Aubyn Trevor-Battye

Who was Aubyn Trevor-Battye?

Aubyn Bernard Rochfort Trevor-Battye, MA, MBOU, FLS, FRGS, FZS was a British traveller, naturalist and writer.

He was born at Hever, Kent, where his father, the Reverend William Wilberforce Battye, was Rector. His mother was daughter of Edmund Wakefield Meade-Waldo, resident of Hever Castle. The Rev. W.W. Battye was a descendant of Sir John Trevor and inherited Trevor estates in 1883. Upon his death in 1890 his surviving family took the heraldic arms of Trevor and the surname Trevor-Battye.

After graduating from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1887, Aubyn Trevor-Battye travelled widely in North America and Europe, studying ornithology, shooting game and fishing. In 1894 he made an expedition to the Russian island of Kolguyev in the Barents Sea to study its natural history, especially the birds, and the topography. He and his assistant had to make a long unplanned return through northern Russia as winter closed in, an adventure that brought Trevor-Battye to prominence on his return to Britain. He was then invited to join William Martin Conway's expedition to Spitsbergen in 1896, as their zoologist.