1850 in birding and ornithology

Birds

Birds described in 1850 include bee hummingbird, Wilson's bird-of-paradise, blue swallow, blue-shouldered robin-chat, Bornean banded pitta, Cape white-eye, grey-collared oriole, long-billed crow, purple-bearded bee-eater, Shoebill
 * Extinction of the spectacled cormorant
 * Edward Smith-Stanley obtains a grey trembler specimen from the bird collector Jules Verreaux

People
 * Death of Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville

Publications
 * Charles Lucien Bonaparte publishes Conspectus Generum Avium (Leyden) ; Revue critique de l'ornithologie Européenne (Brussels) and Monographie des loxiens (crossbills, grosbeaks, and allied species) (Leyden)
 * John Gould commences The Birds of Asia (1850–83)
 * Francis Orpen Morris begins  A History of British Birds  (1850–1857)
 * Frédéric de Lafresnaye 1850. Essai d'une monographie du genre Picule (Buffon), Dendrocolaptes (Hermann, Illiger), devenu aujourd'hui la sous-famille Dendrocolaptinæ (Gray, Genera of birds), de la famille de Certhiadæ de Swains. Revue et Magasin de Zoologie Pure et Appliquée online BHL

Ongoing events
 * Fauna Japonica

Institutions
 * Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft founded
 * The Berlin Museum has a total of 13,760 bird specimens