The death of Bertram Lloyd, on June 9th, 1944, at the age of sixty-three deprives us of a familiar and distinguished figure in the world of Natural History. He was one of our best observers and also one of those none too common personalities that are ready to shoulder the less exciting but very necessary part of Natural History work—committees, recording, editing, propaganda—and are capable of doing so wholeheartedly, competently and with initiative. His place will be difficult to fill.
The following brief account will show the wide range of his activities.
He was educated at Merchant Taylor’s School and then spent two years in Germany, where he acquired his taste for German classical literature and music. He was fluent in the German language and translated many masterpieces of poetry and drama. For a considerable number of years he worked with his father in an insurance office. This, however, was only drudgery to him, his real interests lying in wholly other directions.
Lloyd was a keen humanitarian from his earliest years, and was a member of the original Humanitarian League, founded by Henry S. Salt and others. In 1932, he was instrumental in founding the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports, of which he was the devoted and untiring Honorary Secretary up till the end of his life.
To readers of British Birds he will be best known as a keen field naturalist. His main interest lay in close observation of bird-life and in noting any special features and aberrations of bird-song, for which he had a particularly fine ear. He contributed regularly to British Birds from 1920 onwards, his last communication being a note on “Herring-Gulls feeding independent young.” For several years he made a close study of the birds of the island of Texel (Holland).
From 1935 until his death he was the Editor of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society’s Transactions, to which he contributed frequent articles and short notes, being also the Society’s Recorder for Mammals, Reptiles and Batrachians. From 1939-1941 inclusive he was responsible for the annual Report on the Birds observed in Hertfordshire published in the above-named journal, and for many years past he devoted every available opportunity to the study of British Dragonflies, contributing various papers on this subject.
Lloyd was a member of the B.O.U., a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and on June 7th, 1944, two days before his death, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
He was fortunate in his wife, who shared all his activities and lightened his burden. Space is left only to add that his essentially kindly nature endeared him to all who were privileged to enjoy his friendship.
British Birds, Vol. 38, June 1944-Dec 1945, p. 73