Barbara Snow (ornithologist)

Barbara Kathleen Snow (born Whitaker; 21 February 1921 in Evershot, Dorset – 2007), was a noted English ornithologist and a trained geologist.

In 1958 Barbara, who had been the Warden of Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, married David William Snow, a highly renowned British ornithologist, in Trinidad.

This work extended over many years in Central and South America and led to important discoveries on the co-adaption between the birds and plants, providing food for the birds while ensuring the fertilising of the plants' flowers and dispersal of their seeds - "an early breakthrough in the integration of behaviour and ecology."

They came to realise that tropical fruit-eating birds have abundant food resources, and, therefore, a lot of "spare time" which has facilitated the extraordinary flourishing of communal lek displays by male manakins.

He edited the influential ornithological journal, The Ibis for some years and published the valuable two-volume work, Birds of the Western Palaearctic.