[wisb] Old field guide

From: Max Witynski <birdmax922@xxxxxxxxx>
To: wisbirdn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:40:00 -0500
Received a surprise gift today from a friend of a friend in New York City,
who had been given an old field guide owned by the late children's book
author, Mary Q. Steele. It is a well-used edition of the 1953 Audubon Guide
to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America. Steele apparently used
the book for identifying birds around her home in Chattanooga, TN in the
1950s (and maybe for the rest of her life). It's interesting to read
Steele's small margin notes, which say things like "Brown Thrasher, seen on
Lookout Mountain, Nov. 3 '54." She also included a list of species which
visited her yard during the winter of 1953-54, saying that several Eastern
Phoebes showed up on Feb. 26, 1954. Perhaps my favorite part of the book is
the index, which lists species by their colloquial name, apparently for
people who wanted to know what a bird's "real" name was. It says things
like Ice Partridge: see Ivory Gull, Thunder Pumper: see American Bittern,
Windhover: see American Kestrel. Anyone up for trying to restart the trend
of calling Greater Black-backed Gulls "Coffin-bearers" and Red-throated
Loons "Tutchmunks?" Some of the old names seem to give a lot more character
to the birds. Then again, some don't. Yellow-crowned Night Heron is listed
under "Squawk" which doesn't tell you much about the bird. I thought I'd
heard there was a book out about old colloquial names of birds. Anyone know
what it was called? I'd sure like to get my hands on a copy.
In terms of the birds of the 21st century, I had a catbird yesterday in my
neighborhood. This makes an all time shortest-time between first and last
catbird for me. My last one was on December 17th, the Madison CBC. This
makes a difference of exactly 100 days between 12/17/11 and 4/25/12.
Interesting.

Max Witynski,
Madison, Dane


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[wisb] Old field guide

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