PEEFACE 



During the past seven years, with the assistance of artist and 

 preparateur, I have devoted the nesting season of birds to collecting 

 specimens and making field studies and photographs on which to base a 

 series of what have been termed " Habitat Groups " of North Ameri- 

 can birds for the American Museum of Natural History. 



These groups are designed to illustrate not only the habits and 

 haunts of the birds shown, but also the country in which they live. The 

 birds and, in most instances, their nests and young, are therefore 

 placed in a facsimile reproduction, containing from sixty to one hun- 

 dred and sixty square feet of the locality in which they are found, and 

 to this realistic representation of their habitat is added a background, 

 painted from nature, and so deftly joined to the foreground, that it is 

 difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. (See the 

 photographs of groups on pages, 62, 111, 233, 243, 291.) 



In selecting the subjects for these groups, not alone birds, but the 

 country they inhabit has been taken into consideration; it being desired 

 to have the series of great panoramic backgrounds, some of which are 

 twenty-eight feet in length, portray not only the haunts of certain 

 American birds, but America as well. Characteristic shore, marsh, 

 prairie, plain, desert, forest, and mountain scenes present the major 

 features of American physiography, and each is executed with an ac- 

 curacy which gives to the groups a geographical as well as an ornitho- 

 logical value. 



Some subjects were in nearby localities, which were easily visited; 

 others were in remote places which were reached with more or less diffi- 

 culty. In some cases an entire season was given to gathering the mater- 

 ial for a single group that of the Flamingos, for example; in others, 

 several groups were secured in a single season, the Bahaman Man-o'- 



