Stories of Our Western Birds

First Edition; 1903, San Francisco. Scarce.

Bumped corners. Blue cloth beginning to fray at outer extremities; particularly worn at bottom of spine. Age toned pages. Frontispiece in color; all other illustrations black-and-white. 

Western Series of Readers, Volume IX.

Elizabeth Grinnell was a founding member of the Pasadena Audubon Society and author of half a dozen books, including this one in collaboration with her son, Joseph Grinnell. Joseph Grinnell was an American field biologist and zoologist, credited with introducing a method of recording precise field observations (the Grinnell System). He edited The Condor, a publication of the Cooper Ornithological Club, from 1906 to 1939 and worked on conservation issues in California (and beyond) in the latter part of his life.

From the preface:

It is a matter of common notice that bird-life offers the most attractive outdoor object of interest to the average schoolboy. The almost human personality of birds, their varied form and color, their ceaseless activity, their evasiveness—all conspire to arouse an intense curiosity. And why should we not encourage this curiosity? If properly directed, it is certainly a valuable and ready incentive, to be seized upon and harnessed into the process of education.

The keenness and accuracy of observation cultivated by the overcoming of that very elusiveness so characteristic of birds, will remain long after the bird itself is forgotten. It is a significant fact that many of our greatest scientists and professional men admit their earliest active interest to have been in bird-study, to which stage in their mental development we may attribute a good part of that training so invaluable in their later more serious lines of work. 

In the following simple descriptives, my mother and I have tried to help arouse and direct interest in bird-study among school-children, as well as, possibly, older folks. It has been our aim to present a fair amount of information, but diluted with enough of the commonplace, so as not to balk the most timid spirit of inquiry. We want the reader to finish each chapter with a wish to find out more things for himself by direct observation of the living bird