Margaret Morse Nice

"Ornithological Margaret Morse Nice (1883–1974) changed the course of American through her two pioneering field studies in 1937 and 1943 on the . Although students of understand her importance, few general readers recognize her name, much less significance. There are many reasons this omission should be remedied: her outstanding professional accomplishments, her ability to balance family and career, her management of gender issues, and her work in conservation, preservation, and the ."

"Each spring the drowsy trill of the called us and armed with pails and strainers and home-made nets, off we started to the nearby railroad . Here we found treasures: strings of toad eggs, s big and little, sedate s (which we believed were lizards), and alluring s, drab , and most tempting of all, . Caddis flies had fascinated me ever since I had read about them Charles Kingsleys (1863), and it was wonderful to find that these almost mythical creatures of English brooks were our neighbors here in our own waters."

"The concept of territory proves to be as old as the science of ornithology, since Aristotle was the first writer to mention it. This was pointed out by Lack (Condor, 46, 1944:108) who, however, did not follow the subsequent history of these observations. ... It was Aristotle, then, who declared that eagles partition out the land according to their needs for food, and this statement was incorporated into the books of Pliny, (in regard to ), Albertus Magnus (transferred to vultures), , , and Buffon."

"The most cherished of my life came in 1895 — s Bird-Craft (1895). For the first time, I had coloured bird pictures. Many of these were adapted from Audubons (1827); single birds, or occasionally a pair, sometimes in surprising attitudes, were depicted. In later years, when looking at the reproductions of Audubons original plates, every now and then a picture has given me a little tug at the heart, recalling my childhood years of eager search. The simple descriptions, the charming discussions, the enthusiastic introductory chapters of Bird-Craft — all these I pored over and all but learned by heart."

"In teaching our child the English language, we talked to her as an adult except that our words were simple and concrete. In general our practice has been not to correct her mistakes, trusting to the force of good example. As much as possible we have tried to have her words stand for real things; for instance, we took her to see pigs and bears and skunks, so that she would not get her conceptions merely from stories, pictures and s. Finally we make an effort to avoid the dead level of too simple language by at times dealing with familiar situations in new words."