After 1880 he specialised in watercolours, often of scenery in the Scottish Highlands, where he spent an increasing amount of his time birdwatching.
[5] He contributed a painting to an 1882 book Bedford Park, celebrating the then-fashionable garden suburb of that name.
[1] He made a substantial collection of skins and eggs of European birds, acquired by the British Museum in 1893.
He became a member of the Royal Institution and of the British Ornithological Union, and a fellow of the Zoological Society.
The original 1895 manuscript Book of Reference to the Picidae is kept in the State Darwin Museum in Moscow, Russia.