page_title: Ornithological Dictionary
section_title: Body
hierarchical_section_title: Ornithological Dictionary / Outline / Body
caption_attribution_description: English: Start of the article on the Cirl Bunting, a bird discovered by Montagu, in his 1802 Ornithological Dictionary
context_page_description: The Ornithological Dictionary; or Alphabetical Synopsis of British Birds was written by the English naturalist and army officer George Montagu, and first published by J. White of Fleet Street, London in 1802.
  It was one of the texts, along with Thomas Bewick's contemporaneous A History of British Birds that made ornithology popular in Britain, and, with the 1676 Ornithologia libri tres of Francis Willughby and John Ray, helped to make it the object of serious study. The book includes a description of the cirl bunting, discovered by Montagu in 1800 near his home in Kingsbridge, Devon.
  The first edition was admired by biologists including Charles Darwin and David Lack.
  A second edition, extensively revised by James Rennie in 1831, was panned by scientific critics.
context_section_description: The entire body of the book is arranged as a dictionary from Aberdevine ('Vide Siskin'.) on page 58 (the pages are however not numbered in the original) to Yelper ('Vide Avoset'.) on page 687. Since the book does not have a continuous narrative to summarise, the account here will use one species as a running example to illustrate the book's approach. The cirl bunting is chosen because it was discovered by Montagu and is associated in Britain with his home town of Kingsbridge, Devon. He also chose the species for the colour frontispiece of the book.
  The entry for the cirl bunting states that it was discovered by Montagu "in the winter of 1800" near his home in Kingsbridge, Devon. He records that the species is indigenous to Devon and "confined to the southern parts of that county contiguous to the coast", as it remains in the twentyfirst century.
  Species are listed by the English form of the generic name, thus BUNTING-CIRL. Each genus thus named is listed, as
  BUNTING. A genus of birds, the characters of which are, Bill strong and conic, the sides of each mandible bending inwards; a hard knob in the roof of the upper mandible.
caption: The start of the Ornithological Dictionary's article on the cirl bunting
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