Harold Douglas Pratt Jr.

Harold Douglas Pratt Jr. (born July 23, 1944, in Charlotte, North Carolina), often credited in the short form H. Douglas Pratt or as Doug Pratt, is an American ornithologist, bio acoustican, wildlife photographer, bird illustrator, and musician. His main research field are the endemic avifaunas of Hawaii and other islands in the Pacific where he was one of the pioneers of the voice recordings of birds. Pratt is a Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union.

In 1966, Pratt graduated to Bachelor of Science at the Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. With his dissertation ''A systematic analysis of the endemic Avifauna of the Hawaiian Islands'' he promoted to PhD at the Louisiana State University in 1979. Before he became curator of birds at the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh he worked as research associate at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge from 1980 to 2005.

In 1975, Pratt was one of the last scientists who were able to photograph the possible extinct ʻōʻū and one of several scientists to record the song of the extinct Kauaʻi oʻo.

Pratt wrote important revisions within the genus ''Zosterops'' and the subfamily Drepanidinae. In 1987, he split the bridled white-eye into the three distinct species ''Zosterops conspicillatus'', ''Zosterops semperi'', and ''Zosterops hypolais''. In 1979, he renamed ''Hemignathus wilsoni'' into ''Hemignathus munroi''. In 1989, he moved the Kauai amakihi from the genus ''Himatione'' to the genus ''Hemignathus''. In 2009, he suggested the new created genus ''Manucerthia'' for the Hawaiʻi creeper.

Besides his scientific work Pratt is also a musician. He plays autoharp and won the Walnut Valley Festival International Autoharp Championship in 2006. In 2012, he published his first record ''You Can't Play That on the Autoharp!'' Provided by Wikipedia