Eliot Howard

Who was Eliot Howard?

Henry Eliot Howard JP was an English amateur ornithologist, noted for being one of the first to describe territoriality behaviours in birds in a detailed manner. His ideas on territoriality were influential in the work of Max Nicholson.

Howard was born at Stone House near Kidderminster, second son of Henry Howard and Alice Gertrude Thomson. He studied at Stoke Poges, Eton, and Mason College, and eventually worked as a director of a major steelworks in Worcester.

He showed from his earliest childhood an intense love of natural history. It was not until 1914 that his first work, British Warblers, was fully published, having been issued in parts since 1907. Continually working on the theory of territory, he published Territory in Bird Life, illustrated by George Edward Lodge and Henrik Grönvold, in 1920, followed by An Introduction to the Study of Bird Behaviour, Nature of a Bird's World and lastly A Waterhen's World, in 1940. His books were published under the name "Eliot Howard".

He was a Justice of the Peace and for forty-five years a member of the British Ornithologists' Union.