John Young is perhaps not as well-known as some of the other BOC founding fathers and very little information on his life seems to have been published. Nevertheless, during his lifetime he undertook several ornithological expeditions that were both impressive in their extensive geographical scope and in the important discoveries made.
John Young was born in 1838, the fourth of five children born to Rev. Edward Newton Young and Ann Young of Quainton, Buckinghamshire. He was educated at The Royal Academy in Gosport, formerly known as Burney’s Naval Academy, to lay the foundations for a career in the Royal Navy. However, when it was discovered that Young was slightly deaf, his naval ambitions were scuppered. Instead, in 1858, Young became a member of staff at the War Office, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1893.
Young’s extensive travels date from at least 1856, when, aged 18, he spent a year in India. Although the reason for this trip is unclear and there appears to be no published account of it, it presumably opened his eyes to a new world of birdlife and whetted his appetite for his future expeditions. Indeed, during his time at the War Office, Young used his annual leave to pursue his ornithological , with documented trips to Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Hungary, and Romania. In addition, between 1886 and 1887, a year-long cruise on the Golden took him to South America, Japan, and China.
Young published some of the discoveries made on several of these trips. Following his expedition to Hungary and Romania in May and June 1883, he wrote two articles for the Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society, entitled Heronry on the Danube (1885) and Visit to a colony of black-winged stilts’ nests (1887). Accompanying Young on this trip was Henry Seebohm (see Founding Fathers Blog 2), the noteworthy ornithologist and oologist, with whom he clearly shared a love of travel in the quest for ornithological . Seebohm wrote a diary of this trip, whose contents were summarised in an Appendix to Milsom’s 2020 Seebohm biography. It is not known how Young and Seebohm came to know each other. However, Young joined the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) in 1878 while Seebohm had joined five years earlier, so the two possibly became acquainted through their BOU membership.
Young’s Golden Fleece cruise was also fruitful; whilst in Patagonia, he shot a specimen of the Magellanic Plover Pluvianellus socialis, a bird that had been named in 1846 by the ornithology curator at the British Museum, George Robert Gray. The species had not been seen again thereafter until Young’s rediscovery. Young’s sighting delighted Henry Seebohm and was timely as it enabled Seebohm to incorporate it into his monograph The geographical distribution of the family Charadriidae, or the plovers, sandpipers, snipes, and their allies (1888). In the same book Seebohm mentions that whilst in South America, Young also shot a specimen of the American Oystercatcher Haematopus palliatus; Young was clearly a .
In 1888, during a nest-hunting trip to Scotland, Young discovered the first documented UK nest containing eggs of the Snow Bunting Plectrophenax nivalis. An account of the discovery taken from Young’s field diary was reproduced in Alfred Newton’s Ootheca Wolleyana (1902). Newton, the eminent ornithologist and Professor of Zoology at Cambridge University, described Young as ‘a good friend.’ Young exhibited the Snow Bunting nest and eggs at the Linnean Society on 1 November 1888, along with the Magellanic Plover from Patagonia.
In May 1890, Young was elected as a Fellow of The Linnean Society. The Linnean Assistant Secretary, librarian and notable ornithologist, James Edmund Harting (also Natural History editor of The Field and of The Zoologist) was one of his nominators, citing ornithology and botany as Young’s subjects of study.
Young never married and spent his adult life living in Bayswater, London. His obituary in The Ibis states that his death, after several years of bad health, appeared to go virtually unnoticed.
Whilst it is clear that Young was a ‘club man’, he does not appear to have taken an active role in the BOC, and there are no articles attributed to him in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club. Some of Young’s articles published in other journals are listed below.
Transactions of the Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists’ Society articles
1883 – Observations on the habits of the Bearded Tit in confinement
1885 – Heronry on the Danube
1887 – Visit to a colony of Black-winged Stilts’ nests
1889 – A few notes on a short visit to Arran More and the neighbourhood
The Zoologist articles (selected works)
1889 – Birds in London parks
1892 – Song of the Redpoll
1895 – Rooks in London
1897 – The Wood-Pigeons in the London parks
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Ashley Jackson
