Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist

Abstract

FOR seven years the author, with the assistance of artist and preparateur, devoted the nesting season of birds to collecting specimens and making field studies and photographs on which to base a series of what have been termed. “Habitat Groups” of North American birds for the American Museum of Natural History. These groups are designed to illustrate not only the habits and haunts of the birds shown, but also the country in which they live. The birds, and, in most instances, their nests and young, are therefore placed in a facsimile reproduction, containing from 60 to 160 feet of the locality in which they are found, and to this realistic representation of their habitat is added a background, painted from nature, and so deftly joined to the foreground that it is difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. A reference to the photographs of these groups, which form some of the illustrations of this delightful book of field ornithology, will convince anyone at once of the truth of this remark. Some of these panoramic backgrounds portray not only the haunts of certain American birds, but America as well.

Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist.

By F. M. Chapman. Pp. xvi+432. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.) Price 12s. net.