Bernard William Tucker was born at Northaw, Hertfordshire in 1901 and spent most of his childhood in Chewton Mendip in Somerset. He was educated at Harrow School, where he won the Lord Claud Hamilton Biology Prize and the William Roundell Leaving Scholarship, and at Magdalen College, Oxford where he graduated with 1st class honours in Zoology in 1923. Upon graduation Tucker won a scholarship to spend the next year working on parasitism in crustacea at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples. In 1925 he was appointed Demonstrator in Zoology at Cambridge University, and then in 1926 he returned to Oxford as Demonstrator and Lecturer in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. He held this post for the rest of his life becoming Browne Research Fellow of Queen's College 1944-1947 and Reader in Ornithology in 1946.

When the Oxford Ornithological Society was formed in 1921, he became the first Honorary Secretary. He maintained involvement in the Society and was later Vice President (1926-1934) and President (1934-1950). He was influential in founding the Oxford Bird Census, the British Trust for Ornithology and the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology. He also worked with H.F. Witherby on the Handbook of British Birds (1938-1941), being responsible for the sections on field characters, general habits, voice, display and habitat. In 1940, he became assistant editor of the journal and editor-in-chief in 1943.