102 Favorite Audubon Birds of America

Crown, 1979-01-01. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 11x8x0. Presents Peterson's favorite Audubon bird prints, each with a commentary describing the bird, its characteristics, and its habitat and with the most recent ornithological observations. Roger Tory Peterson (1908 - 1996) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, illustrator and educator, and one of the founding inspirations for the 20th-century environmental movement. Peterson's first work on birds was an article "Notes from field and study" in the magazine Bird-Lore, where he recorded anecdotally two sight records from 1925, a Carolina wren and a titmouse. In 1934 he published his seminal Guide to the Birds, the first modern field guide. It sold out its first printing in one week, and went through six editions. One of the inspirations for his field guide was the diagram of ducks that Ernest Thompson Seton made in Two Little Savages (1903). He co-wrote Wild America with James Fisher, and edited or wrote many of the volumes in the Peterson Field Guide series, on topics ranging from rocks and minerals to beetles to reptiles. He developed the Peterson Identification System, and is known for the clarity of both his illustrations of field guides and his delineation of relevant field marks. Paul R. Ehrlich, in The Birder's Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds, said of Peterson: "In this century, no one has done more to promote an interest in living creatures than Roger Tory Peterson, the inventor of the modern field guide".