West Midland Bird Club

Obituary

Tony Norris, 1917-2005

Tony was BTO President during 1961-64 and was awarded the Tucker Medal in 1959. His service on the Councils of both the BTO and RSPB had their dramatic moments. On his own volition he secured The Lodge at Sandy for the RSPB headquarters using his own money and in the process actually owned it himself for a day! He also purchased Beech Grove at Tring as the first main BTO HQ, much to the surprise of the BTO Council.

His work on birds started in the West Midlands. Ask any of the surviving older members of West Midland Bird Club (WMBC) about Tony Norris and their eyes light up with memories of ringing by forays into Starling roosts with bat-fowling nets, counting Starlings roosting in the centre of Birmingham, or experiences with a Heligoland trap built on a Midland farm which once caught a cow!

Tony Norris joined the WMBC aged 19 — and thereafter his initials appear adjacent to many observations. In the late 1930s he organised a national Corncrake survey, undertaken mainly by correspondence through about 2,500 letters and questionnaires, and through a radio broadcast (see footnote). In 1949, the Club (Tony Norris!) organised a survey to determine the breeding distribution of 100 species in the West Midlands, based on bird-watchers' experience and knowledge, backed up with new field work. Following this innovative pilot work, and working with the BTO network, he then organised a similar national survey of the breeding distribution of 30 species, based on 25x25km squares of the national grid. This work was the first serious attempt to map distributions of breeding birds in the British Isles and led directly to the now familiar BTO Atlases.

During the early 1950s, Tony Norris, the WMBC, and others became deeply involved with founding Bardsey Island Bird Observatory.

He was Chairman of WMBC during 1954-63, and later became Vice President in 1966, then President in 1981, an Honorary position he filled for many years.

In the 1970s Tony Norris developed into a horticulturalist specialising in Nerine, and he was eventually awarded RHS's Gold Medal for his work in this field.

He attended a grand opening ceremony at The Nunnery with a cluster of past BTO Presidents and Chairmen, a spry and dapper man quietly proud of the outcome of his exploits as a younger man. My last contact with him was to collect a large black box of archival bird-survey papers to transport to Thetford. Tony Norris was an enthusiastic mover and shaker in the post-war bird world and he deserves to be remembered more often than he is.

Harry Green