French ornithologists

Jean-Joseph Zéphirin Gerbe (21 December 1810 in Bras – 26 June 1890 in Bras) was a French naturalist. He was the first to discover the pattern of wing taxis, the absence (diastataxis) or presence (eutaxy) of the fifth secondary in birds.He was co-author of Ornithologie européenne, ou Catalogue analytique et raisonné des oiseaux observés en Europe with countryman Côme-Damien Degland (second edition, 1867). He also published a French translation of Alfred Brehm's Illustrirtes Thierleben with the title La vie des animaux illustrée : description populaire du règne animal (4 volumes).Species he described include Gerbe's vole.

Alfred Grandidier (20 December 1836 – 13 September 1921) was a French naturalist and explorer.
From a very wealthy family, at the age of 20, he and his brother, Ernest Grandidier (1833–1912), undertook a voyage around the world. At first they were led by the astronomer and physicist Pierre Jules César Janssen (1824–1907), but when Janssen fell sick and had to return to France after about six months, the brothers continued the journey.
They visited South America in 1858 and 1859 and in particular the Andes, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil. During this voyage they gathered a significant collection of specimens which were analyzed, in 1860, by Ernest.
The two brothers parted ways after this. Ernest Grandidier went to China and collected a vast number of specimens which are now in the Louvre and the Guimet museum. Alfred travelled to India, reaching it in 1863. He had intended to explore the high plateau of Tibet, but was prevented by a severe attack of fever.
Grandidier travelled to Zanzibar to recuperate, remaining some time and making important collections and publishing an account of his findings. He then visited the island of Réunion and in 1865 made his first visit to Madagascar. He became devoted to the study of the island, revisiting in 1866 and 1868. He finally returned permanently to France in 1870. During his explorations he crossed the island three times, travelling 3000 kilometers in the interior and 2500 along the coast. He made observations which resulted in the production of a map of the island used in future expeditions.

After returning to France he began to work on his great work, L'Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Madagascar. This work was undertaken in cooperation with others such as Alphonse Milne-Edwards and Leon Vaillant. This work ran to 40 volumes, the final volumes published posthumously by his son Guillaume Grandidier. He described about 50 new species of reptiles and amphibians.Alfred Grandidier's work drew the attention of the French government to Madagascar, which it would annex at the end of 1890.
He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1885 and was the president of the French Geographical Society from 1901 to 1905. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founder's Medal in 1906.

Jean Théodore Delacour (26 September 1890 – 5 November 1985) was a French ornithologist and aviculturist. He later became American. He was renowned for not only discovering but also rearing some of the rarest birds in the world. He established very successful aviaries twice in his life, stocked with birds from around the world, including those that he obtained on expeditions to Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. His first aviary in Villers-Bretonneux was destroyed in World War One. The second one that he established at Clères was destroyed in World War Two. He moved to the United States of America where he worked on avian systematics and was one of the founders of the International Committee for Bird Protection (later BirdLife International). One of the birds he discovered was the imperial pheasant, later identified as a hybrid between the Vietnamese pheasant and the silver pheasant.

Joseph Paul Gaimard (31 January 1793 – 10 December 1858) was a French naval surgeon and naturalist.

Jean Dorst (7 August 1924 – 8 August 2001) was a French ornithologist.
Dorst was born at Mulhouse and studied biology and paleontology at the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the University of Paris. In 1947 he joined the staff of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. He succeeded Jacques Berlioz as chairman of Mammifères et Oiseaux in 1964, and was elected as director of the museum in 1975, resigning in 1985 to protest against government reforms of the museum.
Dorst was a member of the Académie des Sciences, one of the founders and second president of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos, president of the 16th International Ornithological Congress (IOC), and vice president of the Commission of Protection of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Dorst was one of the writers of the documentary Le Peuple Migrateur (Winged Migration), and the film is dedicated to him. A companion volume of photographs and essays was published in 2003.