Surfbirds News

Richard Fitter was a prolific writer of wildlife field guides and one of the best-known British naturalists of the 20th century. His ground-breaking book published by Collins in 1952, Pocket Guide to British Birds, illustrated by R.A. Richardson was arguably the first modern British field guide. It dispensed with the traditional order and grouping together birds by size and by their habitat. Although Fitter and Richardson were criticised by traditionalists, post-war birders liked the book, and over 100,000 copies were sold.

In 1955, Fitter teamed up with David McClintock to write The Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers. Again dispensing with tradition, Fitter began with buttercups and ended with grasses in the approved order. He grouped the illustrations by colour, so that all similar-looking yellow flowers, whether they were buttercups, celandines, cinquefoils or rock-roses, appeared side-by-side. Together with its well chosen field notes and asterisks to denote rarity, the guide became a firm favourite for a generation of wild flower lovers.

At the time of his death, the ever active Fitter was working on a flora of France.