Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram (30 October 1880 – 19 May 1981), was a British ornithologist, plant collector and gardener, who was an authority on Japanese flowering cherries. Personal life Collingwood Ingram was a son of Sir William Ingram and Mary Eliza Collingwood , daughter of Australian politician Edward Stirling. His maternal grandfather was born in Jamaica to a Scottish planter and an unnamed woman of colour. He concealed his racial identity and later settled in South Australia, where he was elected to parliament; his sons (Ingram's uncles) Lancelot and Edward Charles Stirling were also members of parliament. He was a grandson of Herbert Ingram, founder of The Illustrated London News. Sir William Ingram succeeded Herbert as the owner of the paper, and was a brother of Bruce Ingram, editor from 1900–1963. Collingwood's uncle, Sir Edward Charles Stirling, was a noted anthropologist, physiologist and museum director, with a great interest in the natural world. On 17 October 1906, Collingwood married Florence Maude Laing, only child of Henry Rudolph Laing, they had four children. In the First World War, he was first commissioned in the Kent Cyclist Battalion and was later a compass officer with the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force. In the Second World War, he was commander of his local Home Guard in Benenden, Kent. He was a collector of Japanese art, especially netsuke, and left his collection to the British Museum. Ornithology In the early 1900s, Sir William Ingram employed Wilfred Stalker to collect bird skins in Australia for Collingwood to identify and catalogue at the London Natural History Museum, resulting in his first major publication. In 1907 he collected in Japan and for his work there he was made an Honorary Member of the Ornithological Society of Japan. However his main interest was in the field study of birds; he made the first record of marsh warblers breeding in Kent. He was an accomplished bird artist. His planned book on the birds of France was interrupted by the War and never completed, although part emerged as Birds of the Riviera in 1926. His 1916–18 journals record his war experiences and also his off-duty bird observations, with many sketches made behind the lines in northern France. His published war diaries are packed with his pencil sketches of birds, people and landscapes. He interrogated pilots, including Charles Portal, on the height at which birds fly, resulting in a short