to Blyth, the Gray brothers and Gould, who described the species based on Hodgson’s specimens.
