An ornithologist in London

London Zoo in Regent’s Park opened in 1828 and was a well established popular attraction by Collingwood’s time. In contrast the Natural History Museum moved to its magnificent South Kensington building only in 1881, the year after Collingwood’s birth. It was conveniently close to his London home in Cromwell Road. His enthusiasm for birds took him frequently to both institutions.

A brief note in his 1896 diary shows that he had given birds to the Zoo in the previous year..

30 April 1896

I went to the Zoo. Both my shrikes I gave last year (hand reared) were quite well and both males.

          When hunting was stopped by frost or snow, he would return to London and often go with his sketchbook to the Zoo or the Museum. The Bird Room of the latter was soon to be central to his ornithological life.

           In 1901 he joined the British Ornithologists Union (BOU) and its associated British Ornithologists Club (BOC). He was to be a member for 80 years, a record. The BOC was an elite London-based club for amateur and professional ornithologists which met for dinner at fashionable restaurants to report on, and often exhibit, bird specimens of interest. Frascati’s restaurant in Oxford Street was a frequent venue. Collingwood at 20 would surely have been much the youngest member. The club gave him the opportunity to meet eminent and influential ornithologists, including Lord Rothschild, founder of a private natural history museum at Tring, the director of Rothschild's museum Ernst Hartert and Bowdler Sharpe, head of the Bird Room at South Kensington.

          Collingwood published notes in the Bulletin of the Club in 1901 and 1981, and in many years between.