Sidney William Jackson

Sidney William Jackson (12 June 1873 – 30 September 1946) was an Australian naturalist and field ornithologist with a special interest in oology, who was also a skilled photographer and taxidermist.

History Jackson was born in Brisbane, Queensland, and received his education at Toowoomba Grammar School before further studies in Grafton, New South Wales. His passion for birds and egg collecting developed during his youth.

Based in Grafton, Jackson worked as a commercial traveller, a profession that provided him with opportunities to amass a significant collection of birds' eggs. While his primary focus was on bird and egg specimens, he also collected land snails and botanical specimens. Jackson, along with his brother Frank, developed innovative techniques for tree climbing, employing leg-spikes and rope-ladders to aid in egg collection.

Jackson contributed several papers to the RAOU journal The Emu. He was a diligent diarist, correspondent, photographer and talented sketcher, whose diaries, as well as much of his correspondence, photographic negatives and drawings, eventually found their way to the National Library of Australia in Canberra. He also authored a book, Egg Collecting and Bird Life of Australia, a combined autobiographical work and oological catalogue, illustrated with his own photographs, which was published in 1907.

In 1906 Jackson had sold his collection of nearly 2000 eggs, representing over 500 species of Australian birds, to H.L. White, a wealthy pastoralist based at Scone, New South Wales who was a keen amateur ornithologist and oologist. In 1907 White then employed Jackson as curator of his collection of eggs and bird skins, as well as a collector of further specimens. During this period Jackson travelled extensively throughout Australia on quests to obtain specimens and eggs of various birds. Following White's death in 1927, Jackson moved to Sydney where he wrote popular illustrated articles on natural history for newspapers and magazines, mainly the Sydney Morning Herald and the World's News, using the pen name Ajax.

Ornithological historian Alec Chisholm, in an article about Jackson's diaries in The Emu, described Jackson, whom he knew personally, as follows:

Legacy Eucalyptus jacksonii was named in honour of Jackson.