BIRDS OF ARABIA

First Edition. 624 pages and index, 19 coloured plates, 9 photographic plates, 53 text figures, 35 distribution maps, large folding map in pocket at the back of the book, half brown morocco, red leather title labels and gilt decoration on the spine, matching marbled paper sides and endpapers, bookplate of the renowned ornithologist Peter Steyn on the front paste-down endpaper, a very good copy.

Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO (3 March 1878 – 17 June 1967) was a British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist. He had a decorated military career spanning Africa, where he was credited with creating and executing the infamous Haversack Ruse. While early biographies lionized Meinertzhagen as a master of military strategy and espionage, later works such as Brian Garfield's The Meinertzhagen Mystery present him as a fraud for fabricating stories of his feats. The discovery of stolen museum bird specimens resubmitted as original discoveries had raised serious doubts on a number of scores as to the veracity of ornithological records he claimed as well. In 1948–49, he was accompanied by Dr.Phillip Clancey on an ornithological expedition to Arabia, Yemen, Aden, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa. As the author of numerous taxonomic and other works on birds, and possessing a vast collection of bird and bird lice specimens, he was long considered one of Britain's greatest ornithologists. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Meinertzhagen)