Anthony Strong (OW 1975)

(2 July 1957 – 18 February 2023)

We have been informed by his friend Paul Waring (OW 1975) of the death of Anthony (Tony) Strong at the age of 65.

We are grateful to Paul for these words about his friend.

Tony was one of my best friends at school. We had many wildlife adventures together in those days, exploring the countryside around Oxford. Tony showed me my first Speckled Yellow moth on Cumnor Hurst, which at that time was the only locality either of us knew for it around Oxford, where it was distinctly localized. Tony and I both went on to study zoology at university, he at Nottingham and I at Oxford.

We kept in touch, did more mothing together in vacations and continued to correspond throughout the two years in which I left the UK to work in Africa, and during the next three years when I returned to Oxford to do my PhD on moths in relation to woodland management in Bernwood Forest.

After that, I left Oxford for Peterborough in 1987. I never heard from Tony again, despite me writing to him. Then, nearly forty years later, in February 2023 I was contacted by Neil Bailey of Earthwatch, for whom Tony had been working as a volunteer in their office in Oxford for the previous 22 years. Tony was dying from cancer and wanted me to have all his files of hand-written notes on moths of the Oxford area. He had been recording moths steadily on various sites for the last forty years but does not appear to have sent the results to anyone, or published anything, and had joined none of the entomological societies. He had never owned a computer and does not appear to have corresponded with anyone since the mid-1980s. A memorial noticeboard for Tony and his moth recording at his favourite site, the Meadow Lane Nature Park, Oxford, has been installed there by Earthwatch.