He attended The English High School in Boston, where he rented a room and earned a living by menial jobs.
[4] One of the nation's outstanding ornithologists with an enviable knowledge of botany, Broun was associated with the Pleasant Valley Sanctuary in Lenox, Massachusetts, with the Austin Ornithological Research Station in Cape Cod, where he banded over 40,000 birds, and was nature supervisor for nine years at the Aven Mt.
[1] In 1934, the wealthy socialite, bird-watching enthusiast, and conservationist Rosalie Edge leased with an option to buy 1,400 acres (5.7 km2) to establish Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and hired Maurice and Irma Broun as game wardens to exclude hunters.
With the exception of three years from 1942 to 1945, when he was a photographer with the Seabees in the South Pacific during World War II, Broun worked as a curator of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary from 1934 until his retirement in 1966.
[1] Maurice and Irma worked as a husband and wife team at the Sanctuary until 1966, and then moved to a farm one ridge to the west of Hawk Mountain in East Brunswick Township, Pennsylvania.