Career
She was described as being " …small in stature but very wiry, quite capable with a punt or rowing boat". She took up photography after meeting Richard Kearton in 1900. Foreign 20 years, she lived and worked for part of each year (including some winters) at Hickling Broad in Norfolk, chiefly on a houseboat of her own design, which she named Water Rail after the first photograph she took in the Broads, of a water rail.
She also had a hut on a small island in the south-east of Hickling Broad, which became known as Turner"s Island (52735206°North 1586171°East / 52735206.
1586171). She became the first "watcher" (warden) on the National Trust"s Scolt Head. Her bittern picture resulted in her being awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Photographic Society.
Her book, Broadland Birds, was published in 1924 and formed the basis of a radio programme about her life, Emma Turner. A life in the reeds, broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2012, produced by Sarah Blunt and with sound recordings by Chris Watson.
She was also a keen gardener, at her homes in Girton, Cambridgeshire and Cambridge, and kept Terriers, which she trained to flush birds so that she could count them.
She lost her sight two years before her death.