Europe in 1952 and was awarded the CMG. He spent two years in Paris and five in Madrid before being appointed British ambassador to Haiti, which was ruled by François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier. With little he could do diplomatically in Haiti where, according to Graham Greene, "it was impossible to deepen the night", Corley Smith was able to develop his hobby of bird-watching. Eventually, he was chosen as the spokesman for a number of foreign embassies to protest to Duvalier about the reign of terror and extortion by the Tonton Macoute, Duvalier's private mafia. The result was immediate denunciation as an "impertinent British colonialist", and a demand for his recall. Corley Smith regarded being thrown out of Haiti as an honour, and certainly a better fate than was usually meted out to critics of Duvalier's regime. Years later, he said: "I find it difficult to conceive of any solution to Haiti's problems. The country has been independent for two centuries now and it has never had a good leader." His final posting was as ambassador to Ecuador, where he found many opportunities for ornithology in a country with a wide variety of climates from tropical Amazonia to the high Andes. Evolution In Ecuador, Corley Smith's expertise on high altitude humming-birds found on the Cotopaxi led him to become friends with Professor Jean Dorst, a French ornithologist who was also president of the newly formed Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) for the Galápagos Islands, which Corley Smith went to visit. On the Royal Yacht Britannia he visited the islands again in 1964 with the Duke of Edinburgh, who later became patron of the foundation. Corley Smith worked to establish a national park to protect the Galápagos environment under Ecuadorean control, and organised a British-financed study to recommend how the needs of conservation should be reconciled with the development of tourism to help the economy of the islands. Corley Smith left Ecuador in 1967, and the following year the new National Park Service of Ecuador came into existence. The newly retired ambassador was lured to join the CDF's executive council. The first council meeting he attended was in England, at Down House, Darwin's former home, where members saw in the tall, silver-haired and distinguished-looking former diplomat a remarkable likeness to the portrait there of T. H. Huxley. In 1972, when Sir Thomas Barlow stepped down, Corley Smith took on the role of secretary-general