John Freeman Milward Dovaston

John Freeman Milward Dovaston (30 December 1782 – 8 August 1854) was a British poet and naturalist.

[3] Dovaston became a friend of the Newcastle upon Tyne wood engraver Thomas Bewick, and offered additions and corrections to the fifth edition of his History of British Birds.

In his letters to Bewick, he introduced many of his innovations, including what he called an "ornithotrophe" (punning with "trough" and the Greek word for trophy), a hanging bird feeder.

[3] Dovaston also experimented with growing mistletoes on trees, fencing off grasslands to study hares, and trying to document bird calls with musical notation.

He found that individual birds had their own specific beats or haunts and rarely intruded into the territories of others.