Nature

John Wilson Foster is the senior editor of Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History (Lilliput, 1997; McGill-Queen's UP, 1998). He has been a keen birdwatcher since the age of thirteen, at first around Northern Ireland and then Ireland and England, and between 1974 and 2008 chiefly in Canada with birding trips to Oregon, Arizona and Utah. His records contributed to the 4-volume Birds of British Columbia, ed. Wayne Campbell, et al. (1990-2001). His favourite local birdwatching habitats are the Fraser River delta and Okanagan desert in British Columbia and Strangford Lough in County Down. In his book, Recoveries (2002), he includes an account of the remarkable naturalists' field-clubs in nineteenth-century Ireland.