The Shorebirds of North America

Very good hardcover in un-clipped dust jacket. Bumped corners. Jacket has chips and small tears at outer extremities.

First edition. Large format with 32 color plates. Text by Peter Matthiessen. Paintings by Robert Verity Clem. Species Accounts by Ralph S. Palmer. Edited by Gardner D. Stout.

Both an art book and a complete reference book, this is the first work to cover the shorebirds of the North American continent with such richness of pictorial reproduction, distinction and readability of text, and authoritative technical detail.

The 32 paintings, in opaque water color, are reproduced in six-color lithography. Where there is more than one species to a plate, the birds are shown with others with which they are commonly seen, rather than with other members of the same species, with which they are seldom if ever seen.

The eleven chapters of text, in the form of a personal commentary, comprise a work of rare originality and literary quality, filled with the author's deep affection for the shorebirds, for their "kinship with the distance and swift seasons," and for the beaches and wetlands where they live. The full and detailed plumage and species accounts for the 75 species which occur in North America have been supplied by the top authority in the field.

After a general introduction on each bird are found sections on Description, Behavior Afield, Voice, Habitat, Distribution, Migration, Breeding, and Habits. There is also a helpful bibliography. The whole has been assembled at the initiative and under the guidance of a dedicated naturalist, who undertook the book's sponsorship only on condition that no effort and expense would be spared to make it an achievement of outstanding distinction among nature books.