Turner, E. L. | Every Garden a Bird Sanctuary

First edition, first impression. A rare guide to gardening and managing outdoor spaces for wild birds, by the pioneering wildlife photographer and conservationist Emma Louise Turner.

The prominent American ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice (1883-1974) reviewed this volume for the journal Bird Banding in July, 1936, writing that, “The title of this book is an inspiration in itself. In this sane, readable little volume, Miss Turner, well-known bird photographer and student of life-history of birds, gives excellent advice, not only for garden sanctuaries, but also for woodland and marsh sanctuaries. She points out the ruthless advance of present-day civilization against the few remnants of wild life”.

Emma Louise Turner (1867-1940) became interested in wildlife photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. She joined the Royal Photographic Society the following year, and by 1904 was giving talks illustrated with her own slides. Turner was particularly interested in birds and travelled throughout the UK and in Europe to photograph them, but her main base of operations was in the Norfolk Broads, where she lived for part of each year beginning as early as 1901. This was where, in 1911, she photographed a nestling bittern, proving that the species was breeding in Britain for the first time since 1886. Another highlight of her career was the award of the Royal Photographic Society’s Gold Medal for a photograph of a great crested grebe on its nest, published in her book Broadland Birds in 1924. In 1904 Turner was elected one of the first fifteen female members of the Linnean Society, in 1909 she became one of the first four honorary female members of the British Ornithologist’s Union, and she was the only woman involved in the 1933 appeal that led to the creation of the British Trust for Ornithology.