A Field Guide to the Birds, Roger Tory Peterson, Houghton Mifflin, 1934.
For American families that spent time outdoors during the 1950s and 1960s — like my own — hiking in the woods, vacationing at the seashore, touring national parks by station wagon — Roger Tory Peterson was their personal guide to nature.
In 1934, he published A Field Guide to the Birds, the first modern cataloging of eastern land and water birds, written not for specialists, but for amateur naturalists and laymen. The initial run of 2,000 copies sold out in a week; eventually, six editions across decades were published.
Having invented the modern field guide genre, Peterson went on to write and co-write a series of volumes, covering such diverse topics as trees and shrubs, mammals, butterflies, wildflowers, rocks and minerals, reptiles and amphibians, and insects.
Peterson chose to illustrate his subjects, emphasizing visual identification over physical accuracy. Doing so, he invented what came to be known as the Peterson Identification System, “wherein live birds may be run down by impressions, patterns, and distinctive marks, rather than by the anatomical differences and measurements that the collector would find useful.”
The original edition included only four color plates; the remainder were black and white. Arrows pointed to “key field marks” to allow quick and easy comparisons between species resembling each other. He limited text, insisting “pictures tell the story without help from the letterpress.” Peterson’s innovations ushered in a new era of studying live birds, not cadavers, for which he is considered an early conservationist.
Peterson was born in Jamestown, New York, a small industrial city. Following high school, he went to work in one of the town’s many furniture factories. Already a promising sketcher and painter of birds and nature, he left for New York City, attending art classes and gaining entrance to bird clubs. Unable to afford Cornell University, he obtained a position as an art instructor at a private school in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was there that he published his pioneering field guide.
Roger Tory Peterson (1908-1996) is remembered as a great American naturalist, ornithologist, illustrator, educator, and founding inspiration for the 20th century environmental movement. Some maintain that through his field guides, no one has done more in his time to promote an interest in living creatures.
He was a constant presence in our home, for sure. My mother was an avid birder, passing her passion on to all her children. We had feeders. We buried dead birds that we found in a designated part of the back yard. We had two pairs of binoculars at the ready. We built Revell models of local birds. Each night at dinner we discussed birds we had seen. My mother and I attended one of Peterson’s lectures, and he kindly autographed our family volume.
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