16.06.2025 - Indoor Meeting : Saving Norfolk’s Birds: The W H Hudson Story

Speaker: Conor Mark Jameson
Reporter: Cath Robinson

The club was very happy to welcome Conor back after his stimulating talk on The Goshawk in 2022. This time he was talking about his book: Finding W. H. Hudson, a rather extraordinary naturalist born in South America in 1841. After a childhood on the wild pampas of Argentina and then becoming a gaucho, he travelled to the UK - at one-point homeless sleeping in Hyde Park before becoming the doyen of the early wildlife conservation movement in the salons of London.​

He had no formal education and was a completely self-taught ornithologist and naturalist. As Conor described him, we became more aware of this man deeply passionate about the environment, fearless in defending it and well ahead of this time.
After travelling to the UK, he began by familiarising himself with the local birds and habitats. Drawn to London, he met Emily Williamson and was the only man in the room when in 1889 she brought together a dozen women to launch what became known as the Society for the Protection of Birds, the forerunner of the RSPB. The focus was on ending the global trade in bird feathers for fashion and so began a long campaign against powerful vested interests. Although often controversial, he developed an extensive network with many political connections including Lord and Lady Grey and some celebrity ones including the Ranee of Sarawak.
He travelled England extensively, including a visit to the Brecks, a pilgrimage inspired by the poetry of Robert Blomefield, the “John Clare of Breckland”. He also visited other parts of Norfolk including the Broads and stayed at Cromer, Wells and Hunstanton where he left his binoculars on the cliffs!
He was the author of many books, fiction, non-fiction, sci-fi! Some indeed are still in print. (I had indeed read one “Long ago and far away” about his childhood without realising that it was the same man!).
But most were about natural history in some form, often about areas in the UK where he had stayed but also a rather sad pamphlet on Lost UK Birds. He was a member of a very auspicious authors group including Galsworthy, Chesterton and Conrad who all supported him.
His influence and importance were such that in 1925 a Portland stone memorial was erected in Hyde Park, designed by Jacob Epstein (Rima the bird-girl was, rather controversially for the time, naked to the waist). He is now lauded in Argentina where some of his books are published in Spanish under his name Guillermo Enrique Hudson and there is a town named after him.
He lived to see the Plumage Act become law and also the first meeting of what would become Birdlife, ensuring that there would be a truly global response to conservation. And Conor thought he would have be delighted that at least some of the Lost Birds of the UK in his pamphlet are now back including Crane, Bittern, Avocet, Spoonbill.
Many thanks to Conor for a very interesting presentation about this fascinating man and also for his enterprising use of photographs of others to compensate for the lack of the Real Thing!