Peter Davis

[close] Peter Davis (d.1919) was an English ornithologist who worked as a conservationist, mainly in Wales, and was a driving force in turning around the fortunes of the red kite in Britain.

Peter was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, and educated at Woodhouse Grove school, Apperley Bridge. He then did two years’ national service with the RAF. He then attended the University of Leeds, graduating with a BA in geography in 1951, following which he accepted the post of warden of Lundy Island bird observatory, off the north Devon coast.

In 1954 he moved to Skokholm island, off the Pembrokeshire coast, as warden of Britain’s oldest bird observatory. There he met his future wife, Angela Tame, a zoology graduate from Reading University who was visiting the island. After she returned to the mainland, they met only a few more times before getting married the following year.

In 1957 the couple moved north to Britain’s best known observatory, Fair Isle (between Orkney and Shetland). Fair Isle is a prime hotspot for rare birds, and during his six-year tenure Davis found two “firsts”: a song sparrow from North America and a river warbler from eastern Europe.

After a spell working at the British Trust for Ornithology in Tring, Hertfordshire, Davis realised that he was unsuited to a desk job, so in 1966 he, Angela and their three young children moved to Ceredigion in west Wales, where he would spend the rest of his life.