Schmitz is known for his extensive natural history studies, both on the island of Madeira, where he described the Madeiran Wood Pigeon and Zino's Petrel as well as studying the local ants, and in Palestine.
The German ornithologist Ernst Schmitz lived on the island of Madeira by 1896-1906, a time when the Madeiran Wood Pigeon was already rare.
The petrels breeding in the high central mountains of Madeira were first recorded in 1903 by German naturalist and priest Ernst Johann Schmitz, who failed to realise that they were different from the Fea's Petrels he had seen in the Desertas.
Johann Sebastian Bach | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Ernst & Young | Johann Strauss II | Max Ernst | St. Johann in Tirol | Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi | Ernst Haeckel | Johann Albert Fabricius | Johann Christian Bach | Johann Georg Wagler | Ernst Mayr | Ernst Jünger | Johann Pachelbel | Johann Nepomuk Hummel | Johann Gottfried Herder | Ernst Zündel | Johann Nestroy | Johann Joachim Winckelmann | Johann Gottlieb Fichte | Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach | Ernst Gombrich | Johann Homann | Johann Friedrich Böttger | Ernst Mach | Johann Kuhnau | Johann Heinrich Lambert | Johann Friedrich Blumenbach | Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker | Ernst Moritz Arndt |