Tony Marr: 1939-2025

Last Friday was a sad day for everyone involved with WildWings as it was the funeral of one of the UK’s most respected birders and original WildWings leaders, Tony Marr. 

Born in Scotland at the outbreak of the Second World War, Tony moved to Sussex with his family a few years later and lived in the south of England for most of his working life.  He had a fascination with birds from an early age and inspired by the biology teacher at his school set up a school bird club organising walks and lunchtime meetings.

Aged fifteen, Tony was invited by the family’s ex-home help to go and stay with her in Stornoway on the Hebridean island of Lewis.  For a young Tony, this was not only an amazing and life-changing opportunity but also a “huge sacrifice” as it meant selling his cherished Hornby electric train set to pay for the cost of the journey so “it was goodbye to the train set and hello …… to Golden Eagles, Divers and Dippers”.

The visit was highly influential on his life as it started a fascination with bird migration and many years later would lead to him subsequently buying a house and becoming a part-time resident on the island.

A few years later, Tony was involved in setting up a bird observatory at Selsey Bill and his studies and reports on the wildlife, and especially the birds, of both Pagham and Rye Harbours were highly influential in both locations being declared Nature Reserves and thus preserved for posterity. 

After leaving school, Tony took what was undoubtedly a difficult decision and decided not to work in ornithology (as the pay was poor) and embark on a career in the Civil Service and, in particular, the Land Registry.  He would spend 37 years doing this, heading up the Northern Island office at one point and also starting the staff training programme in London.

During these decades, however, he continued to do much to shape modern UK ornithology with spells on the RSPB Council and British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee.

In the early 1990s, Tony joined one of the first WildWings voyages to Antarctica and not long after this, he was invited by the late John Brodie Good (WildWings founder) to start leading tours for WildWings which led to his early retirement from the Civil Service.

With his interest in seabirds, Tony guided multiple trips to the Arctic and Antarctic (making over 50 visits to the latter), several small boat trips to the Salvage Islands and also branched out into guiding land-based tours including being a regular leader on the WildWings trips to the Chinese migration hotspot of Beidaihe.

I first met Tony in Ushuaia in 1998 when he was guiding on the very first Atlantic Odyssey and together we visited islands which at that point were hardly on the birding map such as South Georgia, Gough, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and Ascension.  We spent an amazing five weeks together heading north and his enthusiasm and passion were palpable.

Having retired relatively young, Tony decided that Sussex was “too crowded”, so he moved to the birding mecca of Cley in north Norfolk and spent many happy years living there, however, his love of remote places led him to buy a rundown property on Lewis which he had converted before becoming a part-time resident. 

This allowed him to continue his fascination with bird migration but also achieve his personal goal of finding a British “mega” and this desire was fulfilled in October 2015 when he found a male Wilson’s Warbler not far from his house.  This was only the second British record (after a one day bird in Cornwall) and was extremely popular with the UK twitching fraternity with a steady stream of visitors heading to see this spectacular bird which was present for five days.

Eventually age and ill health caught up with Tony and he returned to Sussex and became a resident of the Tarring Manor Care Home where he passed away on 7 July 2025.

Tony was a true gentleman, a generous and passionate birder, a fantastic story teller and will be sadly missed by all those who knew him.

Chris Collins