iehe time AsU? DU" By OIN 2B Use b- Ketel N 3 
them with pencil and brush.” 
One of Fuertes’ young students at Cornell University, where he was 
lecturer in ornithology for four years, was George Miksch Sutton. Sutton 
was born in Nebraska 47 years ago, was educated in Texas, and took his 
Ph.D. at Cornell, where he has been curator of birds since 1931. He is now 
on leave of absence to serve his country as a Major in the Army Air 
Forces, engaged in research work with the Arctic Section of the Arctic, 
Desert and Tropic Information Center in New York City. 
His first scientific explorations took him to Labrador and the Hudson’s 
Bay country, where he found the rare nests and eggs of the blue goose and 
Harris’s sparrow. Then he turned south — first to the southern states for 
ivory-bills, to the Florida Everglades, and, most recently, to Mexico, after 
such rare species as the tiger bittern, squirrel cuckoo, and Alta Mira oriole. 
Sutton made the gorgeous illustrations for Todd’s Birds of Western 
Pennsylvania, the plates for Bailey’s Birds of Florida, and many illustra- 
tions for Roberts’ Birds of Minnesota and Allen’s American Bird Biogra- 
phies and Golden Plover and Other Birds. He has also written and illus- 
trated some charming books of his own, notably Eskimo Year and Birds 
in the Wilderness. 
In a recent number of Popular Science Magazine he has told his own 
story of how he works. He says: “‘As far back as I can remember, I have 
been making pictures of birds. Wherever I have gone in my work as an 
ornithologist — whether to the frozen tundra of Southhampton Island, or 
to the cloud-hung mountains of Mexico — I have taken my water-color 
outfit with me. I have seen alive most of the 1,200-odd species and sub- 
species of birds listed for the vast area lying north of the Rio Grande. 
Many of these I have been so fortunate as to encounter on their breeding’ 
grounds, and to sketch in pencil direct from life, or paint in water color 
from freshly killed specimens. The hundreds of paintings I have brought 
back amount by this time to a considerable reference library. These paint- 
ings are housed at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology at 
Ann Arbor.” ES 
Describing how he works, he says, “I have read a good many articles, 
most of them of the Sunday-supplement type, telling of bird artists who 
have waited half frozen for hours on some mud flat for a chance to draw a 
flock of brant from life, or braved a blizzard to get an authentic sketch of 
a snowy owl. This sort of story reads well. But I, for one, am very 
skeptical. I know all too well how impossible it is for me to turn out any 
sort of sketch, whether authentic or not, with hands that are wet and cold. 
In fact, I have to be pretty comfortable all over to turn out anything like 
good work. To be perfectly honest, I depend on a somewhat photographic 
memory: check drawing’s with actual photographs whenever possible; study 
and work with birds in zoological gardens whenever I can; and most of the 
time I find it quite impossible to make my finished drawings direct from 
livine birds. Onlv occasionally am I fortunate enough to have a bird alive 
and in good condition at the time I need it. Life sketches, yes. Quick 
studies showing how a bird holds its wing or how its foot clutches a perch, 
yes. Some of my best direct-from-life portraits are of ducks caught in 
