"When appointed to the in 1935 he was placed in the Bird Room, where he started as Assistant Keeper and retired in 1968 as Senior Scientific Officer in charge of the Bird Room and Deputy Keeper of the Zoology Department. Apart from war service with the , his entire career was dedicated to traditional museum ornithology. He ran collecting expeditions to South Sudan in 1938–1939 and South West Africa in 1950–1951, each substantially enhancing African collections in the Museum; that led to publication of a comprehensive report on the birds of the region. ... His professional career culminated in a sponsored mostly by Major Harold Hall, an Australian philanthropist. That was the last systematic collecting of Australian birds by an overseas institute, collecting in all parts of the continent and enriching the British Museum collection of Australian birds by some 6,500 specimens (skins, skeletons, and fluid). The leader of the first expedition in 1962–1963, Jim’s party discovered a new species of bird () in . In that expedition, his wife Betty accompanied him as doctor and caterer for the team."