Frederick Ambrose Barratt was a bird collector for the British Museum in South Africa during the eighteen-seventies. After travelling from King William's Town to Bloemfontein he left the latter city in February 1874 and journeyed to Potchefstroom, and from there via Pretoria to Lydenburg, where he had arrived by July 1874. At some time he also visited Rustenburg. His "Ornithological notes made during trips between Bloemfontein and the Lydenburg goldfields", comprising brief field notes on 122 species of birds, were published in The Ibis (1876, 3rd series, Vol. 6, pp. 191-214). Barratt stated in his paper that he could "lay no claim to a scientific knowledge of ornithology", but had compiled his notes at the request of the British ornithologist R.B. Sharpe, who named his collection. In the same volume of The Ibis Sharpe described two new species collected by Barratt in the Lydenburg district, near the Macamac goldfields. One of these was named Bradypterus barratti (Barratt's Warbler), in honour of the collector.
Barratt left South Africa in 1875 but later returned. In 1902 he claimed compensation for losses incurred in the Witwatersrand area during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). He died in Gwelo, Southern Rhodesia (now Gweru, Zimbabwe) and was survived by his wife Edith Frances, born Gaston.
