Eric Amos was born on 9 October 1934, at #14 Walton Avenue, North Cheam in Surrey, the oldest of five children. Among his early experiences was that of being evacuated to a village in Suffolk during the Blitz and later to a hamlet in Devon during the buzz-bombing of London in the Second World War. Later, in the mid 1950s, he served three years in the military, spending part of that time in Korea during that war until he was given compassionate leave when his mother died. Artistically inclined, Eric had already attended an art school in England before his military service, but those experiences of two wars may have given him his somewhat cynical and stoic outlook on life.

When his father moved to Bermuda in October 1954 to work for the Owen Harries Consulting Engineers research company, the children relocated with him, Eric joining them when his military service ended in 1956.

Eric entered the local art scene in a big way. His interests were extraordinarily varied, including enormous abstract mixed-media paintings, cartoon drawing, poetry and jazz. He soon made many friends across racial and class barriers, such that the various jobs he held were somewhat incidental to his real interests. His sister Jill recalls growing up with an unorthodox brother. To quote: "I was always so proud of his different ways and thoughts. He was often the topic of conversation with my school friends and I introduced him to one of them, Diana. We all know what happened then." (Diana and Eric later married).

It was during this period of active social life that he and his brother, Anthony, together with Ian Farrow, initiated the "Non-Mariners Race", which has become a mid-summer Bermuda tradition. Among their many permanent friends from that time are Colin and Lucelle Cooke. When Diana moved to London in 1961 to pursue her own career in art at the St. Martin's School of Art, Eric followed. They were married in London in 1963 and lived there for six years while Eric held a job with Reuters News Agency and continued to expand his involvement in art, writing and jazz appreciation.

In 1967, they spent time with Eric's brother Anthony and wife Lynn who were living in Piermont, New York, where Anthony was employed at Columbia University as an oceanographer. It was during that visit that Eric was encouraged to obtain employment on three oceanographic cruises to Antarctica over a nine-month period with his brother. Those research cruises inspired Eric's fascination with the bird world and an obsession to record his experiences in his art as well as his writing. He became an avid diary keeper, recording in meticulous detail natural history phenomena that the more focused oceanographers were completely ignoring; thus his logs of those cruises are unique and now of great value. His seabird paintings from that trip were subsequently a major part of his first solo exhibit at the Lazy Corner Antiques in Bermuda. This led to an invitation by the Tryon Gallery in London to join their "Bird Artists of the World" exhibit with paintings of Bermuda birds.

Meanwhile, Diana had returned to Bermuda and worked first for Advertising Associates and then at what was to become the Bermuda College, teaching art. When Eric rejoined her after these trips he boasted to Diana, "Now I am a bird man too!" This was apparently in reference to a story he always delighted in telling about his first meeting with me at a party back in 1957. Knowing that I was the birdman in Bermuda at that time he approached me to report having seen an avocet on Riddell's Bay Golf course. The way he liked to tell it I responded that he couldn't possibly have because I was the birdman of Bermuda and not only had I never seen one but there had never been a record here!

That brash early encounter may have been the reason Eric seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder when I first began encountering him birdwatching at Spittal Pond in 1969. I kept trying to meet him there, but somehow he always kept ahead of me on the opposite side of the pond. Eventually I found out that he and Diana were living in an apartment above the Halfway House in Flatts, so I decided to confront him there. As the only active birder on Bermuda at the time, I was quite frankly starving for the companionship of someone with similar interests with whom I could communicate my experiences. When Diana opened the door and invited me in Eric was finally cornered! Thus began a partnership of common interest that was to grow into an enduring friendship. Despite his preference for birding alone, Eric, too, came to realise the need for someone with whom to share experiences. I got proof of this one day when I saw him running at breakneck speed towards me while I was working on some aspect of "management" at Spittal Pond. Gasping for air, he told me that he had just discovered a genuine wild flamingo at the other end of the pond.

We had our differences, however. Eric always tended to accept nature as it was, warts and all. If a shorebird he was painting happened to be feeding amongst discarded trash in a local marsh, the trash was faithfully recorded along with the bird, no matter how unsettling it made the picture. It was his way of commenting on the cold realities of the world. Whereas I was always involved in managing and restoring nature reserves, he was content in the role of passive observer, believing that it was presumptive and arrogant of man to think that he could improve on nature. In the longer term, of course, this may well be true, but it became one of our friendly differences about which we would often joke. Whenever I began a new pond digging project or "restoration", for example, I would always apologise to him first, assuring him that nature would soon repair any damage that I caused in my pretences to play God!

Eric abhorred the idea of organised birding tours led by a tour guide, and preferred birding alone, but his powers of observation were extraordinary. His acute eye captured every detail, which was then reflected back in his artwork and writing. Soon he was documenting one new record after another. For this reason I always considered it a privilege to accompany him in the field. With our birthdays only two days apart at the height of the fall migration, we evolved a tradition of birding together on those days and were always rewarded with incredible sightings. One fall day back in the era when Wood warblers were still abundant, we recorded 29 species of that beautiful family on Ireland Island, a migratory landfall hotspot. Eric vowed that he was going to go back and get 30 species the next day … and he did. Later he also began documenting everything with a video camera. The highlight of that era was when he calmly held back during the get-together after Bermuda's annual Christmas Bird Count of 2003-4 until everyone else had reported on their "best bird of the day" and then casually played a tape of his encounter with a Kirtland's warbler – one of the rarest birds in the world with perhaps a one-in-a-million chance of being encountered on Bermuda. Everyone was stunned, but there was the proof and most got to see the actual bird the next day.

I could fill a book with the extraordinary birding experiences that we shared together, but whether they were dangerous, like the time we were held at gun-point by US Marines while birding in a restricted part of the airport when it was the US Naval Airstation; exasperating, like the time he accidentally turned his video camera on while chasing Bermuda's only record of a Booted eagle from Europe and then turned the camera off when we caught up and aimed it at the bird, or whether we were bored out of our minds scanning an empty ocean from my small boat miles at sea in hope of sighting some rare seabird, it was always Eric's dour, but delightful sense of humour that I will hold most precious in my memory. He could make me laugh until the tears rolled and much of Eric's humour was typically directed against himself.

Having settled permanently back in Bermuda, the Amos's purchased a cottage on Ord Road in Warwick which they named "Corncrake". Then in 1974 they were blessed with the birth of their only child, Stacey. I had always marvelled at Eric's ability to re-invent himself in some new capacity as circumstances required, but now he took on the role of housekeeper and childcarer while Diana continued her full-time job at Bermuda College. He had enormous determination when he made up his mind about something, like the time when he abruptly gave up recreational drinking and never touched another drop again in his life. Eric had a great mistrust of horses so the ultimate test was when Stacey begged her parents to buy a horse and Eric found himself mucking-out stables and giving me the manure for a vegetable garden!

The way Stacey described it at his wake, he was the perfect father, introducing her to the world of nature and art and teaching her that even cockroaches should be spared from unnecessary harm! It was only during the self-conscious age of puberty that she became embarrassedly aware that her dad was not like any of the other fathers who held steady jobs and wore suits and tie. Eric put a quick stop to that one by turning up at the school to collect her in an awful brown suit that he had borrowed, and he would have worn formal dress if Diana had let him!

During the 1970s, '80s and '90's, life revolved around rearing Stacey, having art exhibitions at Lazy Corner Antiques, the Windjammer Gallery, Heritage House and the Crisson-Hind Gallery, as well as exhibiting at the Desmond Fountain Gallery and the Bermuda Arts Centre in Dockyard. For a time Eric served on the Government's stamp design committee and he was commissioned to design the stamps commemorating the building of the Deliverance. Some summers were spent at the artists' retreat in San Miguel, Mexico, and occasional visits were made to his brother in Port Aransas, Texas. Eric had another hobby besides birding and that was competitive darts. He very nearly won the Bermuda championship at one point.

Eric was one of those lucky people who seemed to need little sleep, so he would work long into the night on his bird paintings and writing. Thus it was no surprise to me when he self-published a delightfully eccentric illustrated "Guide to the Birds of Bermuda" in 1991. This book summarised his Bermuda bird observations up to that time in a most comprehensive and useful format and received international praise at a conference of the American Birding Association, encouraging many American birders to visit Bermuda. It was largely in recognition of this that he was given a Best of Bermuda Gold Award in 1992.

When Harbour Nights began in Hamilton, Eric and Diana began selling their work there. They also set up the Amos Art Studio in St. George's. Then from 1998 Diana and Eric were commissioned to do the very popular "Bermuda Colours Calendar", collaborating on the artwork and writing.

Eric and I often used to joke about what our birding excursions would be like in our dotage when we could no longer see or hear clearly. Cruel reality arrived all too soon with his diagnosis of colon cancer in 2005, but in characteristic fashion Eric's joking about the drawbacks of old age never stopped, even then. After three operations and several bouts of chemotherapy, I watched my friend begin to weaken. But it was still the same old stoic and gentle-humoured Eric, even after he decided not to fight a recurrence of the cancer and even after he attended the funeral of his youngest brother Jack from the same cancer in February of this year. Instead he and Diana chose to take a leisurely trip to Australia and recorded every bit of it on video. In mid-April during a special visit to see him by one of his old friends, Dr. John Lines, we all made one last birding trip together on the temporary wilderness of Morgan's Point, where we encountered Bermuda's only pair of red-tailed hawks.

The end came fast. He was still working on the calendar and fully alert four days before he died. He never displayed the slightest self-pity and I got the impression that he willed himself to remain in full control until his energy just ran out. Much credit is also due to the extraordinary skill and dedication of the PALS nurses, too, for easing him through those final days with a minimum of pain and inconvenience.

It was fitting that Eric's ashes were spread by his family at his beloved Spittal Pond on a windy day in late May.

Eric leaves an extraordinary legacy, not only in Stacey, who has inherited her parents' artistic skills, but also in his artwork and his meticulous natural history records, which he continued to compile following the publication of his "Guide to the Birds of Bermuda" right up into 2010. Those field notes represent the most comprehensive record of migrant birds obtained by any one person on Bermuda during the period 1969 to 2009. Bermuda, indeed, has lost one of its most outstanding natural historians.

I will greatly miss my friend and my heart goes out to Diana, daughter and son-in-law Stacey and Todd Holden and beloved grand daughter Kaya, brother Anthony and sisters Jill Raine and Anne Amosford in their even greater loss, for Eric was also a devoted family man.