Excerpt from The Habitat Groups of North American Birds: In the American Museum of Natural HistoryThese groups of birds are designed to illustrate not only the habits but also the haunts or habitats of the species shown. Each group usually includes the nest, eggs and young, besides the adult bird or birds, with a reproduction of from 60 to 160 square feet of the nests immediate surroundings. To this accurate and realistic representation of the home of the species is added a painting from nature of its habitat, the real foreground being connected with the painted background in such a manner that one often does not at first see where the former ends and the latter begins. The whole, therefore, gives an adequate conception of the nature of the country the birds inhabit and the conditions under which they live.It should be clearly understood that these backgrounds are not more or less fanciful sketches of the haunts of the birds associated with them, but they are careful studies from nature of definite localities, and therefore possess a geographical as well as an ornithological value. When selecting subjects for treatment, an effort was made to include the birds of widely diversified types of country, in order that the series, as a whole, should portray not only the habitats of certain American birds, but America as well. From the Bahamas to Hudson Bay, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, localities are represented which show at least the more characteristic phases of our landscape, and it is hoped that a tour through this hall of Habitat Groups will not only yield information in regard to North American birds, but also give one some conception of the appearance of the land in which they live.Some subjects were in nearby places and were easily visited, others were in remote regions and were reached with more or less difficulty. It is estimated that about 75, 000 miles have been traveled to secure the material on which the groups are based.The narrative of many of these expeditions is contained in "Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist, " by Frank M. Chapman.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.