Standing on the shoulders of giants

The gymnastic feat enabled the brothers to obtain pictures of birds' nests high in a bush or tree and where ladders couldn't be used. But arguably it was the least remarkable of the methods by which Richard and Cherry pioneered wildlife photography more than a century ago.

An early trick had Cherry standing in the hollow, portable stub of an ash tree, carried to the chosen location. In some settings he occupied imitation piles of brushwood, created by heaping sticks on a canvas-covered frame. The genesis of the modern hide, this technique gave birth to a stuffed and hollowed-out bullock, into which Cherry squeezed himself.

Alternatively, he placed his camera in the chest of a stuffed recumbent sheep, activating it by remote control - the bulb-operated pneumatic tube - through a hole cut in the animal's chest.

The local bird population accepted these intruders, not even noticing that the bullock had two extra legs, needed for stability. And the brothers discovered that if they both walked to a hide but one returned soon afterwards, birds that flew away on their approach soon came back.

The brothers practised their deceptions far from their native Swaledale. In Norway, they constructed a stone wall as concealment to obtain pictures of a snow bunting. In Africa, Cherry devised a chair with long legs, which he placed in the shallows of a lake and surrounded with reeds stuck in the mud. From this he secured not only photographs of Egyptian geese, ibis, storks, herons and other birds, but, more dramatic, cine-film of hippos, crocodiles and turtles.

Richard and Cherry rank among the most distinguished of British naturalists. Published in 1895, with text by Richard and photographs by Cherry, their book, British Birds' Nests, was the first natural history book fully illustrated with photographs from nature. The success of this and the score or so of other natural history books that followed, most jointly produced, took them to dizzy heights, metaphorically and literally. Both became friends of the US president, Theodore Roosevelt, who trekked and camped with Cherry in Africa and personally led Richard on wildlife expeditions in the US. Richard recalled the president "rushing up steep banks, tearing through tangled masses of undergrowth".

A film shot by Cherry in African jungles was given a royal command performance. In 1908, soaring over London in the first airship seen in Britain, he took the first film of the capital from the air. In Belgium in the First World War he also took some of the earliest war film - an experience he was later invited to recount to the king and queen in Windsor Castle.

Plaques on Muker school, attended by the brothers, honour these exceptional dalesmen. But amazingly their stories have never been told.

At last, however, this omission has been remedied by Bill Mitchell, the retired former editor of The Dalesman. A distinguished dalesman himself, and no mean naturalist to boot, he is the perfect man for the job.

"As editor of The Dalesman," writes Bill, "I kept a finger on the pulse of Dales life and frequently crossed the Buttertubs Pass from Wensleydale to Thwaite, in upper Swaledale, where Richard and Cherry Kearton were born and reared. The end cottage grandly known as Corner House was distinctive because the owner, J G Reynoldson, a retired builder, had the lintel carved with the outlines of birds and beasts known to Richard and Cherry.

"George, their cousin and childhood playmate, used to tell of their boyish escapades, adding 'Aye, an' I mind too that Dicky were a rare 'un at gudlin' tickling trout'."

THE brothers are believed to have gained their passion for wildlife from a grandfather. From an early age they knew every local species of bird and could imitate the calls of many birds and animals. Richard used the broken stem of a clay pipe to perfectly mimic grouse.

Clumsy bone setting after Richard damaged his hip in a fall from a tree left him with one leg shorter than the other. Partly disguised by a thick cork sole on his left boot, this handicap didn't prevent him becoming a shepherd - or put him off climbing trees. Though he became a London businessman, he claimed he never wore a suit that would prevent him climbing to a bird's nest.

His move to London came in 1882 when, aged 20, he met the son of a founder of the London publishing house Cassell, Petter and Galpin, who was in Swaledale with a grouse shooting party. Perhaps surprisingly, Richard accepted the offer of a job in Cassell's publicity department. Initially addressing envelopes, he rose rapidly in the company, ultimately becoming publicity director.

When Cherry, his younger brother by ten years, was 16, Richard found a job for him at Cassell.

Through some articles he wrote on wildlife, Richard was invited to contribute the "nests and eggs" section to a book on birds to be published by another publisher. When this fell through, Cassell agreed to his request to produce his own book entitled Eggs and Egg Collecting, which appeared in 1890. Later, Richard deplored egg collecting.

Meanwhile, on April 11, 1892, when the brothers were staying with friends at Enfield, Middlesex, Richard found a picturesquely-situated thrush's nest and suggested that Cherry, the new owner of a cheap camera, should photograph it.

This led to their landmark book of 1895. Its successors ranged from Wild Life at Home: How to Study and Photograph It, and a children's book Our Bird Friends, to Wild Life Across the World, a solo effort by Cherry, with an introduction by Roosevelt who noted: "I have long followed the extraordinary work of the Kearton brothers in photographing English birds."

Richard later observed: "The first photograph, at Enfield, was perhaps the easiest of the lot. For others we had to scale cliffs, lower ourselves over precipices, scramble on small rocky islands and climb mountains."

The extent of their trail-blazing is staggering. Cherry's films of African wildlife, including a lion hunt, were the first of their kind. Leaving Cassell's to become the first freelance wildlife photographer, he pioneered the use of colour film and the telephoto lens.

HIS patience was legendary. On the Isle of Mull he spent the best part of three days waist deep in a loch to photograph the last pair of ospreys to nest in Britain. Securing a picture of a kingfisher took even longer - six days, during which a box containing the camera was gradually moved closer to the bird's regular perch.

Whether the subject was an African hippo or a butterfly in Richard's Caterham (Surrey) garden, the brothers' observation was acute. Richard noted that the St Kilda wren rarely cocked its tail and never uttered "the familiar jarring" alarm call. Cherry was particularly fascinated by the penguins on Darren Island, south of Capetown. In his The Island of Penguins he observed: "They quarrelled, fought, moulted and made love on every side of us ... I met the proud and the meek, the bully and the mischief maker, the comfortable old gentleman, the despised weakling and the social outcast. I saw weddings, fights, the tragic collapse of a house, fun at the seaside - everything happening almost that would provide a headline in our newspapers if it occurred in London or New York."

Alongside his account of the brothers' wildlife achievements, Bill Mitchell sketches in the domestic background. Richard and his wife Ellen had five children, including a son, John, who wrote two wildlife books, and Grace, who assisted her father with his wildlife photography.

Sadly, Cherry's worldwide wanderings caused the collapse of his first marriage. His second wife, a South African singer, gave up her career to accompany her husband on his expeditions.

At Richard's funeral in 1928, a friend observed that the strength he lost from his crippled limb went into his iron will. This was demonstrated in January 1895, when the brothers' mother died at Nateby, near Kirkby Stephen. To fulfil a promise that she would be buried beside her husband in Muker churchyard, Richard employed a gang of men to cut through deep snowdrifts. The brothers dedicated their next book, With Nature and a Camera "to the memory of beloved father and mother, who now lie sleeping where the rock thrush pipes his lonesome note and the moorcock becks at dawn of day".

Richard once confessed that he missed "the clear cool springs and prattling becks" of his native Swaledale. He died in 1928, aged 66, after a long period of illness. Cherry died shortly after broadcasting on BBC Children's Hour in 1940, aged 68.

In a foreword to Bill Mitchell's book, Martin Withers, secretary of the Zoological Photographic Club, says the brothers "brought to the attention of the public at large the beauty and wealth of nature around us and acted as a catalyst for what is today the world-wide conservation movements".

Bill Mitchell notes that direct descendants of the brothers still own three acres near Thwaite.

"The family has thus retained its little stake in the Yorkshire Dales."

Very fitting.

l Watch the Birdie: The Life and Times of Richard and Cherry Kearton by W R Mitchell (Castleberg, softback, £7.99).