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 3 contains 82 hand-colored plates, depicting ducks, geese, swans, flamingos, spoonbills, ibises, and herons.
Family: Anatidae
In MERGANSERS the bills are narrow, rounded and toothed. All other members of this family have lamellated flattened bills with nail at tip of upper mandible. The heavy bodies are maintained in flight by continuous and vigorous beats of the moderate-sized wings. Legs short but powerfully muscled with front toes webbed, giving some species remarkable prowess as underwater swimmers.
Among most of the Ducks the males have an incomplete postnuptial molt when the flight feathers are lost, rendering them unable to fly. This is called the "eclipse" plumage. They are passionate, hot-blooded and given to exspecific intercourse, resulting in numerous hybrids. They are the most economically valuable to man of all wild birds and without the food they furnish, inhabitants of the North could not exist.
Incubation period averages four weeks. One brood a season.
[Numbers 129 – 168 Half natural size.]
Order, Anseres: family, Anatidae; subfamily, Merginae
Bills long, cylindrical and sawtoothed, enabling them to hold live fish food. Their flesh is rank and fishy, protecting them from all save wanton killing. With red bills and crested heads they are conspicuously beautiful.
Food obtained by tipping into shallow water altho they sometimes dive. Lobe on hind toe absent. Incubation period about 24 days, usually by female.
A characteristic iridescent patch on secondaries named the speculum.
Fuligulinae
Tarsi short, legs stout and heavily muscled with lobed hind toe. Food obtained by diving, most of the species being hardy saltwater birds capable of enduring cold and wintering further north than River Ducks.
Order, Anseres: family, Anatidae; subfamily, Anserinae
In physical conformation and habits GEESE link Ducks and Swans perfectly. Their legs are set more in center of body and they feed more on land than Ducks. Necks are shorter than Swans' and lores are feathered. Wings long, broad and powerful, without speculum. One molt each year. Food almost entirely vegetable and so they are more palatable than Ducks.
NEST located on ground.
EGGS — from 4 to 8: white. Incubation period about four weeks; by female, usually. One brood yearly.
Order, Anseres: family, Anatidae; subfamily, Cygninae
Beautiful, peaceful and courageous, SWANS always have held high rank in human affection. Many estates in England have "swaneries" where these birds have been raised for centuries.
They are distributed widely thruout the temperate and cold regions of the world.
Order, Herodiones: Families, Plataleidae and Ibididae
The SPOONBILL has a spatulate bill grooved on sides from base to tip and is perfectly adapted to catching reptiles or sieving aquatic food.
IBISES have decurved cylindrical grooved bills. Feet with toes on same plane enable them to perch easily. Wings ample, broad and rounded.
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.