Baby Bird Portraits: Watercolors in the Field Museum
Here are 35 watercolors of nestlings and fledglings, 19 species of North American birds painted by Sutton over three decades. The original paintings are housed in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and many of them are reproduced here for the first time. Sutton was curator of birds at the University of Oklahoma's Stovall Museum from 1952 until his death in 1982; he wrote 10 books and illustrated 15 others. Some of these watercolors were painted in Ithaca, New York, where Sutton spent 13 years as curator of birds at Cornell University; others were painted in Michigan, Oklahoma, and the Canadian arctic. Johnsgard, an ornithologist, author, and professor, has written descriptive accounts for Sutton's illustrations, offering data on the average number of eggs in the birds' nests, losses to predators and other mortality factors, survival adaptations, favored habitat, and courtship behavior, along with anecdotal information and a list of suggested reading. Sutton's sumptuous paintings and Johnsgard's enlightening text will redouble any reader's fascination and affinity for birds.George Cohen