Charles Dixon was an ornithologist and a prolific author on the subject in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Little is known of his life, but his books were timely publications that capitalised on changing attitudes to ornithology following the advent of new technologies, such as binoculars and photography, that allowed birds to be observed better in the wild. Such advances removed the need for ornithologists to shoot birds in order to study them and opened up ornithology to amateur naturalists and casual birdwatchers.

Dixon’s many books were cheap enough for the casual reader but contained a wealth of information for the naturalist. Although an opponent of the concept of evolution by natural selection and a critic of Darwin’s theories of sexual selection in birds (some of which have since been brought into question by modern research), Dixon was an early proponent of conservation, recognising the risks that human intervention brought to wildlife.