Turner wrote eight books and many journal and magazine articles, and her picture of a great crested grebe led to her being awarded the Gold Medal of the RPS.

Turner's friend, the Reverend Maurice Bird, probably introduced to her by Richard Kearton, kept a natural history diary for 50 years and was therefore also able to share information with her.

She stayed mainly on a houseboat of her own design, which she named after the water rail (Rallus aquaticus), the first bird that she photographed in the Norfolk Broads.

[6][b] A highlight of her career, in 1911, was finding with Jim Vincent, and photographing, a nestling bittern (Botaurus stellaris),[7] a species that had not been recorded as breeding in the UK since 1886.

Her nest photographs included those of the rare Montagu's harrier (Circus pygargus) and the first known breeding ruffs (Calidris pugnax) in Norfolk since 1890.

[10] She seems to have been generally fit, and was described as being "quite capable with a punt or rowing boat",[d] but she suffered bouts of illness throughout her life, with a notable attack in the summer of 1907.

From the family home in Langton Green, she would drive her horse and trap to sites in Kent and Sussex, but she also journeyed much further afield, including several weeks on remote North Uist in 1913, where she saw breeding red-necked phalaropes (Phalaropus lobatus), divers and Arctic skuas (Stercorarius parasiticus).

On Orkney, Turner attempted to photograph breeding seabirds, took a day trip to Hoy, and through a chance encounter found herself a guest at Balfour Castle on Shapinsay.

Her host, Colonel David Balfour, sailed her back to Orkney to get the ferry to Inverness, from where she went to Aviemore to search for crested tits (Lophophanes cristatus).

[13] She went to Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island in the autumn as a guest of Edward Hudson, owner of Country Life magazine, and stayed there for the 1914–15 winter right through to May.

The island is a bird migration hotspot, and rarities she saw there included a great grey shrike (Lanius excubitor) and a White's thrush (Zoothera aurea).

Her journals for 1916 and early 1917 are missing, but it appears that from the middle of the First World War, she was working as a part-time Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) cook[15] at an auxiliary military hospital at Cranbrook, not far from Langton Green.

A trip to Italy in late 1922 in which she visited its major cultural centres seemed largely committed to art and architecture, a rare ornithological comment in her journal being a sighting of a blue rock thrush (Monticola solitarius).

[5][12] Aged 57, Turner found herself living on the reserve in a basic hut during the breeding season, with no electricity supply, and significantly dependent on rain for fresh water.

[18] As well as studying the breeding seabirds, she was able to monitor migrating birds, and found a rare black stork (Ciconia nigra).

[19] Soon after her stay on Scolt Island, Turner moved from Girton to Cambridge proper, and continued to indulge in her passion for gardening in her new suburban home.

[24] Jim Vincent also received a gold medal for his part in obtaining her bittern picture, in his case from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

The reviewer, in the RSPB's 1935 winter issue of Bird Notes and News had said it "showed signs of haste and extraneous matter gathered in to fill vacancies ...".

[37] The Observer, reviewing Bird Watching on Scolt Head commended the book for the author's knowledge and commitment, and said of the quality of the writing "It is as good as anything in the Voyage of the Beagle".

[14] Emma Turner wrote more than 30 articles for British Birds, one of which was a 1919 review of the breeding biology of the bittern illustrated with her own nest photographs.