Re: The Little Game

[tuularose at juno dot com]

Hi all,

Mark's little game reminded me of  a book that a friend gave me a couple
of years ago. He had bought it at the library discarded books sale for
$1.00.  It is a 1979 edition of "The Art of Audubon, the Complete Birds
and Mammals" with an introduction by Roger Tory Peterson. It contains
reproductions of the 500 engravings depicting birds in the famous "Octavo
Edition", first published in seven volumes throughout the 1840's, plus
155 plates called "Quadrupeds" from the 1850's.

We have all seen examples of these magnificent paintings of birds by
Audubon, but what was very interesting to me is that these plates are
shown in full including the text identifying the bird and also the name
of the tree, bush or flower  depicted in the picture.  Most of the names
of Audubon's birds are completely different from today's names, and no
scientific names are included. Peterson could have played the same game
in 1941 with his contemporaries using the names of birds given a hundred
years earlier.

Here are some notes on the differences:

All the warblers are divided into groups by habitat and behavior: 
wood-warblers, ground-warblers, swamp-warblers,  flycatching-warblers,
creeping warblers etc. (not a bad idea). 
For example:
 - Blue-winged Yellow Swamp-Warbler   (Blue-winged warbler) 
 - Pine-Creeping Wood-Warbler (Pine warbler)
 - Black and White Creeping Warbler (B&W warbler)
 - Maryland Ground-Warbler (Common yellowthroat)

There is only one bird that is called a sparrow in the whole book - the
Swamp Sparrow. All the other sparrows are mostly called finches and
buntings.  This can get very confusing when what looks like a Lark
sparrow to me, is called a Lark Bunting, and the one we know as Lark
bunting, is called a Prairie Lark Finch. 

There are quite a few birds I could not match to anything in Sibley. For
instance Audubon has depicted three species of kinglets.  He has a
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet and an American Golden-Crested Kinglet that both
look familiar, and one that looks like a cross between these two that is
called a Cuvier's Kinglet. It kind of looks like the European Firecrest
that somehow found its way to America!

This is all fascinating to me and whatever the names, his paintings are
wonderful works of art and his study of birds was pioneering (even with
the Winchester method of those days which is obvious in many of the
poses).  Here are a few more of these fun names:
Common Troupial (Scott's oriole)
Plumed Partridge (Mountain quail)
Wandering Rice-Bird (Bobolink)
Arctic Ground-Finch (Spotted Towhee)
Aquatic Wood-Wagtail (Louisiana waterthrush)

Aren't birds great!   ~   Tuula

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