Persons from whose collections these casings are taken include:

E.A. Armstrong, 1900-1978. He attended Queen’s University, Belfast 1918-1921, studying philosophy and psychology, followed by two years’ theological study at Cambridge. As an Anglican priest, he worked in parishes as varied as Kowloon (Hong Kong), Ipswich, Doncaster, Leeds and Cambridge. He acquired his great experience as a field naturalist in many different environments. As a result of his period in Hong Kong, he travelled around the world, visiting, among other regions, the Mekong River and the forests of southeast Asia, the California desert, the Tropical Biological Laboratory at Barro Colorado in the Panama Canal Zone and then–via Colombia and Venezuela–Trinidad and Tobago. His first major work in ornithology was Bird Display: an introduction to the study of bird psychology (1942). He was then Vicar of St Mark's Church Newnham, Cambridge 1943-1967.

Eric Brooke Dunlop was born in Windermere, England, in 1887, spent his early life in the Lake District, and was educated at Rugby. He was interested in birds from childhood and spent much time studying them. In 1913 he moved to Winnipeg, Canada, where he continued his studies of birds and wrote contributions for The Auk and British Birds. In 1915 he enlisted in the 78th Canadian Grenadiers and he died in action in France on 19 Mar 1917.

Francis Charles Robert Jourdain was born on 4 March 1865 at Adenshaw Lodge, near Manchester. He was educated at Ashbourne Grammar School and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1887. Following his ordination in 1890, he served as vicar of Clifton-by-Ashbourne, Derbyshire, from 1894 until 1914 when he was appointed rector of Appleton, Berkshire. Interested in ornithology, he collaborated on A Practical Handbook of British Birds, published in two volumes in 1919 and 1924, and later The Handbook of British Birds, published in five volumes between 1938 and 1941. He acted as assistant editor and, from 1917 to 1919, editor of the journal British Birds. In 1921, Jourdain served as leader of the Oxford University Spitsbergen Expedition, organised to conduct mainly ornithological work along the north-west coast of Spitsbergen and to attempt to sledge across the ice cap of central Spitsbergen. Owing to delays and illness, the sledging party was obliged to turn back from a point about halfway across the ice cap. Jourdain published the scientific results of the expedition on his return in 1921. After his retirement from his Berkshire parish in 1925, he devoted most of his time to ornithology, travelling widely in Europe and North Africa collecting eggs and studying breeding habits and distribution. He died on 27 February 1940 at Bournemouth.

Alexander Mayall was born 1874 and died 1943. He wrote Birds and birds' nests of Bromsgrove, &c., published by Witherby & Co, 1911.

David Lack (1910-1973) was a British evolutionary biologist. He developed what is now known as Lack's Principle which explained the evolution of avian clutch sizes in terms of individual selection. His life-history studies of the living bird helped change the nature of ornithology from what was then a collection-oriented field. He was a director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at the University of Oxford.