About Carl Julian (von) Graba
Carl Julian (von) Graba (17 February 1799 in Itzehoe – 30 March 1874 in Kiel) was a German lawyer and Royal Danish judicial councillor, and was also a keen ornithologist and one of the first modern researchers to visit and study the Faroe Islands, where he described the local puffin which was subsequently named Fratercula arctica grabae after him. Graba's findings were mentioned in 1872 by Charles Darwin in his book On the Origin of Species. == Biography == Graba, the son of a Danish cavalry colonel, grew up in Itzehoe, Duchy of Holstein, within Schleswig-Holstein in north Germany, which was part of the Danish Kingdom at that time, until 1864. He was educated at the Katharineum of Lübeck, then went on to study law at Kiel University from 1817. After this, he worked as a lawyer in lower courts. Friedrich Boie, one of his colleagues and also an ornithologist, had travelled to Norway in 1917 to study Norwegian birds, and he persuaded Graba to make a trip to the remote and then almost unknown Danish Faroe Islands, whose birdlife had been little studied. Graba spent three months there in 1828, to investigate what he called the "birds of the North in their home environment", which he imagined would be "even stranger" than the birds of the Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands. === Visit to the Faroe Islands === Graba sailed from Kiel on 23 March 1828 and arrived in Copenhagen on the following day. His onward voyage, scheduled for 28 March, was delayed because of dead calm conditions and he actually sailed on 9 April, reaching Tórshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands, on 18 April. During his three-month visit, he undertook many excursions to the islands of the Faroes, including Nólsoy, Sandoy, Suduroy, Eysturoy and Streymoy, and he kept careful and meticulous notes, with detailed descriptions of birds he saw, including their weight, measurement and plumage colour.
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