Birds of America

For years there sat upon the bottom shelf in our house this large green book called Birds of America, which the family has kept around when other books have been culled. The first thing which attracted me to the book is the large color plates -- 8x10 inches -- by artist Louis Agissiz Fuertes. These paintings were included from those held in the American Museum of Natural History, and to my eye are as good as Audubons, if not better.The book was not just a comprehensive list of the bird species of North America; we are also given a history of our knowlege of the birds, and a lesson in the attitudes of our ancestors toward them. Particularly haunting is the section on the Passenger Pigeon in which we are presented a literary picture of the unrelenting demise of the birds by pot hunters. The article makes it clear just what the bird meant to the people in the US at that time; the despair by its loss was one of the key factors in the legislation which protects migratory birds even today.