Background
Pat grew up in Epson, Surrey, born in an upper-middle-class family.
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Pat Hall
Edit ProfileCareer
She is best known for her work on African birds. Forced to spend several years at home, she took to watching birds and then decided to sign up for the Women"s Legion in 1939. Her work involved teaching ambulance driving and precautions during Air Raids.
She got engaged to John Hall, a lieutenant in the army who was posted in the Middle East.
She was initially posted to South Africa and she transferred to Egypt in March 1941 allowing her to marry John. After the war she returned to the United Kingdom and in 1947, following a failed marriage, she took up a position as a scientific associate at the bird room of the Natural History Museum.
She then joined an expedition to southern and south-western Africa in 1949 along with James Macdonald and Colonel F. O. Cave. Working for half a year, they collected 1300 specimens of nearly 200 species of bird.
She went on several self-funded expeditions in 1953 to northern Bechuanaland and another to Angola in 1957.
She led the Harold Hall expedition to Australia based on her experience in arid zones in 1965. She worked on a number of African bird groups including the francolins. Her major work was An Atlas of Speciation in African Passerine Birds (1970) in collaboration with R.E. Moreau.
Along with Derek Goodwin, she also wrote a series of nonsense poems Bird Room Ballads.
She was invited to preside over the 4th Pan African Ornithological Congress in 1976. A species named by Russian-born ornithologist Alexandre Prigogine (1913-1991) after her as Eurillas hallae ("Hall"s greenbul" ) is now considered to be a melanistic specimen of Eurillas virens.
Achievements
Membership
Pat was a member of the Committee of the British Ornithologists’ Club from 1955 to 1964 and an Assistant Editor of the Ibis from 1971 to 1973.
