"His claim to significance," according to Bryony Dixon of BFI Screenonline, "lies in the groundbreaking techniques he developed to capture animals in their natural habitats and in the fact that he passed this knowledge on.

Pike developed a profound knowledge of photographic techniques and went on to publish a series of 25 handbooks on ornithological photography and cinematography, starting with In Birdland with Field Glass and Camera (1900).

Together with cinematographer Harold Armytage Sanders, Pike took great physical risks hanging from ropes over coastal cliffs to capture unprecedented footage of Britain's seabirds, including kittiwakes, gannets, cormorants and puffins.

He later went on to work for Gaumont-British Instructional Films on the similar Secrets of Life series, where he made the controversial A Family of Great Tits (1934), highlighting the brutality of nature with footage from a specially constructed nesting box.

[15] Some 300 prints, negatives and lantern-slides of his work, which were acquired from the London Natural History Society in 1974, are preserved in the RPS Collection at the National Media Museum in Bradford, along with one of his early cameras.

A local blue plaque for Oliver Pike, co-sponsored by Southgate District Civic Trust and Enfield Grammar School was unveiled on 16 November 2014 by his grandsons Jonathan and Richard Dollimore at 96 Green Dragon Lane, Winchmore Hill, his family home from 1882 to 1914.