The British Ornithologists’ Club is delighted to congratulate Guy M. Kirwan, Editor of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club since 2004, on receiving the 2026 Maria Koepcke Prize from the German Ornithological Society (Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft).
Guy Kirwan (centre) receives his prize alongside Dr. Sylke Frahnert (left) and Dr. Till Töpfer (right) of the German Ornithological Society (Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft). Photo courtesy of C. Viehauser.
The prestigious award recognises Guy’s outstanding contribution to ornithology and, in particular, his distinctive combination of field research, museum collections and taxonomic scholarship. The German Ornithological Society highlighted his work on the diversity and geographical variation of birds and his role in demonstrating how natural history collections remain fundamental to modern ornithological research.
Few careers illustrate this connection between field and museum so effectively. Guy’s extensive field experience, spanning regions from Turkey and Socotra to the Middle East and Central and South America, has informed detailed studies of specimens held in collections around the world. His research has contributed to numerous taxonomic reassessments, including work on type specimens and the description of taxa such as the Socotra Buzzard Buteo socotraensis, Pale Owl Strix hadorami and Basalt Wheatear Oenanthe lugens warriae.
His international collaborations have included major collections at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the Natural History Museum, Tring, as well as collections in Bonn and Berlin. His work has helped demonstrate the continuing scientific value of specimens collected decades or even centuries ago.
For the BOC, the award is especially welcome recognition of Guy’s longstanding contribution to the Club. Since 2004, as Editor of the BBOC, he has played a central role in maintaining the journal’s international reputation for publishing detailed, collection-based research in bird taxonomy, systematics, and biogeography. His editorship has helped provide a global platform for research that connects museum collections with contemporary ornithological questions.
Guy has also made an enormous contribution to the wider ornithological literature, including more than 3,000 species accounts for Handbook of the Birds of the World, HBW Alive and Birds of the World, alongside numerous books, and scientific papers.
The Maria Koepcke Prize, presented at the German Ornithological Society’s 159th Annual Meeting in Mainz on 17 September 2026, is a fitting recognition of Guy’s exceptional contribution to ornithology—and of a career that embodies the enduring relationship between field observation, scientific collections and the discovery and understanding of birds.
The BOC warmly congratulates Guy on this very well-deserved honour.
