Audubon was not the father of American ornithology. That honorific belongs to Alexander Wilson, whose encyclopedic "American Ornithology" established a distinctive approach that emphasized the observation of live birds. In the first full-length study to reproduce all of Wilson s unpublished drawings for the nine-volume "Ornithology, " Edward Burtt and William Davis illustrate Wilson s pioneering and, today, underappreciated achievement as the first ornithologist to describe the birds of the North American wilderness.
Abandoning early ambitions to become a poet in the mold of his...
Audubon was not the father of American ornithology. That honorific belongs to Alexander Wilson, whose encyclopedic "American Ornithology" establish...
