James Maxwell McConnell Fisher was a British author, editor, broadcaster, naturalist and ornithologist. He was an authority of Gilbert White and made over 1,000 radio and television broadcasts on natural history subjects.
Fisher was the son of Kenneth Fisher (also a keen ornithologist and headmaster of Oundle School from 1922 to 1945); his maternal uncle was the Cheshire naturalist Arnold Boyd. He was educated at Eton and began studying medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford, but later switched to zoology. He took part in the Oxford Arctic expedition in 1933 as an ornithologist.
After university he joined London Zoo as an Assistant Curator, and during the war studied rooks for the Ministry of Agriculture. He later became a leading member of the RSPB and IUCN, a member of the National Parks Commission and vice-chairman of the Countryside Commission. He presented the BBC Radio series Birds in Britain from its inception in March 1951 until its end, twelve years later. Fisher was one of the members of the small party that on 18th September 1955 raised the Union Flag and took possession for the UK of the tiny, uninhabited, rock islet of Rockall in the North Atlantic. As well as writing his own books, he was an editor of Collins' New Naturalist series. He was the resident ornithologist in the regular Nature Parliament series broadcast in the 1950s on BBC radio as part of Children's House. He was awarded the British Trust for Ornithology's Bernard Tucker Medal in 1966.
He was married to Margery Lilian Edith Turner, and they had six children, including the publisher Edmund Fisher. He died in a car crash in September 1970. After Fisher's death he was commemorated in two ways. A public appeal allowed the seabird island of Copinsay, Orkney, to be purchased as a permanent nature reserve dedicated to his name. Also, his papers were subsequently purchased by Bruce Coleman and John Burton and presented to The National Archives
