Birds and Trees of North America is Rex Brasher's seminal work, comprised of 862 watercolor paintings bound in an encyclopedic set. Between 1929 and 1932, he created 100 twelve-volume sets—1,200 individual books—and sent them to patrons across North America. Volume 1 contains 61 hand-colored plates, depicting grebes, loons, puffins, auklets, murres, jaegers, and gulls.
Order, Pygopodes: suborder, Colymbi; family, Colymbidae
With compact waterproof plumage, lobate feet, long neck and blade legs, GREBES are second only to Loons in their aquatic mastery. The head is usually crested in Spring — wings short and tail invisible. They are clumsy on land, standing upright owing to the posterior position of their feet and seldom attempt to evade danger by flight. Feet are used as a rudder in lieu of tail feathers.
NESTS are rafts of matted reeds, often afloat; and vitality of eggs is such that even when immersed, they hatch. A sitting bird covers the eggs with moss and rushes whenever they are left.
EGGS vary from 3 to 10 and are usually greenish or dull white. Period of incubation is about three weeks. Feathers are a normal part of their food and they are an essential altho unknown necessity in digestive economy: aquatic beetles and insects form about 40% — fish and other crustacea the remainder.
Order, Pygopodes: suborder, Cepphi; family, Gaviidae
LOONS have held prehistoric form unchanged. Loons swam on lakes where Dinosaurs drank.
They are strong, hardy, vital; enduring rigors of circumpolar regions, retreating south when ice closes down on their food supply. Bills long, pointed; feet fully webbed, wings narrow, short; tail of eighteen or twenty stiff short feathers. Like Grebes they can sink into water and are even more expert in diving. They associate in pairs; more are seldom seen except when stress of weather drives a number to a favorite feeding area.
NESTS are careless structures of sticks, weeds and leaves or merely a hollow in ground.
EGGS: 2; olive spotted with brown and black.
Loons epitomize the wild freedom of untouched nature.
Order, Pygopodes: suborder, Gepphi; family, Alcidae
Members of this family are Eskimos of the bird world. The cold and desolate Arctic regions are their home. In rigorous areas they are the only form of life in evidence. The short wings are efficient underwater propellers and few fish escape when the birds are pursuing food. All stand upright and most species rest with tibia flat on the ground. Tails are medium, plumage dense and waterproof. Most species migrate spasmodically but usually spend Winters on the open sea, returning to their northern breeding grounds.
PUFFINS, MURRES and AUKS lay a single pyriform egg in burrows or on rocky shelves — dull white or olive with brown markings. Incubation period about one month.
Order, Longipennes: family, Stercorariidae
Birds of this order have long, pointed wings; strong, heavy hooked bills.
Legs, usually strong, placed near center of body, three front toes webbed and tarsi covered with horny plates.
Their food is mainly fish and they are seldom found far from the source of supply. Gull Teasers, Sea Robbers and Marlinspikes indicate their thieving propensities. They are pronounced racketeers and permit weaker birds the honor of catching food.
Order, Longipennes: family, Laridae; subfamily, Larinae
Adults of different species are remarkably alike in coloration. White with gray mantle are prevailing tones with diagnostic spotting of black primaries. Immature birds are usually mixed brown.
They are gregarious, poor divers, expert flyers and omnivorous. In seaboard cities they are marine vultures, devouring an enormous amount of refuse. Altho children of the sea, they often make extensive trips inland and a monument in Salt Lake City attests the gratitude of a people saved from starvation by GULLS which destroyed crop-ravaging crickets.
The nests are on rocky ledges or open prairie marshes.
EGGS: 2 or 3, ranging from bluish white to brown with darker blotches of brown or black. Incubation period about four weeks.
Birds and Trees of North America is a vivid record of taxonomy in motion. The scientific and common names within these volumes do not always align with modern standards, nor do they always align with historical standards. While Rex followed the 1910 checklist of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU), he occasionally deviated from it according to his own observations and convictions. He disagreed with the “hair-splitting fad” of systematists and the possessive form of bird names, yet maintained the necessity of a standard language for understanding the avian world. Where Rex intentionally diverged from standard classification, we have preserved his work in its original form.