My friend Ian Bullock, who has died of melanoma aged 73, was an all-round naturalist, traveller, communicator and artist. He worked in the wildlife conservation sector and latterly became a popular naturalist guide with small ecotourism cruise ships.
Ian was born in Cambridge. His father, Clive, was a salesman for the Pye electronics company, and his mother, Jo (nee Simmonds), was a nurse. After leaving Cambridge grammar in 1969 he taught biology in a Kenyan school, through Voluntary Service Overseas.
Following a degree in zoology at Bangor University (where he and I set up an early “eco” student group called Equilibrium), he worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society of Zambia from 1973 to 1976, writing their Chongololo clubs magazines, teaching schoolchildren about local wildlife.
He began a 25-year career with the RSPB in 1978, employed as a warden. Apart from five years in woodland and heathland locations – Aylesbeare Common in Devon, Ynys Hir in mid-Wales and Nagshead in the Forest of Dean – his days were always wind-swept, on cliffs and islands, including at South Stack, Glenborrodale, Fetlar and Isle of Coll reserves in Anglesey, the Scottish Highlands, Shetland and the Inner Hebrides respectively. He conducted population surveys of choughs in the UK and Ireland, and of arctic terns in Shetland. Finally he was warden of Ramsey Island in Pembrokeshire from 1993 to 2003.
Ian’s achievements at the RSPB included starting the recovery of corncrakes on Coll and eradicating rats from Ramsey, enabling shearwater numbers to expand. He monitored populations of plants, beetles, moths and dragonflies as well as birds, and many of his original population maps are still in use.
In 1987 Ian became the first professional warden of the seabird island of Aride in Seychelles. There he set up baseline species monitoring and mapping, trained staff, deterred poachers and managed tourists. He also enabled the successful introduction of Seychelles warblers, until then found on only one other island and co-wrote and illustrated Birds of the Seychelles in the Princeton Field Guide series.
From 1990 he was a regular naturalist/lecturer on Lindblad Expeditions and Noble Caledonia ships. He joined many trips to the Arctic and Antarctic, Pacific and Atlantic islands, giving meticulously researched lectures and informally entertaining passengers with silly songs.
From 2003 onwards he normally spent four months a year travelling for such work, and the rest happily painting and monitoring wildlife near his family home in Pembrokeshire. A prolific and talented artist, he delighted those he worked with through his drawings of whales, mammals and birds, and they are still being used to raise money for wildlife charities.
He is survived by his wife, Gill Lewis, whom he married in 2008, their daughter and grandchildren.
