Karel Hendrik Voous (1920–2002) was curator of birds at the Zoölogical Museum Amsterdam (now part of the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis at Leiden) from 1947 until 1963, part-time professor of Zoogeography at the Free University Amsterdam from 1955 until 1963 and full professor of Zoological Systematics and Zoogeography at the Free University from 1964 until 1975. He published extensively on the zoogeography and geographical variation of west palaearctic birds, on birds of the Indo-Australian region, on sea-birds, on the birds of the Netherlands Antilles, on birds of prey and owls, and on conservation. One of his last books was entirely devoted to short biographies of Netherlands ornithologists active in the twentieth century. Obituaries describing his life and work are to be found in Ardea 90: 189–200, Ibis 144: 551–552 and British Birds 95: 257–259, all these were published in 2002.
The bibliography of Prof. Dr. Voous was compiled by Jan Wattel, now deceased. Corrections were made by Ruud Vlek. We thank the family of Jan Wattel for sending his manuscript to Ardea after he passed away on 25 March 2013. The bibliography can be downloaded from
