Eric Ennion was born on 7th June 1900 at Kettering in Northamptonshire, the son of a country doctor. In 1904 the family moved to Burwell on the edge of the Cambridgeshire fens where, after studying medicine at Caius College and St Mary's Hospital, he joined his father's practice in 1926.

From an early age he was fascinated by birds, and with drawing them. He held his first London one-man show of sporting pictures at the Greatorex Galleries in 1937.

At the end of the war he sold the medical practice and took the opportunity to become the first warden of the pioneer Field Studies Centre at Flatford Mill in Suffolk. After five years at Flatford, he and his wife Dorothy established their own Field Centre and Bird Observatory at Mo...