Ayres taught Roberts to skin birds and small mammals as well as the importance of keeping accurate records on every specimen.

The unit demobilised in August 1906 and Roberts and his brother, Noel, collected birds eggs and nests which they then presented to the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria.

[1] In 1908 he accompanied Frederick V. Kirby on an expedition to Quelimane district in Mozambique to destroy lions for the Boror Company[2] on their coffee and sugar plantations.

His approach to taxonomy was to create a new genus, species or subspecies based on slight difference, a method he defended vigorously.

However, owing to his vast field experience he came to be regarded as the greatest authority on South African birds and mammals.

[1] He was author of several manuscripts and articles in scientific publications, including over a hundred papers in the Annals of the Transvaal Museum, Journal of the South African Ornithologists' Union and The Ostrich.

[1] Early in 1948 he was offered the post of curator of the Queen Victoria Museum in Harare, but his death on 5 May 1948 in a motor car accident in the Transkei region prevented him from taking up the position.

[1] His first scientific publication was "Visit to a colony of Ibis aethiopica" in the Journal of the South African Ornithologists' Union in 1905.