Through their field expeditions, specimen collecting and publications, they, along with Arthur Stark, established a basis for 20th-century ornithology in the southern African region.
Here they initially started farming sheep in the Amersfoort district, before moving to Ifafa, Natal, to run a plantation.
Within a decade of their arrival they started publishing observations concerning crocodiles, baboons and leopards in The Zoologist and The Natal Mercury.
In the forest that still covered the Berea ridge at Port Natal, they collected the type specimen of the garden warbler's eastern race, Sylvia borin woodwardi.
[4] In addition they discovered the isolated southern population of the green barbet at Ngoye forest,[4] which Captain Shelley named for them in 1895, Stactolaema woodwardi.
[4] Through the brothers' efforts the early specimen collection of G. Hutchinson was preserved, and interest in regional conservation was increased.