John Cooper, a very good friend since the 1980s, died in May after a long illness. Until Covid I spent a lot of time birding with John, in Sussex (particularly at Beachy Head) and on various twitches in mainland UK. With other friends John and I visited Madagascar in 1995, the Philippines in 1996 and Japan in 2003.
I was approached and agreed to write John's obituary for the Sussex Ornithology Society. As with most things I agree to do it took a lot longer than anticipated and my thanks go to Doreen and Dave for filling in and firming up many of the details.
An edited version appeared in the Autumn Newsletter but not everyone reading this blog who knew John will have access to it so the original with a couple more photos follows. The edit took out a few details which I thought were of interest.
John Frederick Cooper (JFC) was born in July 1941 in Tolworth (Surrey), the youngest of three brothers. He died peacefully in a nursing home in Burgess Hill in May 2026 following a long illness.
John joined Surbiton
Bird Club with middle brother Barry in 1949 starting a lifelong obsession with
birds for them both, having initially caught the bug when taken to Richmond
Park and Epsom Sewage Farm by older brother Brian. They were soon enjoying watching
breeding pairs of Red-backed Shrikes within walking distance of their home. Taking
their bicycles on the train to see the UK’s first breeding Collared Doves in
Norfolk in the mid-1950’s showed an early interest in rarities although ringing
migrant passerines was to become John’s main interest for many years.
John left school at 15
and joined the Post Office as counter staff. He met Doreen at a dance in March
1960. Later that year John formed the Beachy Head Ringing Group (BHRG) with Barry,
Tony Quinn and Mike Nolan, setting nets at the ‘Z-Bends’ scrub (still known by
local birdwatchers as ‘The Old Trapping Area’) with Doreen as scribe, recording
ringing details. They visited Beachy mostly on Sundays with Doreen on the back
of John’s motorbike clutching mist-net poles! In 1962 ringing was moved to
Whitbread Hollow where it remains. To date over 186,000 birds have been ringed
on Beachy Head.
John and Doreen married
in 1964 and moved to Boston, Lincolnshire, somewhere convenient to birdwatch on
the east coast. John continued ringing, settling on Huttoft Bank as a likely
location. This proved to be an excellent choice when he trapped Britain’s first
mainland Dusky Warbler that November. John made an overland birding trip to
Greece in 1966 giving him a first taste of birding abroad. David was born in
1968 and that autumn John first visited the Isles of Scilly finding a male
‘Subalpine’ Warbler and seeing Britain’s second Northern Waterthrush.
Keen to return to the South Coast John followed up a national advert for recruitment to the
Midland Bank and started at the Eastbourne branch in 1969. The young family
moved into a rented chalet opposite Beachy Head Hotel. Although very convenient
for ringing before and after work their Health Visitor felt the chalet was unsuitable
for a toddler and they moved into Eastbourne. The Chalet later became a Natural
History Museum before being destroyed by a suspicious fire.
Good finds at this time
included the county’s first Red-throated Pipit in October 1969 and a Nutcracker
in August 1970. On 18 October 1974 John trapped the first Sussex Dusky Warbler
in Whitbread Hollow (to add to his first Lincolnshire record), amazingly on the
same day the county’s first Radde’s Warbler was trapped by Roger Charlwood at
nearby Hodcombe. Four days later 19 Rough-legged Buzzards came in off the sea
at Beachy, one of John’s most memorable experiences. In 1974 and 1975 Sussex
Bird Reports John published ‘Bird Population Trends as Shown by Ringing’
from 1964-74 BHRG data and ‘An Analysis of the Spring Sea-watches at Beachy
Head’ from 1960-75 sea-watching data. John
was a member of the SOS Records Committee from 1976-85 and the Sussex Recorder
in 1977 but writing all the species accounts for the 1976 Bird Report impeded
his time in the field and he handed over to Mike Rogers.
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| John and David Cooper in Whitbread Hollow, Beachy Head, Autumn 1970 |
Their first of many
visits to Shetland was in 1978 when younger son Terry was seven. Highlights
were seeing Black-browed Albatross and Snowy Owl, identifying a Saker Falcon
and finding a male Rustic Bunting. In 1979 John was promoted to the bank’s Crawley
branch and they moved to Burgess Hill. Ringing at Beachy Head before/after work
was no longer practical so John concentrated on birding there. His dedication
to Spring sea-watching from Birling Gap led to him being the first to see over
100 Pomarine Skuas in a day in Sussex (on 7th May 1981 – something he
repeated on 5th May 2014).
John took the family on
annual camping trips around Europe often to coincide with Spring migration and
extended autumn half-term holidays to the Isles of Scilly from 1979-83. John’s
enjoyment seeing Nearctic vagrants there led to the family visiting Maryland (and
brother Barry), Texas, California/Arizona and Florida in the mid-1980s. These extended horizons albeit he
remained just as passionate about birding at Beachy Head where he found yet
another Dusky Warbler - the County’s second - in October 1991.
John ended his career as
Operations Manager in Horsham and was granted early retirement from the bank in
1992. He became a full-time birdwatcher, although to some it was hard to tell
the difference. When not chasing rarities the length and breadth of Britain and
Eire he concentrated on Beachy Head between extended periods on Shetland or trips
abroad.
In 1994 John found a
Booted Warbler at Beachy Head in June and a Chestnut Bunting, a potential first
for Britain, on Shetland in September. In Spring 1997 he spent over a month
helping set up a ringing station in the Jordan Valley. John saw over 100 Honey
Buzzards at Beachy Head in Autumn 2000, including 63 departing south on 30
September. He documented it in ‘The Influx of Honey Buzzards and Other
Raptors in Sussex During Autumn 2000’ in the 2000 Sussex Bird Report. In
August 2002 John helped identify the first Sussex Sykes’s Warbler.
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| John in Madagascar in 1995 with Nick Preston, Barry Stidolph and me (photo taken by our driver Terry) |
John birdwatched widely
in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australasia seeing around half of the world’s
bird species. He particularly enjoyed the excitement of finding his own birds
and most trips were done independently, often on a diet of bread and bananas as
he couldn’t abide rice! He had contributions from several trips published in Birding
World and the Bulletin of the Oriental Bird Club.
John, me and Dave Sargeant in Japan in 2005. John King was with us and took the photo
John and Doreen
particularly enjoyed cruises, often finding greatly discounted rates at short
notice. They included Antarctica, ensuring that John would travel to every
continent in search of birds, and various parts of the Pacific. In 2007, on a
cruise to the Canaries, John found a Tricoloured Heron during a few hours ashore, the third record
for the Western Palearctic.
Diagnosed with multiple
myeloma in December 2009, John was given at most two years by his Cancer specialist
but continually exceeded expectations thanks to developing chemotherapy
treatments although at a cost of increasingly painful side-effects. Despite
this John and David wrote accounts for the rare species (just over 100 in
total) in the highly acclaimed Birds of Sussex (2014). John birded in Canada in
2011, Japan in 2012 and Cyprus and Taiwan in 2013. He managed regular visits to
Beachy Head and in October 2015 found the county’s first Short-toed Treecreeper
in the area where he had started ringing 55 years before – his BBRC submission
was judged runner-up in the Carl Zeiss Award 2016. Shetland trips continued to 2017
after which medical concerns prevented them. Autumn 2016 there was particularly
memorable for finding a White’s Thrush the day after seeing Siberian Thrush and
a few days before Britain’s first Siberian Accentor.
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| Doreen and John at Point Pelle, Canada in May 2011 |
In April 2017 John and
Doreen were in the Doctors Surgery in Burgess Hill for a routine cancer
consultation when they heard about a Blue Rock Thrush at Beachy Head, a rather
stressful journey ensued but they saw it. Covid was particularly hard with a
shot immune system making strict isolation essential. John and Tony Quinn
authored a paper in the 2022 Sussex Bird Report ‘Long term trends at Beachy
Head of flycatchers, redstarts, chats and related species’ although it made
rather depressing reading. As the Covid threat declined John did get out to see
the Barcombe White-throated Sparrow and was still visiting Beachy Head in Spring
2022.
John has seen more bird
species than anyone else in Sussex (364, over 90% of the county total). They include King Eider,
Greater and Tibetan Sand Plovers, Bridled Tern, Gyr Falcon, Nutcracker,
Wallcreeper and Black & White Warbler. His last addition was the
White-crowned Sparrow at Seaford Head which Terry took him to see in April
2023.
John enjoyed bird photography, particularly of scarce migrants as
epitomized by his image of a Japanese Waxwing on Hegura-jima in Birding
World (25:485). He also
contributed photos to The Handbook of the Birds of the World and from 2009-2022
updated his Beachy Head & jfcbirding blogs on an almost daily basis.
Away from birding, John
had an interest in cricket and Chelsea FC. He kept a tidy garden but always had
an eye to the sky, once seeing a Honey Buzzard fly over while he was cutting
the lawn.
In August 2025 John was hospitalized following a bad fall. On being discharged in a very weak state he was given a life expectancy of just 7-10 days. Knowing John’s resilience his GP extended this forecast to 4-6 weeks but John lasted nine months, latterly in a nursing home with Doreen visiting every afternoon. John had great determination and didn’t know how to give up (in birding and in life). He was very knowledgeable and focused, if at times appearing a little unforgiving - definitely a birder’s birder. Beside every great man is a great woman and Doreen was most certainly that, supporting his every endeavour. She, David and Terry have our deepest sympathy.
