Posted by Adam Quinan on October 27, 2011 at 07:03:16 user Adam.
In her book, Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk, Christina Hardyment commented that she had been unable to contact Myles North, the inspiration for Great Northern?.
It turns out that she would have needed some supernatural assistance to succeed. I recently found his obituary while googling and he died in Kenya when still quite young in 1967.
See the link below, the obituary doesn't mention Ransome but does give a short appreciation of an enthusiastic ornithologist in colonial and immediately post-colonial Africa.