Collingwood Ingram

Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram (30 October 1880–19 May 1981), ornithologist, plant collector and gardener, who was an authority on Japanese flowering cherries.

Collingwood was a grandson of Herbert Ingram, founder of the Illustrated London News, son of Sir William Ingram, who succeeded Herbert as the owner of the paper, and brother of Bruce Ingram, editor from 1900–1963. On his mother’s side, he was descended from Edward Stirling, the son of a creole mother (a slave or a freed slave) and a Scottish plantation owner in Jamaica. Edward Stirling made a fortune as pastoralist and owner of copper mines in Australia. Collingwood’s uncle, Sir Edward Charles Stirling, was a noted anthropologist, physiologist and museum director, with a great interest in the natural world. On the 17th Oct 1906 Collingwood married Florence Maude Laing, only child of Henry Rudolph Laing, they had four children. He was a Compass Officer with the Royal Flying Corps in World War I and Commander of his local Home Guard in Benenden, Kent, in World War II. He was a collector of Japanese art, especially netsuke, and left his collection to the British Museum.

In the early 1900s, Sir William Ingram employed Wilfred Stalker to collect bird skins in Australia for Collingwood to identify and catalogue at the London Natural History Museum, resulting in his first major publication. In 1907 he collected in Japan and for his work there he was made an Honorary Member of the Ornithological Society of Japan. However his main interest was in the field study of birds; he made the first record of marsh warblers breeding in Kent. He was an accomplished bird artist. A planned book on the birds of France was interrupted by the War and never completed, although part emerged as Birds of the Riviera in 1926. His 1916–18 journals record his war experiences and also his off-duty bird observations and sketches behind the lines in northern France. His published war diaries are packed with his pencil sketches of birds, people and landscapes. He interrogated pilots, including Charles Portal, on the height at which birds fly, resulting in a short paper after the War. He was member of the British Ornithologists' Union for a record 81 years.

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