Adolphe Boucard

Who was Adolphe Boucard?

Adolphe Boucard was a French ornithologist and trader in specimens who collected extensively in Mexico and Central America. He lived in San Francisco between 1851 and 1852, at the height of the California Gold Rush. He concentrated on collecting hummingbirds and sold scientific bird skins to Natural History museums and supplied the plume trade. He collected birds on expeditions to southern Mexico between 1854 and 1867 and many specimens were sold to P.L. Sclater. By 1865 he became a foreign corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London. In 1891 he moved to London and set up a taxidermist company Boucard, Pottier & Co. He published a periodical The Hummingbird which was stopped shortly after he moved to the Isle of Wight in 1894, the same year in which he published Travels of a Naturalist. He died at his son's home in Hampstead in 1905.

Species named after Boucard include Boucard’s Tinamou Crypturellus boucardi described in 1859 by Philip Sclater..