William Eagle Clarke

Dr William Eagle Clarke ISO FLS FRSE PBOU LL.D. (16 March 1853 – 10 May 1938) was a British ornithologist.

Life Clarke was born in Leeds where his father William Clarke was a solicitor and educated at the Grammar School and at Yorkshire College, Leeds where he studied under Professor L C Miall. He was originally a civil engineer and surveyor, but later took up natural history as a profession. He became Curator of Leeds Museum in 1884, moving to the Natural History Department of the Royal Scottish Museum in 1888, where he was Keeper from 1906 to 1921.

In 1903 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh his main proposer being Ramsay Heatley Traquair. He was President of the British Ornithologists Union in 1918. He was also secretary and president of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union.

Publications The Eddystone Lantern, October 12, 1901 from a painting by Marian Eagle Clarke, as published in Studies in Bird Migration (1912).

Atlas of Zoogeography. Bartholomew, J.G., Clarke, W.E., Grimshaw, P.H. John Bartholomew and Co., Edinburgh. (1911) Studies in Bird Migration (1912). Manual of British Birds Third edition, Gurney & Jackson (1927) (revisions to the earlier editions by Howard Saunders)