Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, with a Few Observations

by J. Frank Dobie

PETERSON, ROGER TORY. A Field Guide to Western Birds (1941) and A Field Guide to the Birds (birds of the eastern United States, revised 1947), Houghton Mifflin, Boston. These are standard guides for identification. The range, habits, and characteristics of each bird are summarized.

SIMMONS, GEORGE FINLEY. Birds of the Austin Region, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1925. A very thorough work, including migratory as well as nesting species.

SUTTON, GEORGE MIKSCH. Mexican Birds, illustrated with water-color and pen-and-ink drawings by the author, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. The main part of this handsome book is a personal narrative—pleasant to read even by one who is not a bird man—of discovery in Mexico. To it is appended a resume of Mexican bird life for the use of other seekers. Sutton's Birds in the Wilderness: Adventures of an Ornithologist (Macmillan, New York, 1936) contains essays on pet roadrunners, screech owls, and other congenial folk of the Big Bend of Texas. The Birds of Brewster County, Texas, in collaboration with Josselyn Van Tyne, is a publication of the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1937.

Wild Turkey. Literature on this national bird is enormous. Among books I name first The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting, by Edward A. McIlhenny, New York, 1914. OP. McIlhenny was a singular man. His family settled on Avery Island, Louisiana, in 1832; he made it into a famous refuge for wild fowls. The memories of individuals of a family long established on a country estate go back several lifetimes. In two books of Negro folklore and in The Alligator's Life History, McIlhenny wrote as an inheritor. Initially, he was a hunter-naturalist, but scientific enough to publish in the Auk and the Journal of Heredity. Age, desire for knowledge, and practice in the art of living dimmed his lust for hunting and sharpened his interest in natural history. His book on the wild turkey, an extension into publishable form of a manuscript from a civilized Alabama hunter, is delightful and illuminative reading.

The Wild Turkey of Virginia, by Henry S. Mosby and Charles O. Handley, published by the Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries of Virginia, Richmond, 1943, is written from the point of view of wild life management. It contains an extensive bibliography. Less technical is The American Wild Turkey, by Henry E. Davis, Small Arms Technical Company, Georgetown, South Carolina, 1949. No strain, or subspecies, of the wild turkey is foreign to any other, but human blends in J. Stokley Ligon, naturalist, are unique. The title of his much-in-little book is History and Management of Merriam's Wild Turkey, New Mexico Game and Fish Commission, through the University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1946.

WILD FLOWERS AND GRASSES

The scientific literature on botany of western America is extensive. The list that follows is for laymen as much as for botanists.

BENSON, LYMAN, and DARROW, ROBERT A. A Manual of Southwestern Desert Trees and Shrubs, Biological Science Bulletin No. 6, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1944. A thorough work of 411 pages, richly illustrated, with general information added to scientific description.

CARR, WILLIAM HENRY. Desert Parade: A Guide to Southwestern Desert Plants and Wildlife, Viking, New York, 1947.

CLEMENTS, FREDERIC E. and EDITH S. Rocky Mountain Flowers, H. W. Wilson, New York, 1928. Scientific description, with glossary of terms and key for identification.