Friends of Windsor
Whose Duppies are Welcome

Niece of the 2nd Lord Rothschild and daughter of Charles, who has been called the father of Nature Conservation in the UK.
Dame Miriam was a leading authority on fleas, publishing an estimated quarter of a million words on them alone! She worked on her hugely influential book, Fleas, Flukes Cuckoos: A Study of Bird Parasites (co-authored with Theresa Clay), during her tenure as WGH owner.
When she sold WGH in 1959, she retained the land titles to Windsor Great Cave and subsequently donated them to WWF-UK to ensure the cave's protection. WRC manages the cave on behalf of WWF-UK.
One of our greatest thrills was when she asked if we knew of any interesting bat ectoparasites and we subsequently were able to add a Nycteribiidae wingless batfly -- they look like fleas -- to her father's "little collection" (aka The Rothschild Collection of Fleas, now part of the British Natural History Museum collection).

After a misspent youth of racing motorcyles and learning to fly a de Havilland Chipmunk, Mike settled for terresrial life as Maintenance Manager for Air Jamaica. This was probably a safer option for all involved: when asked during flight training why he was off the scheduled flight plan, he said he'd been chasing a rainbow that kept moving.
Once settled in Jamaica, the self-declared curmudgeon looked for a house as far away from people as possible . . . and was shown WGH on a magical night with a silvery-moon, wrote his cheque . . . and then saw the place in daylight . . .ooops . . . luckily for the house, he dedicated his ownership years to major, structural repairs.
In 2002, with a passion only fully achieved by the converted, Mike co-founded Windsor Research Centre and dedicated himself to preventing the environmental destruction of Cockpit Country. Mike was the techno-brains for this website . . .even tho' his sense of colour was, ummm, sometimes questionable.

As far as WRC is concerned, Charles' most important claim-to-fame was being the husband of our co-founding director, Catherine. His working knowledge of Latin and his forever-inked JP's stamp proved invaluable for getting Susan's earliest work permits processed and for getting WRC officially launched as a registered company ( . . . well . . .sort of . . . but that's another story of indeterminable afflications!).
Despite the many stray biologists Catherine accumulated, Charles never lost his sense of humour and even started to pay attention to birds and little orange snakes which occupied the rougher parts of the golf courses he played.
We're confident that Dame Miriam would have been thrilled to meet Charles and Catherine at Duppy's Roost, a property they used to co-own with friends. To quote one memorable experience:
     There were too many fleas to catch - we were out numbered by
     thousands, between ALL the floor boards! We retreated to Kingston.
Of course, we all know how Charles would respond to learning that he had been near the peak of "Flea Greatness".

WRC particularly would like to thank all of Charles' family and friends whose donations are helping to maintain this website, for the continued sharing of Cockpit Country information with everyone.

The donations also enabled Dr. Susan to undertake an important field survey for bats in northeastern Cockpit Country, in an area which will be destroyed by bauxite mining if we don't keep reminding the authorities that all field data show the connectivity of Rio Bueno to Cockpit Country.  

Like the hauntingly-elusive "Mountain Witch" (aka Crested Quail-Dove; CRQD if one pays attention to acronyms . . . ), photos of Jim Wiley are rare for us, but we managed to find one of him dressed in nice "plumage".  Jim preferred to remain hidden in a blind, meticulously recording his observations of Black-billed Parrots and everything else around him.
Jim was one of the most kind and gentle souls, with a brilliant sense for the absurd, and always happy to share his knowledge of Caribbean wildlife. He set a high bar for natural history while always managing a scratch under the chin for any pooch that came along. The guava juice was for him. . . we didn't have to worry about it going bad, like condor food does.   Abrazos to you, Jim.

Paul:  because you were on holiday enjoying that (poxy - ha ha) TT race, I wasn't able to ask what your dad's preferred drink was. Somehow, I doubt it was Monster, and I thought a quart of oil seemed more apprpriate anyway. Hope 40W is OK, it's what I found in Mike's workshop behind bits of carburettors :-)