Thomas Coward

After an education at Brooklands School, Sale and at Owens College (now Manchester University), Coward worked in the family business for 19 years, before it was taken over by the Bleachers' Association.

His share of the proceeds from the sale of Melland and Coward was sufficient to allow him to retire from business and concentrate on his love of wildlife and the study of birds, which had developed as a child.

[1][2] He began writing articles on natural history for newspapers including The Liverpool Daily Post, The Chester Cournant and The Manchester Guardian for which he wrote the "Country Diary" column until his death.

General interest magazines for which he wrote included The Field and Country Life and in specialist journals such as The Zoologist, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London and British Birds.

Coward is credited with the first use in print of the term "Jizz", in his "Country Diary" column of 6 December 1921 - the piece was subsequently included in his 1922 book "Bird Haunts and Nature Memories".

Cover of The Migration of Birds . Aside from the coat-of-arms and lettering, the design is that used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch , in 1521.
Press advertisement for The Birds of the British Isles and their Eggs , published in The Times, London, 6 February 1920
Brambling by Archibald Thorburn , one of the illustrations from The Birds of the British Isles and their Eggs