IOWA BIRD LIFE— XI, 1941 
114 
The reunion, though, was different. He died September 14, 1941, 
at the Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa, from complications fol- 
lowing an operation. Although his letters of two months before in- 
dicated he may have thought something wrong, the end was a sudden 
shock to his many Iowa friends. 
But it was in another sphere of activity in which he attained greatest 
renown, that of Rosene, the Naturalist. His untiring ambition and 
perseverance achieved for him a place among Iowa’s best ornithologists 
of all time. His was not that of the office chair and laboratory but 
that of hard labor in the field. His ornithology was not taxonomy, not 
distribution, not compilation, but bird behavior, and his accomplish- 
ments in that placed him among the best in the Middle West. 
Some men trace the beginning of their ornithological work to an 
environment of early years; others, to inspiration of some person. With 
Rosene it undoubtedly was both. The bird life of his own farming 
community, ever present and ever active, must have provided an in- 
terest as it does with most of those in such a region. He himself has 
often said, with his usual humor, that the business of banking gave 
him an interest in birds for he “was always chasing tame ducks," i.e., 
those debtors who were behind in payments I But undoubtedly another 
ornithologist, the late Carl Fritz Henning, was first to thoroughly arouse 
his interest in bird life. Later, while attending meetings of the old 
Iowa Conservation Society, he met other ornithologists and, with them 
and others, took an active part in organizing the present Iowa Ornith- 
ologists’ Union in 192J. He was not only a Charter Member but be- 
came its first President and was reelected for a second two-year term. 
The others he met through this association no doubt gave him much 
inspiration for his work. 
At the convention of the Iowa Ornithologists’ Union in 1924, Rosene 
and Walter W. Bennett planned a scientific trip into the Stump Lake 
and Devil s Lake region of North Dakota. It was this expedition that 
gave him a start in the photography of bird life and lecturing, as well 
as much added information and new methods in the study of bird be- 
havior. (See ‘Wilson Bulletin', June, 1926, pp. 65-79). 
The trip, in June 1924, was a three-weeks' battle with mud roads, 
camping in adverse weather, and with other discomforts, all of which 
Rosene took with hearty enjoyment and with a consistent sense of 
humoi . He wanted to take a better kind of photographs, having only 
his postcard-size kodak. It was suggested he obtain a portrait lens by 
which (with help in composition, exposure and bird behavior) he ob- 
tained a creditable set of negatives of water birds and nests. Upon 
returning home Bennett made from them and colored by hand Rosene's 
first set of slides to use in lecturing to his friends. This opened up a 
new field, for now he could share with others his great enjoyment over 
the things his research revealed of bird life. 
Through the next 17 years Rosene did much in ornithology. He 
consistently studied behavior, migration, nesting and the economic 
status of birds not only in his own Ogden territory; but made many 
expeditions to other parts of Iowa. He kept accurate and detailed 
records and gathered an excellent library of still and motion pictures 
to illustrate his findings. He published frequent articles in various 
scientific periodicals but preferred the more modern and more effec- 
tive visual way of explanation. He was greatly in demand as a lecturer 
and contributed much to ornithology by that method. He planned also 
to write a book on the birds of central Iowa, using his own observations 
and photographs, and would have probably begun work on the manu- 
script within a year if he had been spared. 
Rosene's favorite organization was the Towa Ornithologists’ Union. 
After serving as its first President he continued most faithful and was 
always one of the moving spirits in anything that promoted its vvel- 
