BAILEY, FLORENCE MERRIAM. _Birds of New Mexico_, 1928. OP. Said by those
who know to be at the top of all state bird books. Much on habits.
BEDICHEK, ROY. _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_ (1947) and
_Karankaway Country_ (1950), Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y. These are
books of essays on various aspects of nature, but nowhere else can one
find an equal amount of penetrating observation on chimney swifts, Inca
doves, swallows, golden eagles, mockingbirds, herons, prairie chickens,
whooping cranes, swifts, scissortails, and some other birds. As Bedichek
writes of them they become integrated with all life.
BRANDT, HERBERT. _Arizona and Its Bird Life_, Bird Research Foundation,
Cleveland, 1951. This beautiful, richly illustrated volume of 525 pages
lives up to its title; the birds belong to the Arizona country, and with
them we get pines, mesquites, cottonwoods, John Slaughter's ranch,
the northward-flowing San Pedro, and many other features of the land.
Herbert Brandt's _Texas Bird Adventures_, illustrated by George Miksch
Sutton (Cleveland, 1940), is more on the Big Bend country and ranch
country to the north than on birds, though birds are here.
DAWSON, WILLIAM LEON. _The Birds of California_, San Diego, etc.,
California, 1923. OP. Four magnificent volumes, full in illustrations,
special observations on birds, and scientific data.
DOBIE, J. FRANK, who is no more of an ornithologist than he is a
geologist, specialized on an especially characteristic bird of the
Southwest and gathered its history, habits, and folklore into a long
article: "The Roadrunner in Fact and Folklore," in _In the Shadow of
History_, Publication XV of the Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1939.
OP. "Bob More: Man and Bird Man," _Southwest Review_, Dallas, Vol.
XXVII, No. 1 (Autumn, 1941).
NICE, MARGARET MORSE. _The Birds of Oklahoma_, Norman, 1931. OP. United
States Biological Survey publication.
OBERHOLSER, HARRY CHURCH. The Birds of Texas in manuscript form. "A
stupendous work, the greatest of its genre, by the nation's outstanding
ornithologist, who has been fifty years making it." The quotation is
condensed from an essay by Roy Bedichek in the _Southwest Review_,
Dallas, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1953). Maybe some day some man
or woman with means will see the light of civilized patriotism and
underwrite the publication of these great volumes. Patriotism that does
not act to promote the beautiful, the true, and the good had better pipe
down.
PETERSON, ROGER TORY. _A Field Guide to Western Birds_ (1941) and _A
Field Guide to the Birds_ (birds of the eastern United States,
revised 1947), Houghton Mifflin, Boston. These are standard guides for
identification. The range, habits, and characteristics of each bird are
summarized.
SIMMONS, GEORGE FINLEY. _Birds of the Austin Region_, University of
Texas Press, Austin, 1925. A very thorough work, including migratory as
well as nesting species.
SUTTON, GEORGE MIKSCH. _Mexican Birds_, illustrated with water-color
and pen-and-ink drawings by the author, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1951. The main part of this handsome book is a personal
narrative--pleasant to read even by one who is not a bird man--of
discovery in Mexico. To it is appended a resume of Mexican bird life for
the use of other seekers. Sutton's _Birds in the Wilderness: Adventures
of an Ornithologist_ (Macmillan, New York, 1936) contains essays on pet
roadrunners, screech owls, and other congenial folk of the Big Bend
of Texas. _The Birds of Brewster County, Texas_, in collaboration with
Josselyn Van Tyne, is a publication of the Museum of Zoology, University
of Michigan, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1937.
_Wild Turkey_. Literature on this national bird is enormous. Among books
I name first _The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting_, by Edward A. McIlhenny,
New York, 1914. OP. McIlhenny was a singular man. His family settled on
Avery Island, Louisiana, in 1832; he made it into a famous refuge for
wild fowls. The memories of individuals of a family long established
on a country estate go back several lifetimes. In two books of Negro
folklore and in _The Alligator's Life History_, McIlhenny wrote as an
inheritor. Initially, he was a hunter-naturalist, but scientific enough
to publish in the _Auk_ and the _Journal of Heredity_. Age, desire for
knowledge, and practice in the art of living dimmed his lust for hunting
and sharpened his interest in natural history. His book on the wild
turkey, an extension into publishable form of a manuscript from a
civilized Alabama hunter, is delightful and illuminative reading.
_The Wild Turkey of Virginia_, by Henry S. Mosby and Charles O. Handley,
published by the Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries of Virginia,
Richmond, 1943, is written from the point of view of wild life
management. It contains an extensive bibliography. Less technical is
_The American Wild Turkey_, by Henry E. Davis, Small Arms Technical
Company, Georgetown, South Carolina, 1949. No strain, or subspecies, of
the wild turkey is foreign to any other, but human blends in J. Stokley
Ligon, naturalist, are unique. The title of his much-in-little book is
_History and Management of Merriam's Wild Turkey_, New Mexico Game
and Fish Commission, through the University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1946.