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Other lives: Expert ornithologist and keen entomologist who strove to save threatened bird colonies
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Environment — Stephen Moss
The conservationist Harry Green was a naturalist of the amateur school, with an encyclopedic knowledge of British wildlife based on a lifetime in the field. Though born and brought up in Oxfordshire, he spent the whole of his adult life in his adopted county of Worcestershire.
Harry, who has died aged 92, remembered being kept awake during the second world war by calling corncrakes in the meadows near his home. Later he strove, against the odds, to save Britain’s last colony of marsh warblers near Pershore. These, and the corncrakes, eventually vanished, but other species, such as hobbies, little egrets and Cetti’s warblers, did arrive and thrive.
A keen entomologist as well as an expert ornithologist, Harry became obsessed with a rare Worcestershire speciality, the land caddis , organising expeditions to map the range and numbers of a creature whose larvae he irreverently referred to as “animated All-Bran”.
He was also fascinated by the county’s lime trees – which he memorably called “great humming towers of bees” – as key indicators of ancient woodland, and once conducted an aerial survey of them by persuading a friend to take him up in his light aircraft.
Away from fieldwork, and his full-time job as a pathologist, Harry devoted much of his time and effort to more administrative duties. He was chairman of the British Trust for Ornithology from 1988 until 1991, and on the council of the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust for a record-breaking 56 years. In 2001 he was appointed MBE and given the Christopher Cadbury medal by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts in 2008.
Harry was born in Oxford, the son of George Green, a dentist and part-time farmer, who died when Harry was a boy. His widowed mother, Doris (nee Summers), then took work at Sibford school, a Quaker school near Banbury – Harry became a pupil there and his interest in ornithology and the natural world was ignited by his biology teacher. In 1950 he joined the pathology lab at Worcester Royal Infirmary and returned there after national service in the RAF Institute of Pathology and Tropical Medicine, rising to head the lab until his retirement in 1996.
White-whiskered, genial and avuncular, Harry inspired generations of younger naturalists to take up the conservation cause. The radio presenter Brett Westwood recalls Harry delving into old fruit trees in search of noble chafer beetle droppings, reflecting his passion for Worcestershire’s precious old orchards.
In retirement he became a prolific author and broadcaster, appearing on BBC local radio and occasionally Radio 4 to promote the importance of local conservation efforts. In 2015 he co-edited The Nature of Wyre, a comprehensive account of the fauna and flora of the Wyre forest, while in 2022, he published his magnum opus, Shrawley Wood, a monumental work he wrote and co-edited along with a wealth of contributors.
He is survived by his wife, Jenny (nee Briggs), whom he met at the infirmary, where she worked as a nurse, and married in 1958, and by their son, David, a daughter, Rachel, and grandsons, Jake and Ruben, in all of whom he instilled a love of the natural world.
Harry, who has died aged 92, remembered being kept awake during the second world war by calling corncrakes in the meadows near his home. Later he strove, against the odds, to save Britain’s last colony of marsh warblers near Pershore. These, and the corncrakes, eventually vanished, but other species, such as hobbies, little egrets and Cetti’s warblers, did arrive and thrive.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Stephen Moss. Published 24 Aug 2026, 04:24 pm.
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