Chisholm was a prolific and popular writer of articles and books, mainly on birds and nature but also on history, literature and biography.
In 1907, aged seventeen, he joined the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union and during the next year wrote six articles in the organisation's journal, the Emu.
In the Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser he campaigned in 1908 against the killing of egrets for feathers for women's hats, a crusade in which he won support from Australian poet Dame Mary Gilmore.
Visiting England in 1938, Chisholm discovered a large number of documents relating to the nineteenth-century ornithologist John Gould.
They included the diary kept by Gould's principal collector, John Gilbert, during his participation in Ludwig Leichhardt’s 1844-45 expedition to Port Essington.