“Wild Little Honker”Birds exhibit • Bizzell Memorial Library, 5th floor • Spring 2020

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Birds are important in human cultureand so appear in a wide variety of books. This exhibition shows some of the diversity of holdings in Bizzell Memorial Library’s special collections. Because of the broad appeal of birds, they can be found in all of the collections. Books in this exhibition are from the Lois Lenski Collection of children’s literature within the Nichols Literature Collection and the Jackson Pope Collection within the History of Science Collections.

� Bird Music

People have been listening to birds and imitating them for a very long time. Describing bird song comes in many forms, from musical notation to onomatopoeias (as with words like “Hooo hoo hoo,” to describe the sound of owls).

Case 11. Dorothy Childs Hogner, Wild Little Honker (1951)2. Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis (1650)

Case 23. Simon Pease Cheney, Wood Notes Wild: Notations of Bird Music (1892)4. Aretas Saunders, A Guide to Bird Songs: Descriptions and Diagrams of the Songs (1951)5. Margaret Wise Brown, Country Noisy Book (1940)6. Margaret Wise Brown, Wonderful Story Book (1948)7. Helen and Alf Evers, Chatterduck (1943)

Case 38. F. Schuyler Matthews, Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music (1904)9. F. Schuyler Matthews, Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music (1910)

� Bird GuidesBird field guides are used to identify and learn about birds. With smaller and more affordable guides in print, the joy of bird identification spread. The small guides could travel easily in a pocket or bag for use outside. Sometimes the guides are also used to note and record when and where a particular bird was seen.

Case 310. Chester Reed, Land Birds East of the Rockies: From Parrots to Bluebirds (1919)11. Frank Ashbrook, The Yellow Book of Birds of America (1941)

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12. Frank Ashbrook, The Blue Book of Birds of America (1931)13. Frank Ashbrook, The Green Book of Birds of America (1931)14. Frank Ashbrook, The Red Book of Birds of America (1941)15. Frank Chapman, Bird-life: A Guide to the Study of Our Common Birds (1899)16. J. Fletcher Street, Brief Bird Biographies (1933)17. Roger Tory Peterson, A Field Guide to the Birds (1934)18. Alexander Wetmore, Water, Prey, and Game Birds of North America (1965)19. Tony Angell, House of Owls (2015)

� Bird Stories

Birds can represent a shared joy for the natural world, to talk about morality, or explain biology. Two children’s books in this section include song, music, and dance along with the bird stories.

Case 420. “Uncle Fred,” et al., Clover Top Story Book (1877)21. Sophie Bronson Titterington, Bird Wonders (1890)22. Isabella Glennie, Pictures and Stories for Little Children (1860)

Case 523. Ruth Krauss, I Can Fly (1950)24. Mrs. Hartland, A Tale of a Nest (1872)25. Neltje Blanchan, Birds that Every Child Should Know (1907)26. Florence Bailey, Birds of Village and Field (1898)

Case 627. Andrew Lang, Animal Story Book (1896)28. Grey Burleson, Marching Plays (1896)29. Mary and Elizabeth Kirby, Stories about Birds of Land and Water (1800)30. E. T. Roe, Animal Stories and Pictures (1899)

� Bird WatchingBackyard bird watching and ownership brings the simple pleasure of feeding birds and the beauty of feathers into home life.

Case 731. Margaret Barker and Jack Griggs, The Feeder Watcher’s Guide to Bird Feeding (2000)32. James Bell Pettigrew, Design in Nature, vol. 3 (1908)33. Jacob Studer, Studer’s Popular Ornithology: The Birds of North America (1977)

Case 834. Jack Miner, Jack Miner and the Birds (1923)35. Francis Hobart Herrick, Home Life of Wild Birds (1905)

Case 936. Harold H. Bailey, The Birds of Virginia (1913)37. Howard Saunders, Illustrated Manual of British Birds (1899)

Case 1038. F. Schuyler Mathews, The Book of Birds for Young People (1921)39. H. B. MacPherson, Home Life of a Golden Eagle (1909)40. A. Radclyffe Dugmore, Bird Homes (1904)