Wade's Birds of Bempton Cliffs and his observations on Guillemot (Uria aalge) eggs

Abstract

Edward Walter Wade (1864–1937), author of The Birds of Bempton Cliffs (1903, 1907), is almost unknown. He worked as a clerk for the family timber company in Hull and in his spare time visited Bempton Cliffs, where he climbed (routinely without a rope) to observe the seabirds and to collect eggs. He was an active member of the Hull Scientific and Field Naturalists' Club and became one of their Vice-Presidents and President. Between 1902 and 1920 he was a member of the British Ornithologists' Union. Wade's published comments on guillemots and their pyriform-shaped eggs, at Bempton, were unusually insightful, in part because his observations were made at close range (a consequence of his climbing ability), and partly because he thought carefully about what he saw. Wade was among the first to point out that the spinning-like-a-top explanation for the guillemot's pyriform egg shape was incorrect based on his own observations. An appendix lists Wade's 69 articles, mostly about birds in Yorkshire, published between 1901 and 1930.