Meade-Waldo conducted fieldwork and collected birds in the
Atlas Mountains of
Morocco, the
Canary Islands and
Spain, the presumably-extinct
Canary Islands oystercatcher Haematopus meadewaldoi being foremost among them. He was vice-president of the
BOU in 1923 and was an active member of the
Zoological Society of London, the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Society for the Protection of the Fauna of the Empire and the Society for the Establishment of Nature Reserves. He was also
Justice of the Peace for Kent. Meade-Waldo's discovery of
sandgrouse chick rearing behaviour in 1896 was for a long time discredited as fantasy. His acute observations noted male sandgrouse, by deliberately soaking their breast feathers in water, bringing water to its chicks at the nest. Sixty years later he was proved right. He accompanied
James Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford and the naturalist
Michael John Nicoll on their third voyage on the RYS Valhalla; on 7 December 1905 at about 10:15 am the yacht, was cruising off the Florida coast when a "large fin, or frill, sticking out of the water," was spotted. This frill was six feet in length and projected nearly two feet out of the water. "A great neck rose out of the water in front of the frill," noted Meade-Waldo; its neck appeared to be about the thickness of a man's body. This creature moved its head and neck from side to side in a peculiar manner. This
sea serpent incident became famous and caused much interest back home in Britain. ==References==