Birds of the Colorado Valley: A Repository of Scientific and Popular Information Concerning North American Ornithology. Passeres to Laniidæ. Part first

Elliott Coues

Jan 1878 · U.S. Government Printing Office

About this eBook

This treatise may be regarded as complementary to the "Birds of the Northwest" (Misc. Pub. No. 3). It covers much ground not gone over in the latter work, in all that relates to the technicalities of the general subject, as well as to the particular life-histories of the birds composing the remarkable avian fauna of the Colorado Basin. As originally projected for publication in a different connection, the work consisted merely of a report upon the peculiar features of bird-life in the area under consideration, with biographies of the species not treated in the "Birds of the Northwest". But the author's resources have proved to be so largely in excess of the requirements of such a report that the work has outgrown the limits of a single volume, and become a full exposition of our present knowledge of the subject, by the incorporation of much technical matter concerning North American ornithology at large, hitherto the private possession of the author and now first made accessible to the public.