James Parsons Burkitt (1870-1959) was born in 1870 in County Donegal, Ireland. He was a civil engineer, working as the county surveyor in County Fermanagh from 1900 until his retirement in 1940. Burkitt was a keen ornithologist and studied robins in the garden of his home, 'Lawnakilla', near Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. He started ringing the birds in October 1922, and his research, which was published in the journal British Birds between 1924 and 1926, was one of the first studies of bird behaviour and territory to use rings that enabled individual birds to be identified in the field. Later, at Laragh, Ballinamallard, County Fermanagh, Burkitt proved the longevity of one female robin. He had ringed this bird on 18 Dec 1927 and trapped her again on 14 Jul 1938 - this robin was at least 11 years old, "the oldest living robin in the world".

For a fuller biography see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.