Edward Allworthy Armstrong was born in 1900. He attended Queen's University, Belfast 1918-1921, studying philosophy and psychology, followed by two years' theological study at Cambridge.

As an Anglican priest, he worked in parishes as varied as Kowloon (Hong Kong), Ipswich, Doncaster and Leeds, and Cambridge. He acquired his great experience as a field naturalist in many different environments; as a result of his period in Hong Kong, he travelled around the world, visiting, among other fascinating regions, the Mekong River and the forests of southeast Asia, the California desert, the Tropical Biological Laboratory at Barro Colorado in the Panama Canal Zone and then–via Colombia and Venezuela–Trinidad and Tobago. His first major work in ornithology was Bird Display: an introduction to the study of bird psychology (1942).

He was then Vicar of St Mark's Church Newnham, Cambridge 1943-1967. He died in 1978.