My friend Joe Blossom, who has died aged 83, was an expert aviculturist, artist and educator, keen to inspire many people through his love of wildlife.
As assistant director of interpretation at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, based at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, from 1980 for 10 years, Joe had responsibility for disseminating information for visitors at the nine centres around the UK. The then new role paved the way for conservation organisations to communicate humanity’s impact on the natural world.
This work drew on his previous job as an education officer for the WWT, in which Joe devised and delivered the programmes that brought visiting schoolchildren face to face with wildfowl, immersing them in the sounds, smells, colours and displays of the birds gathered round their feet. “Look! Watch! Observe!” he would say. “What can you learn about their lives? How are they going on to live in this changing world?”
Born in Loughborough, Leicestershire, Joe was the eldest of five children of Sibyl (nee Rowbotham), who worked in catering and hospitality, and Joseph Blossom, the principal of an agricultural college. After Kirkham grammar school and an art foundation course at Lancaster College, he studied graphic design and illustration at the West of England College of Art, Bristol (now part of the University of the West of England), followed by a PGCE at Leeds University.
In 1965, with Voluntary Service Overseas, Joe went to Kano State, Nigeria, to teach art. On return, he taught the subject at Kirkham secondary school, and art and photography at Rochdale Art College. He married Jan McKie, a home economics teacher and the sister of a schoolfriend, in 1968 and gained his education officer position at the WWT five years later.
In 1990 Joe and his family moved to Ingham, Norfolk, where he worked as a freelance on conservation and visual communication projects, for Norfolk Wildlife Trust and Thrigby Hall wildlife gardens, among others, and continued his work as a wildlife illustrator and photographer.
Books and guides that he illustrated include Wildfowl of Europe by Myrfyn Owen (1977), Man and Wildfowl, by Janet Kearney (1990), and The Norfolk Broads Activity Book (2000). As a photographer, he travelled to places as far afield as Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Ghana, and Madagascar, capturing pictures of endangered species.
Joe built friendships with enthusiasts throughout the wildlife and conservation worlds. He was a member of the Herpetological Society, breeding several species of terrapins, and a council member of the Avicultural Society, where he was recognised for his breeding successes of rare species of wildfowl and cranes, and the vulnerable salmon-crested cockatoo. He gave invaluable support to the WWT’s Great Crane project – the cranes now breeding in the south-west are just one of his many legacies.
Joe and Jan’s otherwise happy family life together was marred by the early deaths of their daughter, Becky, who was born with a heart defect and died aged 11, and their elder son, Ben, who died of cancer three days after his father.
Joe is survived by Jan, their son Theo, two grandsons and three siblings.
