Description
Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, Published 1979. Wraps, v, 57 pp.; 23 x 28 cm, oblong; First Edition; illustrated with color reproductions of the artist's field watercolors and one map.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Mustard illustrated paper covers with light bumping to edges and corners, mild shelf and edge wear, some color loss along edges, and fading across the bottom of the back cover. Light rubbing and a few small nicks along fore-edge of front cover. Binding tight. Scattered foxing specks to inside rear cover. Pages clean and unmarked. Forty watercolor and pen studies of Alaskan birds made by Olaus J. Murie during Biological Survey fieldwork in the 1920s and 1930s, each paired with the dated field-note entry that accompanied it, from Hooper Bay, Bettles, the Fortymile River, Tanana Crossing and the Aleutians. Compiled after his death by his wife Margaret, who drew the excerpts from his notebooks and diaries and from his Fauna of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula (1959). Brina Kessel and Dan Gibson of the University of Alaska and John Aldrich of the Smithsonian supplied current nomenclature. Murie had no formal art training. He was a biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey and led The Wilderness Society until his death in 1963. Cover reproduces a Golden Eagle head he drew at Bettles in September 1924, on the Muries' honeymoon. Contents: Introduction by Margaret E. Murie; Sketches and Notes of Olaus J. Murie: Red-throated Loon; Northern Fulmar; Laysan Albatross; Double-crested Cormorant; Pelagic Cormorant; Red-faced Cormorant; Emperor Goose; Common Eider; King Eider; Spectacled Eider; Peregrine Falcon; Red-tailed Hawk; Rough-legged Hawk; Golden Eagle; Spruce Grouse; Bristle-thighed Curlew; Sandhill Crane; Wandering Tattler; Least Sandpiper; Black-legged Kittiwake; Dunlin; Pomarine Jaeger; Parasitic Jaeger; Glaucous-winged Gull; Mew Gull; Sabine's Gull; Arctic Tern; Parakeet Auklet; Crested Auklet; Whiskered Auklet; Oriental Cuckoo; Tufted Puffin; Horned Puffin; Hawk Owl; Rusty Blackbird; White-winged Crossbill; Tree Sparrow; Lapland Longspur; Golden-crowned Sparrow; Snow Bunting.