With the untimely death from cancer of David Pearson at the early age of 76 on 20 September 2017, ornithology, particularly East African ornithology, has lost one of its greatest sons. He will best be remembered for his interest in bird migration and his enormous efforts towards our understanding of it; in later years he became keenly interested and knowledgeable on taxonomy and nomenclature. He continued the long tradition of British amateur ornithologists, always maintaining the highest standards. He was exceptionally willing to share his knowledge and encourage others, especially the young. His interest in birds began as a 9-year-old in Sibton, Suffolk, where it was nurtured by his father Fred who took him to the nearby marshes and coastal areas around Walberswick, Dunwich and Minsmere. At the age of 15 he joined the Dingle Bird Club and gained his BTO A Ringer's Permit in 1957. He remained a member and strong supporter of this ringing and migration group for the rest of his life. He was also an outstanding field observer. Mike Smart, a friend from early days, recalls an occasion in late April 1961 when David identified a Western Bonelli's Warbler Phylloscopus bonelli near Walberswick by its song. Then it was only the seventh British record and the first time it had been recorded singing in Britain. He was positive of his identification, although he'd heard only one before, in France. They went on to catch and ring it, confirming his voice ID. David John Pearson was born on 26 January 1941, in Bedford. The family moved to Suffolk in 1947 and Suffolk remained his UK base for the rest of his life. After Leiston Grammar School, where he became Head Boy, he went up to Cambridge and obtained a BA in Natural Sciences at Gonville and Caius, followed, in 1965, by a PhD in biochemistry; his thesis was entitled ‘Carnitine compounds in animal tissues’. In 1964 he married Margaret Barbour and soon after, the young couple set out for Africa for David to take up a lectureship in biochemistry at Makerere University College, Kampala, Uganda, in 1965. In Uganda during the northern winter, he devoted most of his spare time to ringing in an area of bush at Gaba by the shore of Lake Victoria near Kampala, concentrating on Palaearctic passerines. This work resulted in papers in Ibis, Bull. Br. Orn. Club and Bird Study. He also made bumpy 500-km car journeys down to Lake Nakuru in Kenya to ring waders, and that is where we first met, in 1967. The Pearsons returned to Britain in 1968, remaining for 2 years in which David worked as a supply maths teacher in Ipswich, but late in 1970 he secured a lectureship in biochemistry at the University of Nairobi, staying there until 1990. David was a devoted teacher and his final 2 years at the university were spent unsupported by the British government; nonetheless, he insisted on remaining to see his students successfully on their way in medicine. In his 20 years based on the Nairobi Chiromo campus, he travelled widely in Kenya, immersing himself in the Kenya Bird Atlas project by frequently camping overnight, often with Adrian Lewis (the Atlas co-ordinator), in previously unvisited quarter-degree squares. He also chaired the resurrected Ornithological Sub-committee of the East Africa Natural History Society throughout his time in Kenya. These were fruitful years, which saw the production of Birds of East Africa (Britton, P.L. (ed.) 1980, Nairobi: EANHS), a sub-committee team effort; the launch of Scopus in 1977 which included for many years the comprehensive East African Bird Report which always began with a review of the year, written for many years by David. The sub-committee (later renamed Bird Committee) produced three small but definitive checklists for the traditional three East African countries, the Kenya one running to four editions. David was also heavily involved in the East African Rarities Committee, an international group formed in 1984 to adjudicate records from Kenya and surrounding countries and to maintain the checklists for those countries. He was the vice-chairman of the 6th Pan-African Ornithological Congress held in Francistown, Botswana, in 1985, and scientific programme organizer for the 7th, held in Nairobi in 1988. Although David was a committed writer and museum researcher, spending many hours poring over skins in Tring and Nairobi, he was an equally keen fieldworker, never happier than when he was ringing or watching birds. He spent much of his spare time ringing Yellow Wagtails Motacilla flava around Nairobi, ringing waders at several Rift Valley lakes, principally Nakuru, Magadi and Turkana, and also working various sites around Nairobi and Athi River, mainly for small Palaearctic passerines, frequently putting in several hours before beginning his lecturing duties. In his time back home in Suffolk, apart from migrants, his special interest was the Bearded Tit (not the ‘Bearded Reedling’, a name he couldn't abide) Panurus biarmicus, and he published extensively on this species, either alone or with others. Soon after the outstanding ‘lighthouse effect’ at Ngulia Lodge (in the middle of Tsavo West National Park) was discovered in the autumn of 1969 by Alec Forbes-Watson, David joined Graeme and Daphne Backhurst to catch and ring birds there. This developed into the Ngulia Palaearctic Bird Migration project, still running today, although in a somewhat scaled-down manner, where well over half a million Eurasian migrants have been ringed so far, yielding over 250 controls and recoveries of 13 species. Ngulia has also turned up two new taxa for Kenya: Savi's Warbler Locustella luscinioides (two records in different years) and an example of a Palaearctic race of the Red-rumped Swallow Cecropis daurica rufula, and David was present for all three. The work at Ngulia has been written up in Ibis, Scopus and the EANHS Bulletin. In addition, in recent years he has written the narrative of the informal Ngulia annual reports, including that for 2016. As a spin-off from the Ngulia work, David discovered a major site for wintering Barred Warblers Sylvia nisoria at Mtito Andei and, with Peter and Hazel Britton, several wintering populations of Basra Reed Warblers Acrocephalus griseldis in eastern Kenya. The Mtito Andei site was worked for three winters along with Swedish colleagues and their findings were published in Ibis and Scopus. At Ngulia and at other ringing locations, David was always ready to help newcomers and others who knew less than he did (which of course meant most people). He was particularly interested in moult and ageing, and he produced a meticulous guide to the identification and ageing of most of the Palaearctic species encountered at Ngulia. This was necessary because Lars Svensson's excellent guide (Identification Guide to European Passerines, 1992, Stockholm) often did not cover the plumages in the months when the birds were found at Ngulia. However, the knowledge he gained from examining huge numbers of birds in the hand for ringing and at various museums was put to good use with his contributions to several leading handbooks on African, Palaearctic and world birds, culminating in the over 700-page magnum opus, Reed and Bush Warblers with Peter Kennerley (2010, London: Christopher Helm). David's last major work was the revision of the taxonomy of the East African White-eyes Zosterops spp. (Pearson, D.J. & Turner, D.A., 2017. Scopus 37: 1–13). David not only travelled widely in East Africa but also made visits with Gerhard Nikolaus to Khor Arba'at on the Red Sea coast of Sudan, Lake Alakol in eastern Kazakhstan, and to the Crimea, at the last two sites joining local ringing teams which included his good friend Sergei Yerokhov. He also took part in ringing operations in Iceland, Thailand, Jordan and northern Sweden. When he returned to England in 1990, he slipped naturally back into ringing at Dingle but also did some contract work locally for the RSPB and BTO. In contrast to this fieldwork, he also devoted a great deal of time to museum work, mainly at Tring. This, together with his own wealth of field experience, was put to good use when he co-wrote Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania with Dale Zimmerman and Don Turner (1996, Russel Friedman: Halfway House) and in his extensive contributions to the 4th edition of Howard & Moore. In recent years David assisted Darcy Ogada as co-editor of Scopus; his contribution to the continuation of this little journal was vital and will be keenly missed. He had a wonderful sense of humour and often, for instance at Ngulia, we would all be convulsed with mirth, often aided and abetted by our trusty Viking and Flemish team members, over some quirk of pronunciation or other such triviality. The funeral on 6 October was held in St Margaret of Antioch Church in Reydon. David will be greatly missed by all his friends and family and by his many friends from the bird world in Europe, Africa, America and Australia and, not least, by Darcy Ogada, Don Turner and me.