Louis Agassiz Fuertes — Painter of Bird Portraits 277 



9 the female was found dead in a nest-box at my neighbor's, but the male 

 successfully raised the family, which left the nest on July 12. A few days 

 later the male returned and, until August 6, spent almost his entire time in this 

 tree, singing from morning till night, presumably for a mate that never came. 



22. Robin. Ten feet high, in a box elder. Discovered July 2, when a 

 Robin was on the nest. When examined, the next day, there was nothing in the 

 nest, and no birds were thereafter seen about it. 



23. Arkansas Kingbird.' Fifteen feet high, in a box elder. The nest was 

 only a few feet from where what I presume was the same pair built in 19 13. 

 They first investigated the site on May 15. On May 26 the nest was appar- 

 ently complete. On June 7 it contained four eggs, and on July 9, four healthy 

 young left the nest. 



24 and 25. At this point about ten feet high, in the crotch of an ash tree, 

 a Robin started to build and abandoned the place. Later, the pair of Arkansas 

 Kingbirds that built at No. 23 carried a few strings to this same spot, but soon 

 abandoned it and went to No. 23. 



Louis Agassiz Fuertes — Painter of Bird Portraits''' 



By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



10VE of birds as "the most eloquent expression of nature's beauty, joy, 

 and freedom" is the rightful heritage of everyone who in one way or 

 another hears the call of the outdoor world. But that inexpUcable 

 fascination for birds which awakens an instinctive, uncontrollable response 

 to the sight of their forms or the sound of their voices, which arouses a passion- 

 ate desire to become familiar with them in their haunts and obtain an intimate 

 insight into their ways, and which overcomes every obstacle until, at least 

 in a measure, this desire is gratified, is the gift of the gods which marks the 

 true ornithologist. In him the universal, if not always developed, love of 

 birds is supplemented by the naturalist's longing to discover the secrets of 

 nature. Your true bird student, therefore, is a curious, and sometimes con- 

 tradictory, combination of poet and scientist. 



Men in whom this taste and ambition combine to make birds the most 

 significant forms of the animal world, are not numerous; but a great painter 

 of birds must be primarily a man of this type. When therefore one considers 

 how small is the chance that the essential attributes which make on the one 

 hand an ornithologist, on the other an artist, will be found in one individual, 

 it is small wonder that the world has known so few real bird-portrait painters. 



Artists who introduce into their canvases birds as impossibly feathered as 

 conventional angels, artists who paint birds with more or less accuracy of 

 color and form and, more rarely, pose, have not been few in number; but the 



♦Courtesy of 'The American Museum Journal' 



