Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [January, 1898]

Various

Birds Illustrated by Color Photography A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life

INTRODUCTION

With the January number of Birds, we enter upon a new year with the satisfaction of having pleased our readers, as well as rendered an actual service to the cause of education, ornithological literature, and art. Among the hundreds of testimonials from competent judges, (many of them scientists), which we have received, we will permit ourselves the use of one only, as exemplifying the excellence which we have sought to attain and the rightful claim which we may make for the future. The writer says: “I find Birds an everlasting source of pleasure to the children, not less than to myself. I have one of the few almost absolutely

fresh

 copies of ‘Audubon’s Birds,’ for which I have refused $3,000, besides later works, and I will say that the pictures of birds given in your magazine are infinitely more true to life, and more pleasing, everyway, than any of those presented in either work. The other day I compared some of your pictures with the birds mounted by myself, notably a Wood-duck and a Wood-cock, and every marking co-incided. The photographs might have been taken from my own specimens, so accurately were they delineated, attesting the truth of your work.”

Some of our subscribers, unaware of the prodigality with which nature has scattered birds throughout the world, have asked whether the supply of specimens may not soon be exhausted. Our answer is, that there are many thousands of rare and attractive birds, all of them interesting for study, from which, for years to come, we might select many of the loveliest forms and richest plumage. Of North American birds alone there are more than twelve hundred species.

The success of Birds is due to its superior color illustrations and the unique treatment of the text. Popular and yet scientific, it is interesting to old and young alike.

The classification and nomenclature followed are those adopted by the American Ornithological Union in 1895.

Nature Study Publishing Company.

THE PIGEONS

Under the big nursery table

Are Sue, Don, Harold, and Mabel,

All playing, with joy and delight,

That pigeons they are, dressed in white.

Don’t you hear their gentle “coo, coo”?

Ah, now they fly out in full view!

And over the meadow they go —

’Tis their own dear nursery, you know —

Where, quick to the tops of the trees

They fly, with lightness and ease;

There each birdie is glad to be

Perched high upon a big chair-tree.

But to their home in swiftest flight

They haste, ere day has changed to night;

Then in they go, with cooing sweet,

And find their home a blest retreat.

And now they tell just where they’ve been,

And all the wondrous sights they’ve seen.

Then with their “coo, coo,” soft and low,

Each pigeon goes to sleep, I trow.

– Emma G. Saulsbury.

THE CROWNED PIGEON

WE regret that a full monograph of this remarkable bird cannot be given in this number. It is the giant among Pigeons and has some characteristics, on account of its great size, not common to the family. Very little has been written about it, and