BIRD ILLUSTRATORS

LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES

   I used to work in the Western Libraries back when there were more of them and the collections they held were impressive. As I have indicated in several posts, the area devoted to books and other resources has shrunk, while space for the students has grown. Many books are in storage, where they cannot be browsed and I think that is unfortunate. 

   It is the case, however, that the argument for keeping books and other scholarly resources has been lost. And, admittedly, the losing of that argument is not as unfortunate as one might think - unless you prefer printed books and journals.

   The material in storage is easily retrieved for you, if you know it is there. As well, much of it can be accessed electronically and from afar and at anytime. About the only rationale one can offer for keeping all those old books and journals around is an aesthetic one which does not hold much appeal for many. 

    That gets me to Fuertes, who produced books about birds and provided the illustrations for many others. Seeing such books and works like, The Double Elephant Folio: The Story of Audubon's Birds of America, is more appealing to me than viewing them electronically (that book is in storage.)

   A couple of years ago, I did a post about "Bird Art" and in it wrote about the works of John Gould and provided a list of his beautifully illustrated books that were held by the Western Libraries, but were in storage. There also are books by Fuertes in storage and I will provide just a couple of examples. If you want to see some of his images from afar you can visit the L.A. Fuertes Image Database at Cornell in Ithaca, where Fuertes was born. You will find 2500 and they are searchable by type (e.g. drawings, water colour, gouaches). You might argue that providing space for such things is no longer necessary, but I still disagree.

 

 Here are a few Fuerte's works in storage at the Western Libraries. He has been described as "the nation's most notable ornithological painter since Audubon."

A Natural History of American Birds of Eastern and Central America;

Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States;

The Bird Life of Texas;

To a Young Bird Artist: Selected Letters From Louis Agassiz Fuertes to George Miksch Sutton.

The Bonus:

   I am pleased that, at least for now, there are other bird-related items to be found in storage. If you want to listen to them for example, here are a few recordings:

Voices of African Birds; Songs and Calls of 42 Species Found in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Tanganyika, Rhodesia, South Africa, the Congo, and Nigeria;

Mexican Bird Songs; The Voices of 74 of the Most Representative Birds of Mexico

   One can also hear the sounds made by other species:

The Songs of Insects; Calls of the Common Crickets, Grasshoppers, and Cicadas of the eastern United States;

Voices of the Night; The Calls of 34 Frogs and Toads of the United States and Canada.

   Apart from sound recordings there  are even some games to be found in storage. For example, Professor Noggin's Birds of North America Card Game is located there.

   It is likely that many of these items will ultimately end up in storage facility near Toronto for a variety of reasons, some of which are noted above. If items can be retrieved from storage, it doesn't matter much where the facility is located. 

   There is now another reason for withdrawing the books relating to birds, in that those books contain bird names which are no longer acceptable and were written by authors such as Audubon who have been 'cancelled'. This is yet another argument with which I do not agree and I would hope the dwindling collections in the Western Libraries are not further 'weeded' because they contain ideas and names now deemed unacceptable.

Post Script:

   Most of the books related to ornithology were held in the "sciences" library, which is now known as the "Allyn & Betty Taylor Library" (there also was once a separate "Engineering Library." and another one for Medicine.) There continues to be a reason for collecting ornithological research in that the campus now contains the Advanced Facility for Avian Research (see my post, "For The Birds." )

    Professor Noggin's card game would have been collected for aspiring teachers and housed in the Education Library, which also no longer exists and is now the "Wampum Learning Lodge." There is a sizeable collection of children's books in storage, many of them collected for fledgling librarians and held in the library of the Graduate School of Library Science, which also no longer exists (see my earlier posts, "Landmark Books" and "100 Years of Newbery Medals.")

   Perhaps at some point in the future someone writing a history of UWO and Western might be interested in knowing about the richness of the collections held in libraries that have since disappeared. 

    As for the "NAMES" problem, I touched upon it in a post, the title of which hints at my position on the subject - "No More Name Changing". The American Ornithological  Society does not agree. See the "English Bird Names Project" where you will learn that, among other things, "The AOS commits to changing all English-language names of birds within its geographic jurisdiction that are named directly after people (eponyms), along with other names deemed offensive and exclusionary, focusing first on those species that occur primarily within the U.S. or Canada."

   If you are just interested in birds, go back to Cornell and enjoy "All About Birds."

   If you are interested in eagles, such as the one above painted by Fuertes, see:

"Eagle Attacks Child", and "Eagle Update" or read about the Canadian "Eagle Man", Charles Broley. As well, the eagle and some insects are discussed more recently in, "Birds and Bugs." 

The Bonus:

  Someone, who perhaps knew my position regarding the re-naming of everything, sent me this 'bird-day card', which, I admit, weakens it a bit.

Ohio State University Press

    As the dreary weather continues, so does the search for good reading material. It is not usually found on the New York Times Best Seller List which, we have come to learn, does not contain books recommended by the NYT, but only those found in the various tabulations gathered by someone who works for the NYT. The best sellers are often not good, but they are popular, which also does not necessarily mean "good". As I type this on "Family Day", a holiday throughout much of Canada, it is interesting to note that Jennette McCurdy's, I'm Glad My Mom Died, is #4 on the "Non-Fiction" list. It may, or may not, be good, but apparently it is selling well. 

  About 12,000 books are published annually by University Presses, but they rarely appear on the lists in the NYT. An exception might have been, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, which was published by the University of Chicago Press and was at least somewhat popular and made into a film directed by Robert Redford and starring Brad Pitt. Given that you may not come across many university press catalogues, or pay much attention to the book ads in some high brow magazines, there may be 12,000 new books of which you are unaware. 

  It is to make you aware of potential sources for good books that I have provided short profiles of university presses over the past couple of years. I began way out on the west coast with the University of Washington and lately have focused on ones near by, ranging from the University of Minnesota to those even closer to Ontario: Penn State, Wayne State, Michigan State and the University of Michigan. I must soon begin including Canadian ones. 

  Today, the choice is from Columbus, Ohio. I should have mentioned earlier, and have done so in earlier posts, that not all university press books are unreadable and full of the jargon we civilians associate with those who reside on campuses. While many current university press publications deal with things like intersectionality and hyphenated identities, the older entries in the catalogues can be of interest and many of them can be read and enjoyed by people like us. 

   At the website of The Ohio State University Press, you can quickly learn about their publishing priorities. When I have posted about the university presses close by, I have indicated that there is often a regional focus which encompasses our area, where books of "local" interest are found. See, for example, Penn State's "Keystone Books" and Wayne State's, "Great Lakes Book Series." Books with a midwestern focus produced at Ohio State are found under the "Trillium" imprint, a floral emblem Ontarians will recognize.

   If you are especially interested in nature and the birds and fishes found close by Ontario, be sure to check the works of Milton Trautman. Although he didn't make it beyond Grade 8, he is renowned as an ornithologist and ichthyologist and wrote many articles of interest about the Bass Islands a little bit south of Pelee Island. His very big book about The Birds of Buckeye Lake can be downloaded for free, but his Birds of Western Lake Erie could cost you almost $300. For a long and interesting article about Trautman see: "The Last Naturalist: A Zoologist Happiest in the Fields and Streams of Ohio, Wrote Major Works About the State's Birds and Fishes," Parker Bauer, The American Scholar, April 21, 2022. 

OSU PRESS

"The Trillium imprint publishes books about Ohio and the Midwest in an effort to help the citizens of the state learn more about the unique history, the diverse culture, and the natural environment of the state of Ohio. Books published under this imprint will also help to fund our scholarly publishing program, and will aid in lowering the cost of the student textbooks we publish." 

The entire book can be read by clicking on this link. 

A Few More Buckeye Books

The United States of Ohio covers little-known facts about Ohio, such as how the state was the birthplace of both the National Football League and Major League Baseball and how it was Ohioans who led efforts toward racial integration in both sports. Readers will learn what makes the state a manufacturing and agricultural powerhouse—with both the largest tire company, Akron’s Goodyear, and the largest consumer products company, Cincinnati’s Procter & Gamble, based there. The state grows, processes, and builds on a level that far outpaces the size of its population or expanse of its borders. And it is the birthplace of many prominent US figures—from Thomas Edison to John Glenn to Neil Armstrong. From sports to a century’s worth of entertainment superstars to aviation and space exploration, Ohio’s best have made for America’s greatest stories—all captured here in a look at the Buckeye State and its impact on the other forty-nine.

“An exceptionally thorough history of white supremacy focused on Ohio but relevant nationwide. By analyzing supremacist influences on American history, from conquests of Native Americans to today’s alt right, the authors have created an eye-opening resource. Its accessible style will engage a broad readership.”—Deborah Levine, editor of American Diversity Report

“Falconry in Hawking Women touches on so many topics: the strange intimacies of memory training that bonded a bird with its handler, gender hierarchies, and especially the entangled freedom and constraint of poetics. Petrosillo’s rich practical knowledge of the sport illuminates a key component of medieval literature.” —Karl Steel, author of How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages.

The Bonus:

  

   University presses also often publish journals and one produced by OSU is: Inks: The Journal of the Comic Studies Society. 

For an article of local interest in this journal see: "Comics and Public History: The True Story of the 1934 Chatham Coloured All-Stars, " Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs, in Vol.4, No.1, Spring 2020, p.101.

Bird Art

 John Gould

   I happened to notice the image above, which is from a Gould work found in the Collection of Barbara and Ira Lipman which is being auctioned by Sotheby's. It is only one of the 269 items being offered and the starting bid for the Gould folio is $80,000. It is not the most expensive work in the lot. A 'Babe' Ruth baseball card is expected to fetch between $300,000 to $500,000 U.S.  You will have to hurry since the auction begins closing on Dec.16. Details about all of the books and manuscripts and odds and ends are easily found on the website of Sotheby's. 

   If you go to the Sotheby's site you will find enough to keep you busy for a long while. If you are interested in our subject for today - Bird Art - and the bird artist John Gould, then you need to visit The John Gould Ornithological Collection at the University of Kansas. Those of you who are tired of my prose, can go directly to the site to view thousands of beautiful bird illustrations.

   John Gould was born in Dorset in 1804 and over the years produced, along with his wife and Edward Lear, over 50 large illustrated volumes with alluring titles such as A Century of Birds From the Himalaya Mountains. He is an interesting character and it will be easy for you to learn more about him. 

   The story relating to how the Gould works came to reside in Kansas is also interesting.  It involves a compulsive collector of all things avian - Ralph Nicholson Ellis, Jr. He was so obsessed and so eager to spend his inheritance on bird books that his mother had him institutionalized and his wife filed for divorce. During all of these problems he had  his 65,000-item collection shipped in two boxcars which ended up on a siding in Kansas where the head of the Museum of Natural History in Lawrence, agreed to store them. The rest is history, as they say, and more details are provided in "The Story of the Gould Collection" by Karen Cook which is found on the University of Kansas website provided above.  For more about Ellis and his "galloping bibliomania" see Basbane's,  A Gentle Madness, p.21.

   With the financial assistance of the NEH, more than 6,000 drawings, lithographs and watercolours were digitized and  are viewable online. Here is the formal description of the collection:
This collection of the large-format bird books published by John Gould (1804-1881) also includes several thousand pieces of pre-publication artwork produced by Gould and his artists. It is part of the Ralph Nicholson Ellis, Jr. natural-history collection in Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.

The Bonus Material:

   If you are a 'birder' and interested in bird books, have a look at the Soffer Ornithology Collection at Amherst. Although the books have not been digitized it is interesting see the notes about the books which were provided by the collector. There are several Gould books listed.

   Perhaps you are wondering whether the university closer by has any Gould books. Here is the answer:

Books by John Gould in the Western University Libraries

(This list was gathered by me. For a thorough account you should check with a Western Librarian.)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of Asia. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers.   London : Methuen, 1969, c1968.

QL674.G668.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881.  Birds of Australia. Ill. by John Gould. Text by Abram Rutgers. London, Methuen [1967]

QL693.G58.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of Europe. Illus. by John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers. London, Methuen [1966]

 QL690.A1G64.(storage)

 Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of New Guinea. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers. New York, St. Martin's Press [1971, c1970

 QL694.N4G68 1971.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of South America. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould.  Text by A. Rutgers. London, Eyre Methuen [1972] 

QL689.A1G68 1972.(storage)

Lambourne, Maureen. Birds of the world : over 400 of John Gould's classic bird  illustrations / Maureen Lambourne.

London : Studio, 1992. QL674.L35 1992. (DBWOVR)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. John Gould's Birds of Great Britain / introduction by Maureen Lambourne. London : Eyre Methuen, 1980.

QL690.G7G76 1980.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. The Mammals of Australia / John Gould ; with modern notes by Joan M. Dixon. South Melbourne : Macmillan 1983.

QL733.G7 1983.(storage)

For biographical details see:

John Gould: The Birdman: A Chronology and Bibliography, by Gordon C. Sauer, 

QL31. G67S28 1982 (storage)

John Gould’s Contribution to British Art: A Note on Its Authenticity, Allan McEvery

QL31.G67M3 1973 (storage)

The Ruling Passion of John Gould: A Biography of the Bird Man, Isabella Tree, 1991

QL31.G67T74 1991 DBWSTK

See also Basbane’s A Gentle Madness… TX907.C67 2001, DBWSTK

Bird Eggs: If you are interested in beautiful pictures of eggs see: Oology and Ralph's Talking Eggs: Bird Conservation Comes Out Of Its Shell, Carrol Henderson. ( a copy is available at the Taylor Library at Western.)

"In Oology and Ralph's Talking Eggs, Carrol L. Henderson uses the vast egg collection of Ralph Handsaker, an Iowa farmer, as the starting point for a fascinating account of oology and its role in the origins of modern birdwatching, scientific ornithology, and bird conservation in North America. Henderson describes Handsaker's and other oologists' collecting activities, which included not only gathering bird eggs in the wild but also trading and purchasing eggs from collectors around the world. Henderson then spotlights sixty of the nearly five hundred bird species represented in the Handsaker collection, using them to tell the story of how birds such as the Snowy Egret, Greater Prairie Chicken, Atlantic Puffin, and Wood Duck have fared over the past hundred years or so since their eggs were gathered. Photos of the eggs and historical drawings and photos of the birds illustrate each species account, Henderson also links these bird histories to major milestones in bird conservation and bird protection laws in North America from 1875 to the present. While wild bird conservation has come a long way in the last hundred years, this book is a call to action for conservationists because some modern-day threats to bird life are far more insidious than threats posed to birds a century ago by market hunting and the plume trade."--BOOK JACKET.

For additional research about birds at Western, visit AFAR, which I described here: For the Birds. 

Unexpected Libraries

 

 When travelling, I find that libraries can be useful and attractive sanctuaries. They are usually quiet and comfortable places. More importantly, they have restrooms. Although Starbucks may have adopted an open access policy, I generally find that commercial establishments are not likely to welcome you and smile when you ask to use the facilities.

    Here are three libraries you don’t really need to visit since they are located in surroundings that are already peaceful and beautiful and fully equipped with plumbing. Given that you won’t need them and that they are not immediately obvious you are likely to overlook them. You shouldn’t. 

 VanDusen Botanical Garden

t

Located in Vancouver, B.C. you will find this beautiful spot occupying over 50 acres. For more details visit this link. If it is raining heavily, seek refuge in the Library which is just past the gift shop.

1. Yosef Wosk Library and Resource Centre

"Founded in 1976, and relocated to the new Visitor Centre in 2011, the Yosef Wosk Library and Resource Centre is the largest public access botanical and horticultural library in western Canada.The library’s collection focuses on gardening in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, and covers a wide range of topics including gardening techniques, selecting and growing ornamental plants, native floras from around the world, vegetable and herb gardening, pruning and training, North American ethnobotany, butterfly gardening, native plant gardening, flower arrangement, plant hunters, garden history, pests and diseases, garden design, gardens to visit, horticulture in urban environments, botany and plant ecology, plant conservation, literature in the garden, garden art, organic gardening, environmental science and much more."

The library also displays art work and there are often guest speakers. As you know, I am a fan of periodicals and you will find in this library: The Fiddlehead Forum, Bulletin of the Fern Society and the Conifer Quarterly. Here is the link.

If you are really interested in such libraries and want to know if there is one in a city you are planning to visit see: The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries.

     The answer to the question, "Who is Yosef Wosk?" is not easily found on the site. But, one does find the answer elsewhere in Vancouver, over at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Wosk deserves a picture which is provided below:

    "Every great library has a circle of friends and supporters who help it grow and flourish.

Dr. Yosef Wosk exemplifies what it means to be a very good friend. He has supported hundreds of libraries—fledgling and established; urban and rural; public, private and academic—in British Columbia and around the world. Yosef, who is the director of Interdisciplinary Programs in Continuing Studies at SFU, was awarded the Keith Sacre Library Champion Award from the British Columbia Library Association in 2006 in recognition of his work with Libraries Across Borders.

     SFU Library has benefited greatly from Dr. Wosk’s philanthropy. In the 1990s, Yosef and his father helped bring a significant collection of Aldine books to SFU’s Special Collections and Rare Books.The Wosk-McDonald Aldine Collection consists of over one hundred rare 16th century tomes published under the imprint of Aldus Manutius. These books, which also feature beautiful bindings from the 16th to the 20th centuries, have added tremendous depth, quality, and tradition to SFU’s holdings."

                                           

 Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

2. The Library at Crystal Bridges

This museum is located in Arkansas! It's still worth the trip. For a complete description see this link and also have a look at their blog. The library is a substantial one: "The Crystal Bridges Library features more than 50,000 volumes pertaining to American art and art history, plus archives containing personal papers and other artist ephemera, and access to several online resources. The Library provides the highest quality of access to resources and services, as well as commitment to the highest ethical standards for privacy, copyright, intellectual freedom, and preservation of information. The Library is located on the Museum’s third floor and is open during all Museum public hours."

    When I visited a while back, one of the exhibitions was: Fish Stories: Early Images of American Game Fish. Apart from the displays this book was found in the collection:

"Game Fishes of the United States, one of the largest and most spectacular of American sporting books, was printed in 1879 -1880 at the zenith of late 19th-century American chromolithography. The work, which is included in the Crystal Bridges Library collection, features 20 color plates based on the original watercolor paintings by well-known sporting artist Samuel Kilbourne, with text written by ichthyologist George Brown Goode, head of the fish research programs of the US Fish Commission and the Smithsonian.

“The collection in Fish Stories ranks among the most admired 19th-century color lithography and helps tell the story of American printmaking.” said Catherine Petersen, Crystal Bridges Library Director. “The exhibition provides a unique opportunity for art lovers, anglers, and families to explore distinctly American fish in their natural surroundings, many of which can be found in nearby rivers and lakes.”

     For my earlier post on the visit to Bentonville and Crystal Bridges see: Amazing Accomplishment(s)

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Located in Ithaca, New York, you have probably visited the virtual Macaulay Library if you are at all interested in birds.

"The Lab’s Macaulay Library is the world’s largest online archive of natural sound audio and video recordings. The Macaulay Library is the world’s premier scientific archive of natural history audio, video, and photographs. Although the Macaulay Library’s history is rooted in birds, the collection includes amphibians, fishes, and mammals, and the collection preserves recordings of each species’ behavior and natural history. Our mission is to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts."

3. The Adelson Library

This real library is worth visiting, particularly if the Lab is full of school children or if it is raining in Sapsucker Woods.

"The mission of the Adelson Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is to provide outstanding and innovative support for the Cornell Lab, and scholarly communities worldwide, by curating and disseminating contemporary and historical resources. It also serves casual visitors to the Lab's Visitors' Center, which is part of the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity at the Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary in Ithaca, New York. Prior to establishing the Adelson Library, the Lab of Ornithology had built a small reference collection containing approximately 200 volumes. Today the library houses more than 14,000 volumes and continues to expand in terms of both contemporary and historical literature, as well as other resources."

Eagle Man

Charles Lavelle Broley (Dec. 7, 1879 - May 4, 1959)

    A short while back, I became aware of Edwin Way Teale who, among many other things, wrote four books about travelling across the U.S. following the seasons. I started reading the first one - North With the Spring - and was not far into the 17,000 mile trip when I took this detour.

   Teale (and his wife) were hardly into their trip (c.1950), journeying around Lake Okeechobee in Florida, when he mentioned that he was going to join up with a Canadian for an eagle adventure. The Canadian is Charles Broley and naturally I wanted to find out who he was. In terms of google 'hits' there is not much about him and there is no Wikipedia entry. There should be.

   He was originally from Gorrie, Ontario which is near Goderich and he was definitely not your ordinary snowbird. If you are interested in eagles or ornithology, you will be interested in what follows and may not be aware that this "bald-headed eagle-bander" knew more about eagles than just about anyone. He made people aware of migratory patterns and he knew of the potential negative effects of DDT early-on and was cited by Rachel Carson.

     He was also fearless. If you are not fascinated by birds, you still may be interested in finding out more about a late-bloomer who started climbing very tall trees at a very late age.

     I have detoured long enough so this short introduction will have to do. If I have not convinced you that Broley is an interesting subject, then simply read the brief biography I have linked below. If that changes your mind you will find that I have dutifully typed-out the relevant section from Teale's book. I have also provided a bibliography, which I have partially annotated and from which you will learn a great deal.
    

A Short Broley Biography

Lower Beverley Lake Association

“Charles Broley/Eagle Platform

Jan. 6, 2012.

http://lbla.net/?page_id=301

Lower Beverley Lake is near Delta, Ontario which is approximately 60 km from Kingston.

This is where the Broley snowbirds migrated from in the winter and returned to in the summer.

A good short biography of Broley is provided when an eagle platform was dedicated to him in 2011. Click on the link above to read it.

Broley as Described by Teale 

Among other things you will learn how Broley got to the top of this tree!

North With the Spring: A Naturalist’s Record of a 17,000 Mile Journey With the North American Spring, Edwin Way Teale. Dodd, Mead & Company, 1957

Chapter Six: “Eagle Tree” pp.39-54.
[The action takes place near Lake Okeechobee and the 'prairie' is the Kissimmee Prairie, c.1950]

     “At breakfast Dick Pough told us that in a couple of days Charles L. Broley was driving over from Tampa to band eagles on the prairie. Broley, a retired Canadian banker who took up the risky hobby of eagle banding when nearing sixty, is an almost legendary figure in modern ornithology. At sixty-seven he was then nearing his thousandth eagle. We decided to wait and join the expedition. (pp.39-40).

     “Outside the Southland Hotel, the next morning, we met the Broleys. They had driven over from Tampa the evening before. Both the eagle bander and his writer-wife were people we liked at once. Five feet, nine and a half inches tall, 150 pounds in weight, with a sense of humor as keen as his blue eyes, with his hair cropped so short that he has been referred to as the “bald-headed eagle bander,” this retired banker was one of the most remarkable men we met on our travels. Although he was nearing seventy, he was ascending cypress trees 150 feet high and climbing trunks so rickety that they swayed with his weight and went down in the next heavy storm.” (p.47)

     “Broley spread out coils or rope, three rope ladders, lead sinkers, stout fishline, a broom handle with a teaspoon taped to one end, a slingshot, a pair of rubber-soled shoes, and other odds and ends….”
     “Under the eagle tree our eyes ran upward along more than half a hundred feet of trunk to an immense nest of sticks massed against the sky. Bald eagles keep adding sticks to their nests year after year. Sometimes the weight of the accumulated material will exceed a ton. Broley’s largest nest, perhaps the largest in America, is lodged in the top of a Florida pine near St. Petersburg. His measurements show it is 20 feet deep and 91/2 feet wide. Among the sticks of another nest he once found about three-quarters of the handle of a heavy ash oar….”
     “He never knows, in ascending a tree, what will lie at the top of his climb. Moreover, each tree presents a fresh set of problems. The dead pine under which we stood rose for more than twenty feet before the first stub of a limb jutted out. One cypress Broley climbed had its first limb seventy feet from the ground. And, in Canada, he once reached a nest at the top of an 80-foot basswood tree which had lost all its lower limbs. In this case he threw a weighted fishline directly over the nest itself, by means of his slingshot, and with this pulled up his rope ladders. For less lofty throws he use the broom handle with the teaspoon at the end. We watched him place a lead sinker, attached to a stout fishline, in the spoon and flip it over the stub of a limb with a deft sweep of the wooden handle that was a tribute to his years as a lacrosse player. To the fishline he attached a rope, pulling it over the limb and attaching it, in turn, to a 40-foot length of rope ladder with wooden steps. When this was fastened securely in place and he had changed into rubber-soled sneakers he was ready to climb….”
     “Standing on the first limb, Broley threw a sinker and fishline over the highest limb and repeated the process of pulling up rope and ladder. This enabled him to reach the edge of the nest. Now came the ticklish job of getting over the side. The last few feet are the most important of his climb….”
     “The same tree is used by the same eagles season after season. The highest next Broley has visited is 125 feet above the ground in the top of a giant cypress….”
     “As Broley pulled himself up and onto the nest above us -- first his head and shoulders disappearing, then his legs projecting out into space and shortening until they were gone -- patches of loose bark sloughed away from the upper trunk and fell to the ground. For ten minutes he was hidden behind the wall of sticks. But we could visualize events on the nest high overhead. Before making the ascent he had demonstrated the steps required in banding an eagle….”
     “When his legs appeared over the edge of the mass of sticks and he came down the tree, loosening ropes and letting down ladders in his wake, he had banded his 932nd eagle. Since then he has passed the 1,200 mark. He has banded more eagles -- a dozen times more -- than all other birdmen put together.” (pp.48-53)

A Broley Bibliography

For more photographs of Broley see The Florida Photographic Collection

which is part of the Florida Memory Project and where you will find much else to see.

Anon. “Eagles to be Like Dodos in a Hundred Years, Conservationist Says,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, July 5, 1954.
Broley is quoted and notes that development and land clearing are problems: “I can’t see anything else than a gradual decrease in population.” He had also issued an earlier warning. See:“Timber Cutting in Florida Threatens the Life of Eagles,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Dec. 27, 1946.

Anon. “Dunnellon Garden Club Hears Russell Mason,” Ocala Star-Banner, Jan 23, 1963.
Mason was the executive director of the Florida Audubon Society. After providing background about the AS “...he showed colored films of wading and song birds of Florida. Of special interest was the film of the bald eagle in his natural habitat, filmed by the late Charles Broley, a Canadian, whose pictures and writing sparked the effort for the preservation of this bird.” See the obituary by Mason that is provided below.

Beans, Bruce E. Eagle's Plume: The Struggle to Preserve the Life and Haunts of America's Bald Eagle, Scribner, 1996.
Broley gets a thorough treatment - see especially Chapter 5: "In at the Death", pp.72-84.

Bergstrom, E. Alexander,  (Reviewed Work:) Eagle Man by Myrtle, Jeanne Broley
In Bird-Banding, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 1954), p. 82
Eagle Man: Charles L. Broley's Field Adventures With American Eagles was written by Broley’s wife Myrtle. This short review of it is available via JSTOR. Those interested in banding should see other issues of Bird-Banding where Brody is often mentioned in relation to the subject. For example in this article one will find a list of eight banded eagles which had been found after banding by Broley. Most of them had been shot! See: May Thacher Cooke, Bird-Banding, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Jan., 1950), pp. 11-17.

Bodsworth, F., “How to Catch an Eagle,” Maclean’s, Vol. 65, No.3, Feb.1,1952.
“Broley has taught U.S. scientists more about their national bird than any man alive.”
“Retired, he has earned a spot in a couple of U.S. biographies as the world’s leading authority on eagles, has been elected one of the few Canadian fellow members of the traditionally hard-to-crash American Ornithologists’ Union, and is in such a demand as a lecturer that if he wished he could earn more than he ever did in a bank office. He’s also, without doubt, the most actively retired businessman on the continent.” p.23.
“Roger Tory Peterson, a leading U.S. ornithologist said: “To Broley goes the distinction of adding more to the knowledge of our national bird than any man living.” p.33.
[Peterson also wrote about Broley in his book All Things Reconsidered... see the Peterson entry below.]

Broley, Charles L. “Migration and Nesting of Florida Bald Eagles,”The Wilson Bulletin,Vol. 59, No. 1 (Mar., 1947), pp. 3-20
This article by Broley from The Wilson Bulletin is available via SORA, the Searchable Ornithological Archive, and JSTOR. This is the first paragraph:
“Previous to January 1939 few Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus l.Leucocephalus)
had been banded in Florida. The Florida Bald Eagle was considered non-migratory and was regularly recorded as a permanent resident of the State. In 1938, Richard H. Pough, of the National Audubon Society, suggested that I band a few eagles as an experiment, and during the eight years, 1939 to April 1946, I banded 814 Bald Eagles along the Gulf Coast of Florida-practically all in January and February, a few in March. Meanwhile, I kept a year-by-year record of most of the nests in the banding area, which extended from Hernando
County south to Lee County.”

Broley, Charles L. "Plight of the Florida Bald Eagle," Audubon, Jan.-Feb., 1950,p. 45.

Broley, Charles L. "Plight of the Florida Bald Eagle Worsens," Audubon,  Mar.-April, 1951. p.72

Broley, C.L., “The Eagle and Me,” Canadian Banker, Vol.60, No. 1, Winter, 1953. pp.99-106.
This article has as a subtitle: "A Retired Banker's Hobby". He describes how he got started and provides a thorough description of how he climbs trees and devised his climbing gear.
"At the age of 73, I find that I can climb perhaps more easily than I did 13 years ago. I enjoy a difficult tree more than an easy one, and I hope to carry on for a few years more." p.106.

Broley, M.J., Eagle Man: Charles L. Broley's Field Adventures With American Eagles.
The author of this book is Myrtle Jeanne, Broley's wife. There is an introduction by Teale.

Cook, Hugh A.,  “Charles Broley: An Extraordinary Naturalist” , CM: A Reviewing Journal of Canadian Materials for Young People, Vol.14, No.4, July 1986. (CM was also known as Canadian Material and was published from 1971 to 1994 by the Canadian Library Association.)
This review of Gerrad’s book about Broley is presented here in its entirety:
     “Jon Gerrard, a medical doctor in Manitoba, developed an interest in bald eagles. As a result of this interest, he became interested in the life of Charles Broley and had the opportunity to meet Jeanne, Charles's daughter, and visit the site of the family cottage at Delta, Ontario. This, along with the writings he had perused of Charles Broley's pioneer work in bird watching and the banding of bald eagles, lead Gerrard to write a paper for a conference on bald eagles that was being held in Winnipeg.
     Unfortunately, there are several gaps in the life of Charles Broley that Gerrard could only surmise about, and these he has acknowledged. Charles Broley was raised in Elora, Ontario. He became a banker, moved to Delta, where he met and married his first wife, Ruby, and built the family cottage on an island. Unfortunately, he lost Ruby to tuberculosis. He moved to Manitoba, where he met his second wife, Myrtle. At this time in his life he became an avid bird watcher, as did Myrtle. He became highly respected for his knowledge of birds and upon his retirement, at the age of sixty, began climbing one hundred foot high trees to band eagles. After several years of banding, Charles began to notice a decline in successful nestings of the eagles and was responsible for raising enough concern that political action brought about a ban on DDT.
     Shortly after Myrtle's death Charles died trying to extinguish a grass fire that burnt his cottage. By his personal efforts Charles had greatly encouraged an interest in bird sanctuaries and bird conservation in general. Avid hunters became avid bird watchers and photographers. This is a story that needed telling and it would be a worthwhile addition to the bird section of all libraries.”

Curtin, Dave, “The Eagle Has Landed: National Symbol Flies in the Face of Near-imminent Species Extinction,” Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, Jan. 8, 1995.
    “Retired banker and amateur biologist Charles Broley theorized in 1958 that fish eaten by eagles were contaminated by the pesticide DDT, according to Greg Breining in the 1994 book "Return of the Eagle" (Falcon Press).” [This book is not available locally. A copy is searchable via the Internet and it is clear that Broley is discussed in the book which has its full title: Return of the Eagle: How America Saved Its National Symbol.]

Evanoff, Vlad, “Seen Any Pink Geese Lately?”, The American Mercury, May 1959, pp. 46-49
This is an article about how scientists are marking birds and animals so that they can obtain information about their movements and habits. Broley is mentioned in this context on p.47.

Gerrard, Jon. Charles Broley: An Extraordinary Naturalist 1983
    This short biography was published by White Horse Plains Publisher in 1983. See the review above in the entry for Cook.

Haddock, Dudley, “Eagle Scout:The Little-known Story of our National Bird: The Eagle,"
Collier's Weekly, May 9, 1942, pp. 14-15.
This article has a few good photographs.
“Because he tackles buzz saws with his bare hands as a hobby, Charles L. Broley, a 63-year-old retired Canadian banker, has supplied Uncle Sam with more information about his trade mark during the last four years than had been learned since its adoption by the Continental Congress in 1782. In lieu of golf and fishing he bands bald eagles during his winter visits to Florida.
     Until Broley became interested, in 1938, only 58 of the birds had been banded in North America. Knowledge of its habits was limited. It was believed, for one thing, the Florida species was non-migratory. Now it is known to be a long-distance traveler, for two with Broley bands have been found in Canada, one on Prince Edward Island, 1,650 miles north of the nest it left only three weeks previously….”
     Until recently much of the life story of the species was a closed book. Observation of the nests and banding of the eaglets is so strenuous and hazardous few attempt it. One must be an engineer, acrobat and strong man to do so, for these nests are in the tops of the tallest pines and cypresses. Open a great umbrella, turn it upside down and attempt to climb into it from the tip, without wings, and it may be realized what one is up against in gaining the top of a nest, even after the tree has been scaled….”
     Broley became addicted to his hobby by request. Prior to his retirement in 1938 after twenty years as manager of the Winnipeg branch of the Bank of Montreal, he had attained recognition as one of the continent's foremost authorities on ducks, geese and swans.
Upon learning he intended to spend that winter in Florida, officials of the National Audubon Society and the Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department of the Interior requested that he band a few bald eagles. That was the beginning. His work from the outset proved to be of such scientific value Washington since has annually requested the Canadian government, which restricts the movement of its nationals during wartime, to permit him to return and continue it.”

Hickey, Joseph J. A Guide to Bird Watching, 1943.
See the section “Florida Odyssey” on pp.143-145.

Mager, D. “Charles Broley in Florida,” in J.M Gerrard and T.M Ingram, The Bald Eagle in Canada, 1985. This book was not available to me.

MacMaster, A. “Charles Broley in Manitoba,”  in J.M Gerrard and T.M Ingram, The Bald Eagle in Canada, 1985.

Mason, C.R., Obit. The Auk, Vol.77, No. 3, July 1960, p.378.
The Auk is available on SORA, the Searchable Ornithological Archive, and via JSTOR. Presented below is Mr. Mason’s obituary for Broley:
  “Charles L. Broley  of Delta, Ontario, an Elective Member of the American Ornithologists' Union, and a member since 1926, died suddenly in the early summer of 1959 as a result of fighting a brush fire near his home. He had shortly before returned from Tampa, Florida, where he had continued his long fight for protection and restoration of the Bald Eagle. He had just agreed to serve on the Wildlife Committee of the Florida Audubon Society, with special emphasis on his favorite bird. His presentation of the plight of America's National Bird at the Annual Meeting of the Society in March 1958 had inspired its officers to initiate a program of census and research leading to greater knowledge of the needs for survival of the Bald Eagle in Florida.
     Mr. Broley was a banker by profession but retired at 58 to spend most of the following two decades in studying, banding, photographing, and lecturing about the Bald Eagle. He became adept in the use of rope ladders in climbing eagle trees and developed a national and international reputation as an authority on the species. Mrs. Broley, who preceded her husband in death by a year, wrote the "Eagle Man," which described his experiences with this great bird during his retirement years. The Broleys' daughter has deposited her father's records and eagle films with the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University so that they may have further use. Many of us here in Florida, and throughout the country, considered Charlie Broley a fine personal friend, and the warmth of his association will be greatly missed as will his work in ornithology and conservation.”
C. Russell Mason,  Altamonte Springs, Florida.

McNicholl, Martin K., “Charles Lavelle Broley,” The Canadian Encyclopedia.
This is the complete entry:
    “Charles Lavelle Broley, banker, ornithologist (born at Gorrie, Ontario,  7 Dec 1879; d at Delta, Ont 4 May 1959). A banker in Winnipeg, he was also active in ornithology and conservation. In 1939 he "retired" to winters in Florida and summers in Ontario.
In Florida he began a raptor-banding study, in his first 8 years banding 814 bald eagles and ultimately banding more than 1200. Recoveries showed that eagles dispersed northwards after nesting prior to southern migration; Broley's was the first study to demonstrate this phenomenon with large numbers. Declining hatching success during his study resulted in one of the first alerts to science of the dangers of insecticides.
Broley was honoured for his work by a life membership in the Natural History Society of Manitoba. He also encouraged the early career of wildlife artist Terence Shortt. Broley was to assume membership in a special conservation committee on bald eagles when he died fighting a brushfire.”

Peterson, R.T., “Eagle Man,” Audubon, 50, 1948.
Apparently Broley is mentioned in this article.

Peterson, Roger Tory, All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures
See the chapter: “Broley, The Eagle Man,” p.124. There is a good picture of Broley on p.130.

Redford, Polly, “Counting Our Eagles, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1965, pp. 64-68
Apparently Broley is mentioned in this article.

Sterling, Keir Brooks, et al.  Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists. Greenwood Press, 1997
A short, but useful biographical sketch of Broley is provided along with a bibliography (see “Broley, Charles Lavelle, on pp.116-117.)
 [Broley’s] “ investigations were among the first to implicate DDT in raptor declines and thus pesticides as environmental threats.”
“Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring effectively used Broley’s data in combination with others to sound this warning.”

Tao, Dominick, Soaring Spiritual Bond: The Image and Aura of the Eagle Have a Clutch on Countless Lives,” St.Petersburg Times, June 6, 2010.
     “Back in the days when most of Central Florida was pine scrub and farmland, Charles Broley ventured where only eagles dare.Throughout the 1940s, the former bank manager climbed into hundreds of eagle nests across the state, often more than 100 feet up, placing numbered bands on more than 1,000 chicks so their movement patterns could be tracked.
His obsession is legend among present-day Florida eagle stewards, like Barb Walker, the coordinator for Pinellas County's Audubon Society Eagle Watch program.
She feels it's her job to carry on the torch of eagle conservation pioneered by Broley 60 years ago. "I think it's important to our children. The past with eagles is important, even before they were delisted (from the endangered species list)," Walker said.

Teale, Edwin Way, “Bird of Freedom,” The Atlantic Monthly, November 1957, pp. 133-140
Apparently Broley is mentioned in this article.

Wellington County Museum and Archives
This is from the website of the Wellington County Museum and Archives
http://wcma.pastperfectonline.com/
A1997.132 - Eagle Man, by Myrtle Jeanne Broley, 1952.
Eagle Man, by Myrtle Jeanne Broley, 1952; hardcover, 210 pages. Story of the Elora banker-naturalist Charles L. Broley's field adventures with American Eagles; written by his wife, Myrtle Jeanne Broley. Inside front cover, signed "Myrtle Jeanne Broley / Charles Broley". Includes newspaper clippings from Toronto Daily Star, July 28, 1954; Kitchener-Waterloo Record, May 5, 1959 [obituary Charles Broley].

White, E.B. “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, April 24, 1954.
Broley is mentioned and a couple of months later one finds him profiled by Geoffrey T. Hellman in “Eagle Bander, New Yorker, June 19, 1954.
“The leading eagle bander of the world” is described as  “a wiry, sun-burned, single-chinned, bright-blue-eyed man who looks ageless…” Broley says that a few weeks before had just had a very rough eagle outing in Maryland. He is 74 at this time.

Winnipeg Free Press.
     A large number of references to Broley are found in the archive of the Winnipeg Free Press, but one has to pay to access them. According to Sterling’s sketch in the Biographical Dictionary.... noted above, Broley often contributed to A.G. Lawrence’s bird column, "Chickadee Notes," which was published in that paper.

Wood, Madelyn, “Our Bird of Freedom,” Coronet Magazine, July 1954, pp. 81-84
Apparently Broley is mentioned in this article.

[I was not able to see the two biographical works about Broley and didn't have time to track down some of the unannotated references. This is a 'detour' after all.]

SOUND

   

    At the end of 2016 I happened to be looking for some of the internet sources for sound that I had noticed over the last couple of years. They were scattered in my notes and among my bookmarks so I rounded them up here. I thought I might as well share them.

    This short list should be useful for those searching for sources where you can hear things as well as see them. Be warned that some of these resources will not actually provide you with the sound via online streaming; in some instances you will have to visit the library or archive to access the sound. Still, below you will find thousands of speeches, songs and sounds and be able to listen to them.

    The list is divided into two sections, one for Human Sounds and one for Sounds from Nature. Researchers who focus on audio and the acoustic could certainly provide you with many more I am sure, but this list should suffice for those who are trying to locate a particular speech or identify the sound of a bird.

Human Sounds

 

     For sources from the  United States start first at the Library of Congress where you could end up spending the rest of your life listening. There are many points of entry, but I suggest beginning at the RECORDED SOUND RESEARCH CENTER.

From there try: Recordings Available Online where you will find collections as

The National Jukebox,  For Food for Thought: Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Other National Press Club Luncheon Speakers, 1954-1989, and such things as the: Sports Byline USA Collection :

“Since 1988, the Sports Byline USA radio series has regularly presented interviews with notable figures from the world of sports. To this point, they have aired over 6,400 such interviews with athletes, coaches, trainers, managers, owners, writers and others in the areas of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, golf, track and field and other sports. Notable interviewees include John Wooden, Reggie White, Mickey Mantle, Elgin Baylor, Hank Aaron, Oscar Robertson, John Elway, Jose Canseco, Charles Barkley, Mike Krzyzewski, Jimmie Johnson, John Mackey, Archie Griffin, Bonnie Blair, Bill Bradley, Willie Mays, Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, John McEnroe, Natalie Coughlin and Meadowlark Lemon.”

Another useful entrance is found at the Library of Congress  American Memory site.

Some Other Suggestions in the U.S.

American Archive of Public Broadcasting

“The American Archive of Public Broadcasting contains more than 50,000 hours of digitized public broadcasting programs and original materials.”

This very rich site is worth visiting. Unfortunately, however, the content does not appear to be allowed to cross the border into Canada.

G. Robert Vincent Voice Library. Michigan State University Libraries.

“The G. Robert Vincent Voice Library is a collection of over 100,000 hours of spoken word recordings, dating back to 1888. The collection includes the voices of over 500,000 persons from all walks of life.”

This collection is close by in East Lansing so one could visit to listen to material not available online.

Here is a short review of the collection (from Choice, Nov. 2011)

“The G. Robert Vincent Voice Library (VVL) contains more material than any other academic voice library in the US: recordings of speeches, oral history interviews, lectures, and performances from a variety of prominent individuals from the business, political, artistic, athletic, and entertainment fields. Started in 1962 with a donation of 8,000 recordings, by 2000 the library had seen a 20-fold increase. Today it features 40,000-plus hours of spoken word recordings, as the comprehensive About link makes clear. The library, while comprehensive, is not completely accessible online. Copyright restrictions prevent the sharing of many items electronically. Those available online can be found in three browsable collections, which feature speeches from US presidents, oral histories from men and women who worked in the automotive industry, and readings and discussions from Michigan writers. The RealAudio files are relatively clear and easy to access. In addition to accessing the fully available collections, users may search the library's in-house holdings (which include WW II material and many recordings related to the arts) and order them through interlibrary loan. Rudimentary search capabilities allow for searches by keyword, speaker name, call number, and year. Although the inability to access all recordings online is a drawback, it does not diminish the usefulness of the collections that are available.”

     For Canada a good place to begin your search is at: Virtual Gramophone: Canadian Historical Sound Recordings which  “contains information for 78-rpm and cylinder recordings released in Canada from 1900 to 1950, as well as foreign recordings featuring Canadian artists and/or compositions. Each database record provides information about an original recording, such as its title and performer, relevant dates, and details about the label and disc. As well, “you will find Selected audio recordings are available in mp3 and Real-Audio formats. The recordings include:

First World War era military bands and popular music

Recordings from the vaudeville era of the 1920s

The music and entertainment scene in Quebec in the 1920s and 1930s

Orchestral, instrumental and religious music

Opera recordings by Canadian singers

See also the digital archives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which has a useful “On This Day” section which allows you to select videos related to the day you choose.

The National Film Board of Canada site is very useful and if you go to the archival section you can search for films by keyword.

    For the United Kingdom go to British Library Sounds which “presents 50,000 recordings and their associated documentation from the Library’s extensive collections of unique sound recordings which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds.”

Sounds From Nature

    In the U.S. you should go directly to:

The Macaulay Library - The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

This library has expanded and now includes more than bird sounds. It is the largest archive of natural sounds in the world, To learn more see this article from The Cornell Chronicle, Jan. 17, 2013.

The Yellowstone National Park Collection

Acoustic Atlas

The Acoustic Atlas is curated by the Montana State University Library and includes more than 2500 recordings of species and environments from throughout the Western United States. Among the sounds one finds more than a 1000 from birds.

“Through a cooperative project between the Acoustic Atlas and Yellowstone National Park, the growing audio collection aims to create new ways to experience the animals, landscapes and people of the area, by offering a freely accessible online archive of natural sounds, interviews and radio stories focused on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.”

The Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database

Here you will find a  resource that contains approximately 2000 unique recordings of more than 60 species of marine mammals. To learn more see the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The British Library sound archive is mentioned above. Use this link to go directly to the sounds of the Environment and Nature. Here you will find the British Library Wildlife Recordings.

   As an aside, one should appreciate these freely accessible resources. The BBC offers access to 13,000+ nature and animal sound effects for $3,999 US.

Post Script:   
    I have not looked much for Canadian sound sources, but will note that Canada was an early leader in sound studies thanks to Murray Schafer who is from Sarnia. For additional information see the World Soundscape Project.
     For a couple of books about sounds and history see:How Early America Sounded and Listening to Nineteenth Century America.

The usual bonus information:
If you are tired of all the noise that was generated in 2017 and seeking silence then go to the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park. It is supposed to be the quietest place in the United States. See One Square Inch. (Listen carefully and you will hear the birds).