MAJOR ROBERT RUTTLEDGE: Major Robert (Robin) Ruttledge, who died on January 13th aged 102, was an outstanding Irish ornithologist of the last century. Largely through his efforts, birdwatching became the popular pastime it is today. He foresaw, and tried to forestall, conservation problems now manifest in the country and set exacting new standards in ornithology which are now the norm.
Robert Francis Ruttledge was born on September 11th, 1899, to Thomas Ruttledge, a land agent, and Mary Browne-Clayton at Browne's Hill, Co Carlow. At the age of three, on the death of his grandfather, his family inherited and moved to Bloomfield House, Hollymount, Co Mayo.
His interest in birdwatching was encouraged at the British preparatory school, Winton House, and later at Marlborough College.
At the age of 16 he had his first paper, on the birds of Lough Carra, published in the Irish Naturalist. He kept a daily diary from 1915, writing in the antiquated style of Victorian naturalists.
In 1918, he passed exams for the British army and was sent to the military academy at Quetta in India. He joined the Poona Horse, an élite cavalry regiment, in whose service he spent the next 23 years, attaining the rank of major. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1919 for action against the Wazirs near Jetta Fort in Waziristan.
He never went birdwatching in India, feeling it was not the proper thing for an army man to do, and instead spent his leave pig-sticking, a form of hunting at which he excelled. "I absolutely loved it," he said in an Irish Times interview. He also hunted with the Peshawar Vale Hunt and went duck-shooting.
In 1928, he married Rose Burke whom he had known since childhood. They had two daughters, Anne and Veronica.
In 1941, he was invalided out of the army. He had sold Bloomfield, which his father had left him, in 1925 as the fortunes of the estate were waning and would be difficult to restore from India. (The big house later burnt down and was demolished.) They settled in Cloonee, near Ballinrobe and some 20 years later moved to Dublin and finally to Newcastle, Co Wicklow.
He surmised, correctly, that the list of known breeding species in Ireland was incomplete and set out to find more, a task which took him to the remotest corners and islands. Contemporaries recall a visit to the Stags of Broadhaven off north-west Mayo where he was stranded for days but returned with news of nesting Leach's petrels, a first for Ireland. He always insisted on absolute secrecy about the whereabouts of rare breeders, fearing the depredations of egg-collectors.
While fellow birdwatchers sometimes beat him to new discoveries, Robin Ruttledge was the recorder par excellence, bringing order to the observations acquired and publishing everything assiduously: his list of papers ran into several scores.
Recognising that a complete survey of Ireland was beyond the ability of a few, he enlisted the help of wildfowlers, game-keepers, taxidermists, even lighthouse-keepers who found migrating birds drawn to their lights at night. He corresponded with enthusiasts all over Ireland, gathering the information that culminated in The Birds of Ireland (1954), co-written with Father P.G. Kennedy SJ and Col C.F. Scroope.
He pioneered aspects of birdwatching, taken for granted today, including identifying birds in the field (instead of collecting specimens), and was one of the first to observe seabird passage from the vantage points of coastal headlands such as Brandon Point, Co Kerry.
Dissatisfied with the random nature of most bird recording, he set up a dedicated station on Great Saltee Island, Co Wexford, in 1950 with the help of John Weaving, to monitor bird migration in a methodical fashion.
It was Ireland's first bird observatory. Joining the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), he introduced its bird-ringing scheme to the island, providing new insights into bird migration over the next 14 years.
Identifying the need for an annual report, he launched the Irish Bird Report in 1953, and edited it for 19 years. Such was its success that he quickly obtained enough new information to publish his critically-acclaimed Ireland's Birds in 1966, which remained the standard reference for 23 years. He also produced several versions of the National Museum's list of Irish birds.
In 1961, he received BTO's highest accolade, the Bernard Tucker Medal, presented to him by Peter Scott, in recognition of his work on Saltee.
Robin Ruttledge was one of the founders of the Irish Wildbird Conservancy (now BirdWatch Ireland) in 1968, and became its first president. It subsumed two small bird societies, including the Irish Wildfowl Committee founded by Dr David Cabot in 1964, and developed rapidly, becoming Ireland's largest voluntary conservation organisation.
Its emblem of a Greenland white-fronted goose was drawn by Sir Peter Scott as a special favour to Robin Ruttledge. The organisation's headquarters in Monkstown, Co Dublin, was named Ruttledge House in his honour, more than a decade before his death.
He played a large part in persuading the Government to purchase its most important winter haunt, the Wexford Slobs, jointly with the Irish Wildbird Conservancy and with WWF funding. It was Ireland's first internationally important conservation venture. In January 1981, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by Trinity College.
In later life, he could often be seen on Newcastle beach, not far from his home, scanning the sea with his battered old binoculars, still searching for something new, still posing questions and providing possible answers. In these days of instant communications, perhaps we are losing some of the lessons he taught us, such as writing down our observations and putting everything into print.
Robin Ruttledge was predeceased by his wife Rose in 1996, and is survived by his daughters, Lady Hemphill and Lady Edward FitzRoy.
Major Robert Francis Ruttledge: born 1899; died, January 2002