Best known as a Lepidopterist. His father was an important businessman in Leeds and he was educated there and at the Friends School, York, where his fellow students included Benjamin and Nicholas Cooke, and several others who were to become well-known naturalists. He became a partner in his father's firm and then joined Pickfords as their agent firstly in Dublin, and later in Liverpool. Subsequently he started in business on his own account in Bradford , but soon gave up and moved via Leeds to the Isle of Man where he settled. Birchall sustained injuries in a fall from a cliff while pursuing his entomological activities from which he never properly recovered, and he died at Douglas, Isle of Man, after being nursed by his daughter for several years.
The writer of his obituary in Ent.mon.Mag., 21, 1884, 27 states that he was ‘a born naturalist, an enthusiastic collector, and an extremely genial and buoyant disposition; at the same time he was a strong partisan, and enjoyed a controversy in print, especially on theological matters.' Birchall's entry in the Ent Ann., for 1857 and 1860 records his interests as 'British insects of all orders', which certainly included beetles. Johnson & Halbert (1902) make various references to his captures, and in 1876 he published a note on 'Coleoptera in the Isle of Man' in Ent.mon.Mag., 13, 65.
His British collections of Lepidoptera were sold by Stevens on 19 July, 1881.
Apart from the obituary mentioned above there are obituaries in Proc.Ent.Soc.Lond. XLIII, (by J.W.Dunning); Leopoldina, 20, 1884, 15; Zool.Anz., 7, 1884, 352; and Psyche (Cambridge, Mass., USA) 4, 1884, 191.. . (MD 10/01)