James Fisher

James Maxwell McConnell Fisher (3rd September, 1912 – 25th September, 1970) was a British author, editor, broadcaster, naturalist and ornithologist. He was also a leading authority on Gilbert White and made over 1,000 radio and television broadcasts on natural history subjects.

Fisher was the son of Kenneth Fisher, (also a keen ornithologist and headmaster of Oundle School from 1922 to 1945); his maternal uncle was the Cheshire naturalist Arnold Boyd. He was educated at Eton, and began studying medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford, but later switched to zoology. He took part in the Oxford Arctic expedition in 1933 as ornithologist. After university he joined London Zoo as an assistant curator, and during the war studied rooks for the Ministry of Agriculture. He later became a leading member of the RSPB and IUCN, a member of the National Parks Commission and vice-chairman of the Countryside Commission.

As well as writing his own books, he was an editor of Collins' New Naturalist series. He was the resident ornithologist in the regular "Nature Parliament" series broadcast in the 1950s on BBC radio as part of Children's Hour. It is likely that his writing and broadcasting played a significant role in the growth of interest in birdwatching in the United Kingdom in the post-Second World War period.

He was married to Margery Lilian Edith Turner, and they had 6 children. He died in a car crash in September, 1970.

Bibliography

• Watching Birds (Pelican, 1941, paperback) - sold over 3 million copies.
• The Birds Of Britain (1942)
• Bird Recognition 1 (Pelican Books, 1947; revised edition 1954)
• Bird Recognition 2 (Pelican Books, 1951)
• The Fulmar (1952)
• A Thousand Geese (1953, with Peter Scott)
• Sea-birds (1954, with Ronald Lockley)
• Bird Recognition 3 (Pelican Books, 1955)
• Wild America (Collins, 1956, with Roger Tory Peterson).
• The Shell Bird Book (1966)

Contributions

• Eliot Howard, Territory in Bird Life. Collins (1948 edition) - Foreword, with Julian Huxley

References

• Marren, Peter. The New Naturalists. ISBN 0-00-719715-2

Donate to Wikimedia