Collingwood Ingram, ornithologist, plantsman, artist, WW1 diarist

Collingwood Ingram 1880-1981

In 1926 Collingwood traveled to Japan on his famous

vistt to see and research cherries

So this is the hundredth anniversary of his trip.

! The full journal is now available to be read

on the Researchgate website !

Download the free pdf to see the beautiful images

Collingwood Ingram’s life spanned 100 years. He was brought up in privilege and benefited from family money all his life. He made full use of his good fortune, devoting much of his first forty years to the study of birds and then a quarter of a century collection, breeding and growing of garden plants, especially Japanese cherries. In both ornithology and horticulture he was amongst the finest in the country. As well as loving the beauty of natural world, he also shot and hunted, a combination quite common in his time.

In his teens Collingwood Ingram kept diaries, illustrated with sketches.

As an adult he travelled widely and recorded his travels in journals and sketchbooks.

These legacies of his enjoyment of nature are at the core of this website.

War Diaries

"Wings over the Western Front"

In June 2014 Collingwood Ingram's WW1 diaries were published by

Day Books of Charlbury

From late 1916 until the end of the war in November 1918, Collingwood Ingram was a Compass Officer in the Royal Flying Corps. He was also at the height of his powers as an ornithologist and even the war did not dim his passion for birds. His diaries describe the devastation of the battlefields and also take us behind the lines, where ordinary life continued and birds sang. We see the birds and the countryside of NE France through his words and sketchbooks, He also applies the same descriptive powers to the early days of flight

and to the ever-present war.

"ultimately records the triumph

of nature over warfare"

see review in link below.

Wings over the Western Front

Day Books

........................................................

A fine biography

'Cherry Ingram -- The Englishman who saved Japan's Blossoms'

by Naoko Abe

Published by Chatto & Windus on 21 March 2019

(and in the USA by Knopf Doubleday as The Sakura Obsession)