Birds of America

Title: Birds of America
Genre: Science & Nature/Reference
Editor-in-Chief: T. Gilbert Pearson (1873-1943)
Illustrators: R. I. Brasher; R. Bruce Horsfall; Henry Thurston
Publisher: Garden City Books, Garden City, New York
Year: 1936 (updated edition of 1917 book)
Pages: 290
Format: Hardback, large-format, missing dust jacket
Provenance: "Merry Christmas to Mathew from Bognu [sp?] 1953—" written in ink on first page. Also contains a vintage New Yorker magazine clipping with a cartoon of a birdwatcher, two booklets of migratory bird and waterfowl hunting regulations for the 1961-62 season, and a child's drawing of two birds rendered in colored marker on lined paper.
Random Passage: "The avocets and stilts include eleven or twelve species which occur, usually in flocks, throughout the warmer regions of the world. As a family they are comparatively large birds, and they have exceedingly long legs, long necks, and long, slender bills, curved more or less upward, in which their nostrils are set within the quarter nearest the base."
Notes: Handsomely produced volume combines scientific info and lovely illustrations with personal anecdotes on bird behavior. This particular copy has obviously been well-loved by several different owners (the latest of whom, your humble cowboy). The legacy of editor and wildlife conservationist T. Gilbert Pearson lives on in the North Carolina Audubon Society which bears his name.