Annie Meinertzhagen

Annie Meinertzhagen (2 June 1889 – 6 July 1928) She married fellow ornithologist Richard Meinertzhagen in 1921 and died from a gunshot fired under suspicious circumstances.

Early years Born Anne Constance Jackson, her parents were Major Randle Jackson and Emily V. Baxter of Swordale, a village in eastern Ross-shire in the Scottish Highlands. Mrs Jackson was the daughter of Edward Baxter of Kincaldrum, Angus.

Anne developed an early interest in natural history, especially in birds. With her younger sister Dorothy, who was to become an entomologist, she studied zoology for three years at the Imperial College of Science in London under Ernest MacBride.

Much of her early ornithological work occurred while she was based in Swordale, in Ross and Cromarty, and along the firths of Cromarty and Dornoch she began publishing papers on the local birdlife in 1909.

Marriage

In March 1921, she married British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. She spent part of her honeymoon in research at Walter Rothschild's ornithological museum at Tring. to Egypt and Palestine in 1923, to Madeira in 1925, and to India in the winter of 1925–26, when she joined her husband in an expedition to Sikkim and southern Tibet hunting birds and mammals in the Himalayas.

Death Annie Meinertzhagen died at her estate at Swordale on 6 July 1928, just over three months after the birth of her third child, and waders which formed the basis of her contributions on their plumages to Witherby's Practical Handbook of British Birds (1919–1924). Under her married name she made several important contributions to the Ibis, including review papers on the genus Burhinus in 1924, the subfamily Scolopacinae in 1926, and the family Cursoridae in 1927.

Recognition 1915 – Honorary Lady Member of the British Ornithologists' Union 1919 – Corresponding Member of the American Ornithologists' Union

She is honoured in the subspecific name of the Antipodes snipe (Coenocorypha aucklandica meinertzhagenae), described by Walter Rothschild in 1927.