Boulton was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War because of his knowledge of Africa and his experience in foreign travel.
Boulton moved to Southern Rhodesia in 1959 with his third wife and established the Atlantica Foundation, a charitable organization to encourage the study of African birds.
[3] Immediately after graduation Boulton was made research assistant at the American Museum of Natural History's ornithology department.
He was a participant of Arthur Stannard Vernay's 1925 expedition to Angola and in the same year married the ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton (née Crayton).
[3] Boulton transferred to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1926 as assistant curator of birds and in 1929 joined the Sarah Lavanburg Straus expedition to Nyasaland (Malawi), Uganda and Kenya.
[1][4] In 1931 Boulton was appointed assistant curator at the Field Museum of Natural History and, the same year, accompanied Ralph Pulitzer on his expedition to Angola.
[5] Boulton was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, which was then the US intelligence agency, in 1942 due to his knowledge of Africa and overseas experience.
[3] Boulton was responsible, from 1943, for co-coordinating a joint program with the X-2 Counter Espionage Branch to monitor the supply of uranium ore, vital to the success of the Manhattan Project, which was primarily obtained from the Belgian Congo.
[3] Within months the couple had moved to Southern Rhodesia where they founded the Atlantica Foundation, a charitable organization to encourage ornithologists, particularly students, to study the birds of Africa.
[2][1] Boulton had a farm near Lake McIlwaine which housed an extensive art collection that was exhibited at the Rhodes National Gallery in December 1960.
He also assisted with early conservation projects in the region to the south-west of Lusaka, which was established as Lochinvar National Park in 1972, and experimented with farming termites as a nutritional foodstuff.