Bates was born near
Abingdon, Illinois. He went to school where he learned Latin and became interested in languages. He got an interest in natural history from his teacher Leanna Hague who took the class on botanical trips. He went to study at
Lincoln, Illinois, and then transferred to
Knox College,
Galesburg. He worked in the summer to help produce maps for the Santa Fe Railroad in Knox County and Galesburg. After graduating with a doctor of letters from Knox College in 1885, he became a teacher in Hawaii but quit after a few months. He then worked as a surveyor for a railroad company in Tennessee. Following his parents' wishes, he joined the
Chicago Theological Seminary where he studied Greek and Hebrew and graduated with a theology degree in 1892. He then taught at Ward Academy in South Dakota, using his free time to study the plants of the region. There, he took an interest in the local language and began to document the Bulu grammar and vocabulary. This led to a publication of a textbook in 1926. He lived initially at Senji, later at Efulen near Great Batanga in the German part of
Cameroon, making a living from farming. He was known by the locals as "Bitye" and he called his farm by the same name. He collected natural history specimens both around him and on his travels and sent many of these to the
Natural History Museum in
London. He made use of native hunters to assist him in his collections. Some of the natives believed that he sought to collect male and female specimens so as to populate his own country with the bird species.
Richard Bowdler Sharpe noted in 1906 that Bates' specimens were valuable and that there were several new species. By 1928, the number of specimens he had sent to the museum was estimated at 6905. During World War I, Bates was unable to send specimens and he began to spend more time on his farm cultivating cocoa, coffee and rubber trees: his may have been the earliest rubber plantations in the region. The German authorities forced him to hand over his guns (used for bird collecting) and he was asked to leave the region in 1915. He then moved south on foot to
Rio Beneto in the Spanish Guinea. It was only in 1916 that he returned to his plantation and by 1921 he had travelled across the Cameroon which was controlled by Britain and France. He wrote on the structure of the underwing coverts in 1918. In 1922, he travelled to Nigeria and in 1927, he visited the northwest of Lake Chad.
England Bates left Africa and moved to live in England in
Little Watham, Essex in 1928 and settled in a home that he called 'Timbuctoo'. He then began to examine the bird collections in the bird room in the British Museum, London, and began to work on a
Handbook of the Birds of West Africa. In 1930, he made a collecting trip to Sierra Leone for the Natural History Museum, and also visited Guinea and Mount Nimba. In 1931, he went on another expedition to Mali. He was asked to examine the specimen collection of
Harry St John Bridger Philby. He learned
Arabic and visited
Arabia at the age of 70 in 1934 on the invitation of Philby. He spent three months and collected more than 500 specimens. Bates trained Philby's servant to skin and had an Indian clerk, Mahbub Elahi Kazi, collect specimens with a 16-bore gun. He also left a
.410 bore shotgun for Philby to obtain more bird specimens even though the latter found it difficult to skin birds. Because of this,
Norman Kinnear influenced the
Bombay Natural History Society to send a skinner named Fateh Khan to Arabia. The skinner, however, proved to be inexperienced, fell sick, and was forced to return to India. Philby's specimens included several new species including
Dendrocopus dorae which he requested be named after his wife Dora. He also had a subspecies of owl named as
Otus senegalensis pamelae named after Miss Pamela Lovibond, a friend and librarian at the
Athenaeum Club. Bates was unable to publish the
Birds of Arabia but wrote several papers on Arabian birds for the
Ibis. His unpublished manuscript on the
Birds of Arabia was later used by
Richard Meinertzhagen who added various embellishments and gave little credit to Bates. Bates died in
Chelmsford following a surgery and recurring serious illness. == Taxon named in his honor ==