[1] He served in the British military in the Royal Artillery during World War II and was a veteran of the Siege of Tobruk.
[1] Though he had no formal education in ornithology at the time, Goodwin was hired to work in the Natural History Museum's bird room.
He wrote a series of detailed books on crows, pigeons and estrildid finches during the 1970s and 1980s as part of his work at the British Museum.
[1] He also taught and mentored noted ornithologists, such as Aubrey Manning, Rob Hume and Desmond Morris when they were students.
He even resigned from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to protest its perceived lack of support for saving these pheasants, which had been introduced to parts of rural England.