My friend Clive Mann, who has died aged 80, was a biology teacher who engendered lifelong affection in his pupils, while using his jobs as launching pads to fulfil his passion to study birds all over the world.
He was born during the second world war, in Colchester, Essex, to Kathleen (nee Coppin) and Richard Mann. His father, a coal porter, was enlisted and died in Palestine in 1946 after being shot, so Clive barely knew him and was brought up by his mother and his grandmother Selina. While attending Colchester Royal grammar school he joined the Colchester Natural History Society where he learned to ring birds and embarked on a series of bird-watching adventures, mostly by bicycle, with like-minded friends.
Armed with a degree in zoology and anthropology from University College London, in 1964 he travelled to Uganda, where he obtained a diploma in education from Makerere University, Kampala, in response to a poster he had seen advertising TEA – the teachers for East Africa scheme. After teaching at Soroti Senior secondary school, he returned to London in 1968, working as a secondary school teacher in Stamford Hill and Tottenham, but he was soon back to Africa for a teaching post in Kenya at Kabarnet boys’ school the next year.
There he met Rani Chandiramani, whom he married in 1972. Although they separated, they remained amicably in touch thereafter. In 1978 in London he married Krystyna Puławska, with whom two years later he had a daughter, Dominika. Their son, Konrad, was born in 1985 during the family’s 10-year sojourn in Brunei. Clive and Krystyna separated after returning to London. For the last 20 years of his life Clive’s partner was Ania Smith.
An avid ornithologist, Clive contributed to the knowledge of the East African avifauna, principally through a bird ringing programme in Kakamega forest. His ornithological interests led him to gain an MSc in 1979 and a PhD from the City of London Polytechnic in 1988 on passerine taxonomy, using previously unused morphological characters such as birds’ feet, musculature and tongues.
From 1981 until 1991 he was head of biology at a school in Brunei where he resumed research on tropical birds, culminating in a definitive book, Birds of Borneo (2008). Clive also wrote Sunbirds: A Guide to the Sunbirds, Flowerpeckers, Spiderhunters and Sugarbirds of the World (2001, jointly with me) and Cuckoos of the World (2012, jointly with J Erritzøe, FP Brammer and RA Fuller).
He was a fellow of the Linnean Society and a member of the British Ornithologists’ Union. He served for many years on the committee of the British Ornithologists’ Club and was its chairman from 2001 to 2005. He was also a trustee of the Trust for Avian Systematics for more than 20 years.
Clive was a warm, kind and generous man. He was renowned as a raconteur, recalling many tales of his wide-ranging travels. He cared much about the world’s environment and campaigned through social media on a variety of conservation and political issues.
He is survived by Ania, Dominika and Konrad, and his sisters Marilyn and Yvonne.
