16 
THE AUDUBON BULL PE aay 
Four Friends of the Winter Season 
The next four pages contain a special portfolio of black-and-white 
reproductions of bird paintings, authored by Earnest W. Steffen of 
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We are pleased now to have an “Illinois exclu- 
sive” on Mr. Steffen’s work, and these are forerunners of his illustra- 
tions which will be in future issues of the BULLETIN. Readers of 
the Audubon magazine, “Iowa Birdlife,” however, have seen many 
of his pen-and-ink sketches in that publication in recent times. 
In planning the portfolio (which ought to be in color but cannot 
be here), we asked Mr. Steffen to help us preface this feature with 
some words about himself, his bird studies, and his art career. Below 
is what he wrote. 
“My interest in birds was in evidence 
quite early in my childhood. At that 
time books were very scarce in our 
household. However, there was one 
that seemed to provide something 
of interest, Ridgway’s “Manual of 
North American Birds.” Even be- 
fore I could read I whiled away 
many an hour studying the pictures 
in the back of this book. These were 
line drawings depicting the parts 
of the various birds described in 
the manual. Later when I was able 
to read I set myself the task of 
drawing with pencil one bird from 
each genus which was described in 
the book. 
“In order to complete this self- 
imposed project, I found that I must, 
at least, be able to identify birds. 
That posed quite a problem because 
most of the birds described in the 
manual could not be seen on our 
160-acre Iowa farm. Those _ birds, 
therefore, had to be drawn from 
description only. But I finished this 
project to my own low standard of 
satisfaction. If one were to see this 
drawing tablet today, he would de- 
cide at once that I just didn’t have 
what it took, and that I had better 
choose some ‘ther field in which 
—The Editor 
I would most certainly have much 
more talent. 
“Much later in life I acquired 
paints and binoculars and a means 
of travel much superior to a farm 
horse. All of this opened up vast 
oppcrtunities, and I went about the 
business of painting bird pictures 
with renewed vigor. As I gained in 
skill I likewise raised my standards 
from time to time, so that finally 
I wasn’t satisfied unless I had ac- 
tually seen the bird I wished to 
paint and had looked at him care- 
fully through binoculars. Then I 
became interested in each bird’s 
habitat and consequently set myself 
the task of including in the paint- 
ing some portion of the bird’s 
surroundings. 
“As a result of all this, I realized 
that we would have to travel and 
that we would have to camp if we 
were going to see the birds as I 
wished to see them. Fortunately I 
have a wife who enjoys the simple 
but rugged life of camping. So we 
bought ourselves some equipment — 
away we went to see birds and to 
glean some facts about the territory 
in which they lived. For a number 
(Continued page 26) 
